As I was saying . . .

At some point between my birthday and the end of the year, I make a perfectly plausible New Year’s resolution: to carve out some writing time and get that novel I’m working on finished. Then I write other detailed resolutions that expand and strengthen the initial resolution. I also throw in some I’m going to exercise and drink more smoothies.

Last year, I even attempted to do NaNoWriMo in November, which didn’t go quite as well as I’d hoped. In fact, it went in the opposite direction. If you’re wondering why my NaNo word count widget is still stuck in November, it isn’t the result of laziness; it’s because that’s the last time I even looked at my story, let alone touched it, and I mean that in a completely normal way.

While I would like to blame Kavya, my two year old daughter, for my lack of time, energy, motivation, inspiration, etc. I can’t. Nor can I blame my hectic work schedule. It’s not that hectic, or draining.  The real issue really boils down to. Well, me. I am not looking at writing fiction as a job, and I probably should start doing that. There is no divine inspiration, or sage advice to gleam from writing books or magazines. The bottom line is that I have to write like it’s a job.

When I write freelance articles and essays, I know someone is going to pay me as soon as I finish it. Even when I grade papers or write up lesson plans/syllabi, I know at the end of the 4 month semester, I will be paid for my effort. Writing fiction is totally different. There is no guarantee of anything. Not of payment. Not of publication, or the time frame. As Victor Frankenstein says to Robert Walton in Letter IV of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: “Unhappy man, do you share my madness?” Yep. I do, homeboy.

After my five days of NaNo and my pitiful November word count, I felt a bit bummed and even as I write this post, I still haven’t looked at my writing. But clearly, I wasn’t that distraught because it didn’t stop me from livin’ it up on a holiday to Hawai’i for Christmas.

So, rather than making a huge New Year’s Resolution post filled with lofty goals, this year I have exactly two writing related goals:

1) To get organized and start taking my writing seriously, instead of waffling about. That wasn’t really a goal, more an offhand inner thought that somehow made it to #1 on my resolutions.

2) I’m going to post a monthly word count in the sidebar, and try to gear myself up for NaNoWriMo. This is the year I finish my novel.

3) Read more. Maybe post some reviews on here of some of the books I’ve read.

I’ll end this post with another inspirational video by the best writing mentor anyone could hope to have:

Exactly How It Went Down

Last week, two of my School of Visual Art students almost got into a fist fight during class discussion. Alright, that is not entirely true. Nor is it partially true. It was all very civilized and uneventful, although chairs may have been thrown had I left the room and didn’t reign the discussion back to its original purpose: dissecting the narrative structure of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” Somehow, during the course of our discussion, we ended up having a bit of a quibble over Star Wars being boxed into the Fantasy or Science Fiction genre. Or possibly both of these genres.

We started discussing the basics of story structure from Aristotle’s “Poetics,” and predictable horror films and romantic comedies where plot and characters were clichéd, and stlll we paid our ten dollars to watch these stories unfold exactly as we thought they would in the cinema. We paralleled this to Shakespeare’s comedies ending in a marriage and his tragedies ending in bloodshed and a pile of dead bodies, including the protagonist(s) at the end.

Pau and Brandon Look Just Like This.

We were in the middle of breaking down the inciting incident, catalyst, call to action, which are all exactly the same thing, and about the rules that allegedly govern genre. Most of my class had watched Star Wars (yet another reason I love teaching here!) and we had just begun to talk about what its catalyst might be, when the two trouble-makers of the class, Brandon and Pau Something Or Other (not related, despite the same last name)  made their very brief arguments for their difference of opinion in regards to the genre.

Pau felt that the narrative of Star Wars was pure fantasy, while Brandon thought that since technology was guiding the story, it was a clear case of Science Fiction. They naturally spent the rest of class wearing dunce caps and sitting on opposite ends of the classroom looking remorseful.

We eventually brought the discussion back to Shelley’s use of the letters where bugger all happens until letter four, the purpose of Walton narrating the story,  and the use of the stark empty plains of the North Pole as the setting.  Shelley wasn’t on a budget.  Gothic castles and scenery were available, as were humped, scary looking man servants from Transylvania.  But as a massive Star Wars fanatic, and as an admirer of writers from both genres, I was intrigued. I saw the point both Brandon and Pau were making. Brandon’s position is based on a fairly simple and widely accepted criteria for the distinction between science fiction and fantasy. If futuristic weapons or aliens are involved, it is Science Fiction. If a quest, knights, dragons, a princess, or magic are involved, it’s fantasy.

Pau’s argument is one at odds with this distinction and centers on the narrative, which as we all know, is one complicated mofo. She also loves the term “magical realism,” which I’ll save for another post.  To oversimplify the narrative of Star Wars:

Armed with a fancy sword and guided by a wise old wizard with great zingers,  a gallant knight sets off on a quest to slay the evil dragon and save a beautiful princess. Along the way, he learns martial arts from a master, combats evil, and is shocked upon discovering that the evil dragon is really his father. And the sequels begin.

Terry Pratchett, one of my all time favourite British writers, most famous for Discworld, is known the world over as a fantasy writer. It doesn’t help matters that he wears massive black hats, has a bit of a lisp, and is not shy about wearing what look like magician’s cloaks.  And he wears the title (as well as the honorary “Sir”) with pride. In the video above, he says in no uncertain terms that when he was writing Discworld, he was making a conscious decision to write fantasy by using dwarves and wizards. It features virtually the whole gamut in addition to incompetent wizards and wise witches: There are mythological and real creatures, all of whom take on human characteristics.  But science fiction writers like H.G. Wells,  Mary Shelley, or Ursula LeGuin would probably not agree with his notion that “Science Fiction is a subset of fantasy.”

A lot of libraries and bookshops can’t be bothered to separate the two genres, so often meld the two together in an unholy literary medical experiement, placing books in both genres alphabetically in the Fantasy/Science Fiction section as if they are exactly the same thing.  I’m sure that most, if not all writers of what we consider to be in the genre of fantasy or science fiction, made a conscious  decision to put elements of their genre into their story on some level. But this doesn’t bring us any closer to a definitive criteria of what makes Science Fiction, science fiction, and Fantasy, fantasy.

Some claim it stems from the narrative, the plot devices, or the characters. Others claim the distinction lies in far more integral ways. science fiction is –as the name implies– rooted in science. It must create a world and the laws that govern its logic through facts, and should be based loosely on what we know to be true today in order to speculate a future utopia or dystopia.

British Fantasy Writer, Terry Pratchett

But this sounds like what a lot of fantasy writers do as well. Terry Pratchett has consciously sought out to write fantasy and has followed all of the rules a fantasy writer follows. But he has also broken many, perhaps unconsciously, or perhaps he was just concerned with writing a bloody good story. If a science fiction writer is rooted in science, then a fantasy writer is obviously rooted in fantasy, or the land of make-belief. It generally doesn’t have to provide the science or logic of its world. In Lord of the Rings, for example, we simply accept that this world of hobbits and trolls and dragons and an evil magical ring exist. There is no effort from Tolkien to go out of his way, or even in his way, to explain their logic.

But there is an awful lot of science and logic and what not that underpins every single one of Terry Pratchett’s novels and short stories, which is not surprising, given his influences. The Discworld series contains all of the elements of fantasy, but it also speculates on society, draws clear parallels with political and religious ideology and how silly all of it is, as well as delves into the logic of the world. He breaks down how it is possible that this world is a large disc with a waterfall on its edge, that rests on the backs of four elephants, who are standing on a massive turtle. This sounds very familiar to religious myths from Buddhism and Hinduism to explain things like death and even earthquakes (an angry bull needing to be appeased) .

"Creature" or "Monster," That is the Question.

Add to this confusion, subgenres like supernatural or horror that have become accorded all of the rights of a proper genre. Now, where does Frankenstein fit? Technology isn’t actually used and there aren’t any aliens or technological weapons. But the idea of a creature being created through “science” is easy enough: Science Fiction. This is clearly no fantasy. But it is scary. Horror, then? But there is no gore; And unlike her predecessors, Shelley attacks what was thought to be a sacred institution: Nature. Through an intensely amplified moral argument, she sharply questions our morals as individuals and as members of a collective society. This sounds more like Science Fiction though doesn’t it? It is making a speculation. But it is scary. Existential Gothic Horror Science Fiction perhaps?

And then there are those who feel that stories like Star Wars or Discworld can’t be neatly placed in one genre, and that this whole thing is a “false duality.” You can see the parallels with the Heroic Epics of Beowulf or Homer’s Iliad/Odyssey. Whether we’re talking about Achilles or Huck Finn; Odysseus or Beowolf;, Mulan, that kid from Transformers, or Luke Skywalker, the “quest” of the Hero is the same: to save someone or something greater than him/herself. And when you bring in a spiritual quest, it complicates things even more.

If a bookshop felt like putting Star Wars or Discworld in a category called Science Fiction/Fantasy/Spiritual Adventure, I would be fine with it. But it is rare to see a story transcend whatever genre it is intended for these days. The prequel of Star Wars, for example, is completely technology based with no wiggle room for anything other than Science Fiction. A story about an alien invasion with no depth to the narrative, is generally agreed on as being Science Fiction; a story about a mythological creature living in a mythological land wanting to rid his land of evil by destroying a ring is Fantasy. I don’t know if there is a debate on the genres of these things because as I’ve told my wife, Sona Charaipotra many times, I am not a nerd.

To paraphrase this entire blog post: “Neither.”

Weekly Word Count Goal: 1,644 x 7 = 11,508
Actual Weekly Word Count: 6,200

Total Words Written: 6,200/50,000

The Good: I am excited that my novel is finally taking shape and that I’m not constantly second-guessing the story, the characters, or the narrative structure of the entire thing. I am also very pleased with the progress and the fact that I am sitting down to write. So, I am at peace with the progress I am slowly making.

The Not So Good: My progress could obviously be better. I do need to stop dwelling on refining sentences and move forward with the plot. But most importantly, I really need to carve out time from my schedule because otherwise, everything else will take precedence. Even though, I’ve only hit 53% of the NaNoWriMo goal, it is a 53% boost from where my writing was at on October 31st. This coming week will be better. Wish me luck!

Start Time: 2:30 pm
End Time: 3:00pm
Today”s Word-count: 17 (no, that isn’t a typo!)

Total Words Written: 4,200/50,000 (from Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four and Day Five)

The Good: We got to Cape May in good time. The room is lovely as is the beach and the weather is nice. Kavya is thoroughly enjoying herself.

The Not So Good: I got so bloody knackered that I completely zonked out when we came into the room. I did sort of work on my writing for about half an hour, from 230pm to 3pm, but I got 17 words that I think mostly consisted of vowels and were refining sentences that were already there. So I’m definitely not pleased about my progress today.

Dialogue is one of the most underrated skills for a fiction writer to study. It’s viewed almost as the exclusive territory of screenwriters. The stories that I enjoy reading (short-stories, novels, non-fiction) use a range of tools to tell their stories. There are beautiful sentences with lovely imagery and words that pop into your mouth and crackle (description); the plot is intriguing, and the dialogue is believable and the characters are deliciously complex. So, the stories of the authors mentioned above are not ones I read just out of entertainment, but the fact they are fantastic stories to really attempt to dissect how the writer’s achieved the effect they did.

All of these writers have completely ignored the sage advice sermonized in writing programs: all of the elements must be present and above all, there must be plot to propel the story forward. Otherwise, what’ the point? I’m not suggesting that these are plotless stories. There is, of course, plot in all of the stories, but the main tool the writers use to draw you in is the complexity of the characters through the dialogue (check out Goodies and Baddies: Creating Complex Villains and Heroes). 

In Flannery O’Connor’s story, “A Good Man is Hard To Find,” you are slapped with the plot in the first paragraph. You know exactly what is going to happen and odds are, she did it on purpose because everything else is so carefully laid out and subtly integrated. Then you have this glaring foreshadowing of the grandmother who tells her son about this crazy killer called the Misfit And guess what happens? They encounter the Misfit.

In many of Hemingway’s stories, absolutely nothing interesting happens in terms of plot. There is no crazy killer involved, except for “The Killers,” where there are two, and even there, the plot isn’t all that enticing once we understand the premise. “A Clean, Well Lighted Place,” is about a young and old waiter waiting on a drunk customer, so they can close up and go home. The old waiter feels sympathy for the man because he sees himself in him. Eventually the drunk man goes home and the old waiter goes to another bar/bodega and has a drink. That is it. Two settings and two main characters. In “Hills Like White Elephants,” a man and a woman are having a seemingly light conversation while waiting for their train at the station, and are still waiting at the end of the story. What is magical about all of the stories is the way the dialogue quickly draws us into the characters, into the drama, into the world these characters inhabit. We are genuinely interested in what happens to these characters, even if it doesn’t involve an inciting incident.

So here are links to  three short-stories that I find to be an effective study of writing believable dialogue. Let me know what you think or if there are other stories you think also fit the bill:

A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway
A Clean, Well Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway

Start Time: 9:30 pm
End Time:  11pm
Today”s Word-count: 2,000! ! !

Total Words Written: 4,200/50,000 (from Day One, Day Two, Day Three, and Day Four)

The Good: Not only did I get to hang out with Kavya during the day, but I put in a major dent into my story. While there was some dilly dallying with refining bits and pieces and stopping to add to the backstory, overall I am quite chuffed that a) I surpassed my daily goal and b) that it seems to be coalescing smoothly.

The Not So Good: This is not necessarily a negative yet, but I have a feeling I know what is going to happen tomorrow and the day after. So, starting on Sunday morning until Monday afternoon, we are going on a little family trip (just me, Sona, and Kavya) to a little seaside beach called Cape May, about a half hour from Atlantic City in New Jersey. We’ve brought our laptops, but I think it’s safe to assume bugger all is going to happen with the writing. I just don’t think we’re organized enough to switch Kavya off between the two of us so that we both get some writing time. This is the ideal situation, but hopefully it will just be too cold that we stay indoors the whole time, Kavya sleeps the entire time, and we do some hardcore writing. Yep. That’s what might happen. I am of course very happy with my word count today, but it’s not so much that I can take so many holidays of having days with word counts of ZERO. Wish me luck!

Start Time: None
End Time: None
Today”s Word-count: A Big FAT zero

Total Words Written: 2,200/50,000 (from Day One and Day Two)

The Not so Good: Kavya wasn’t feeling well, so we kept her at home, which meant I got woken up by Kavya saying hello to me and wanting me to read her one of the gabillion Elmo books on the shelf to her. I also had grading to do, which would have taken me about an hour to do, but ended up taking about seven because Kavya kept running away with my papers or wanting me to take a break and clap my hands like a mental patient. So, basically I was absolutely knackered by the time evening rolled around and I made a half-hearted attempt to look at my story, but ended up falling asleep. Tomorrow is Saturday and some words need to get written!

Start Time: None
End Time: None
Today”s Word-count: A Big FAT zero

Total Words Written: 2,200/50,000 (from Day One and Day Two)

The Good: I got to hang out with Kavya. We talked about many interesting things, like lava formations on the Big Island in Hawaii; she kept saying “more” and after a pause, “waataarr” then proceeded to get the entire cushion I was sitting on, including my trousers wet. We did some yoga. She knows one move: the downward dog. This is followed by her climbing onto my head.

The Not so Good: Thursdays are my full on days where I start at 9am and come home at 4pm. The only writing I did today was while sitting on the train for about fifteen minutes, and that essentially consisted of adding a vowel or an article before closing my laptop back up and walking home.  And as soon as I came home, I took a nap. Then I woke up and Kavya was climbing onto me, saying, “Papa, Elmo?” followed by her flinging herself over to the bookshelf to get a book and wanting me to read it to her. So that was the end of my night. Tomorrow doesn’t look all that promising either as we are headed to Sona’s mum and dad’s after my class at S.V.A. and have a fun trip planned for Sunday and Monday to Cape May. So, I am hoping that I keep my momentum going and it doesn’t flatline because I have  a novel to write!

Start Time: 9:30 am
End Time: 2:00 pm
Today”s Word-count: 1,000/1,644
Total Words Written: 2,200/50,000

The Good: I did force myself to sit down and write. And I am pleased with the progress I am making and with where the story is going and how it’s taking shape. Plus, so far, I haven’t veered off my outline . . . although I’m not moving forward with the plot either. I am trying not to be overly critical and getting too bogged down with the minutia of perfecting my sentences and ideas.

The Not so Good: I dawdled a bit too much during my writing time. I had five hours to write, but a lot of it was taken up by looking up names of Bollywood films I’m referencing in the opening and on youtube videos and articles on Bollywood star, Amitabh Bachchan’s link to inciting mob violence in 1984. Yes, research. It wasn’t necessary. I am also not thrilled I didn’t meet my full word count for yesterday and today, but I am pleased I’m writing. I did still refine and added bits to the first part of the novel, rather than ploughing straight ahead. I’m also needlessly concerned about tomorrow when I have a full teaching load. I should have just concentrated on today and gotten my writing sorted.

Overall: I didn’t get completely bogged down in making the sentences and ideas flow perfectly, and I am happy that I am writing with a direction, so I don’t feel like I’m wasting my energy in developing plot points or characters that aren’t going anywhere (as has happened in the past). I may have stopped the narrative a wee bit with the description and introduction of the sister character in a flashback that wasn’t there before. Hey, I did say I am trying not to be overly critical! So, overall, I feel like I’m making good progress.

Start Time: 9:00 am
End Time: 11:00 am
Today”s Word-count: 1,200/1,644
Total Words Written: 1,200/50,000

I didn’t hit my exact word count, but so far, so good, athough I did a lot of refining and I did still go back and edit. I’ve actually sat down and written more than I have in the past year and am actually progressing with my novel. So hip, hip hurray for me.

I attempted to write my novel during National Novel Writing Month in 2009 (NaNoWriMo or just plain NaNo), and while I would like to blame many things other than myself for not putting in much of a dent, it was through a lack of planning. I didn’t have an outline or even a sense of where I was going. This year, I am hoping it will be different. I am going to try and write 1,600 words per day.

I found these nifty word count image meter thingies that I am going to update you with daily during November. For those of you interested in using them yourselves, they are very easy to use.

You just put in this url and change the word count, target, and mood number: http://wordmeter.heroku.com/meter/words=1200&target=1644&mood=2

This year, I made an open declaration to all those who read this blog in my resolution post, Literary New Year’s Resolutions for 2011 of my writing goals this year. The reason I made it public rather than simply scribbling it down in my journal is so people would see my progress and I would be publicly shamed if I didn’t make strides in accomplishing my set goals. So far, the only two people who bully me into admitting my failures in letting Jersey Shore or FaceBook trump my writing goals are Sona Charaipotra (that’s my wife) and Dhonielle Clayton, her classmate, fellow fiction writer and homegirl at the New School’s MFA program, and blogger extraordinarie at TeenWritersBloc.com

You will find a public display of my inadequacies and . . . adequacies. No, that’s not the right word. My successes and failures – that sounds better – in keeping up with my writing goals for the next 30 days – click tab above that says “NaNoWriMo” or (check out http://www.navdeepsinghdhillon.com/category/nanowrimo). According to my New Year’s post, every week, I aimed to write 3 days a week, 500 words per session. So 1,500 words per week. It’s now November and my word count is at 0. So slightly short. This month for National Novel Writing Month, I’m going to put in a more respectable effort. Bullies welcome. Caste no bar.

Writing, like many other creative fields, is an incredibly lonely and isolating thing to do. It’s difficult being anti-social, not so you can put your feet up and unwind, but so you can sit in a corner of your house with a laptop. So two of the things I like about NaNo is that it connects you with a quarter of a million people around the world who are all trying to write a novel, and there are some amusing “pep talks” by established novelists. All of the participants, especially the aspiring novelists, are  thinking This is the year. Very few will be disciplined enough to actually write 1,667 words a day, and make it to the full 50,000. What it gives aspiring novelists is a community and above all, hope. The hope that this year they can put a dent in their novel, maybe finish it, maybe even publish it.

I am particularly excited this year because I have an outline! And I am finally comfortable with the characters I am populating the first part of my novel with, the narrative, and most importantly, I feel confident in the research component. As many of you know, I have been in research mode for several years now, and it is very addictive once you start. First I was researching Punjab in the 1980s, then key figures in the movement in India, Canada, the U.K, as well as speaking to as many people who would speak about the issues. And then there were all sorts of uncovered avenues I hadn’t read about. My wife, Sona Charaipotra, suggested I completely change any semblance of a narrative I had when I added September 11 into the backdrop. And the research for that started. To find out more details about my novel, click here.

Two years ago, I wrote about 1,500 words, and I broke two of the cardinal rules of NaNo: 1) I started criticizing what I’d written, and 2) I blasphemously started editing. All of the 1,500 of the words I wrote have since been destroyed, replaced by other words. Initially, they weren’t better words, but were different words. Some versions started in 1947, others in 1957, and still others in present day California or 2001 New York. I aged the main character from 16 to 27 and now down to 18. The story has taken on many different narrative approaches from flashback, first person, to straight linear, and various forms of third person. In-between all of this, I went back to researching, returned to my fiction and I destroyed the words again, only to use way too much exposition and backstory, all perils of transitioning back to fiction after being in “research mode.”

One of the difficult things about my novel is that I am taking two incredibly emotional events, which are still very fresh in the minds of many, and I am trying to weave a narrative that involves real events, and complicated fictionalized characters with real life problems, while still trying to remain true to facts and a version of reality. Striking a balance between creating real emotional depth and writing melodrama is no easy task. And as much as I like blaming external forces that infringe upon my time, the truth is the only factor that has kept me from proceeding with my writing is me. I quickly realized that I needed an outline , but had no idea how to do it, and still had reservations about it.

I first started writing short-stories, which is where my love for fiction started, and my strategy for writing them has and will probably always involve writing without an outline (but never say never). The ideas develop organically and because there are such a limited number of pages, it is easy to focus it and to see an end in sight (link on my thoughts on the M.F.A) . My novel has turned out to be a very different beast because of the complicated layering of the characters, with the constantly changing narrative (and plot) of the subject I am attempting to convey, especially because of the time line. I know many novelists who cannot work without an outline (like Sona and Dhonielle), and plenty who work without it and like the flexibility of following an idea or train of thought that naturally develops, like Corey Haydu, a New York City based novelist and playwright.

A few days ago, I sat down with  Sona and Dhonielle, at the Brownstone Diner in Jersey City. And they both helped me to really break down my story and write an outline!. While I chatted with Dhonielle, who is no-nonsense when it comes to getting real, even when pancakes are involved. Questions like “then what happens?” and comments like “that doesn’t make any sense,” forced me to really think about where the story was headed or where I wanted it to go. Sona, meanwhile, added her thoughts as well, but was mainly writing out the major plot points and character traits with different colored markers on multi-colored notecards. There was also rope involved, but we didn’t get that far. We sat there for a good three hours and I had the first five chapters outlined. I found it incredibly helpful to be able to talk it out with someone who forced me to address the dreaded “and then?” without getting sidetracked, and also to have written copy to keep me on track. The outline did have many specific ideas in it, but it wasn’t so specific that I felt constricted.

So, thanks to Sona and Dhonielle, I now at least have a solid idea of where 200 pages of my story is headed. I am going to keep the 1,600 words per day as the goal and will keep you updated on how that goes.

If you are a fellow aspiring novelist, why are you reading this? Go write! If you’re a reader, a fellow aspiring novelist, or just someone who just stumbled onto this site, become a fan on FaceBook, or follow me on Twitter, so you can tell me to stop dawdling and to go write!

Got P.M.S.? Get Milk

A hilarious advertisement campaign by the “Got Milk” folks gives hope to men who have to deal with the erratic behavior of their wives/girlfriends due to their P.M.S. symptoms. The campaign is called “Everything I do is Wrong” and promotes an understanding of this mental disorder as well as garnering sympathy for the men who have to live with the repercussions of it. The premise is not just opinion. It is scientific. According to a study, milk (and other dairy products) help to calm down the craziness of women during their time of the month. One of the ad campaigns shown on the left features a bloke with disheveled hair, and a befuddled expression, as he carries several cartons of milk in his hands. It sends the positive message to little girls and women all over the world that with enough milk, God willing, a woman can someday be president of the United States. Maybe even a doctor.

There is a video clip from CNN that I can’t embed, but here’s a link to it: (http://youtu.be/65GUEKn0duQ). What I found particularly interesting in the video is the way this topic is being discussed. There isn’t an ounce of outrage from either of these women. This is a perfectly acceptable advertising campaign and is just “hilarious.” And the only people who would have a problem with it are those silly “feminists” and “women’s rights groups,” who live out in the Amazonian jungles and are completely separated from reality. Other videos covering this story showed reactions of women from various walks of life, and none of them were offended either (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US8fzDbUFNM).

Is George Clooney too fat to act?

Don’t ask me why I know who Coco Rocha is. Just accept that I do. What I admire about her is that she is one of a very tiny number of successful supermodels who have spoken out against the culture of eating disorders in the modeling industry that has largely contributed to our perception of beauty. And by extension, the perception that women and girls the world over have of beauty. Coco has said that after a trip to Singapore where she ate up a storm (it’s Singapore, how can you not!) and gained a few pounds, she was given the advice to lose the weight because the look that year was anorexia. But whoever gave her that advice didn’t want her to be unhealthy, so added, “we don’t want you to be anorexic, but that’s what we want you to look like.”

I remember reading an article in college ten years ago about young girls in Fiji developing all sorts of eating disorders shortly after American television was introduced to the island in the 1990s. In countries like India and Korea and Pakistan and I’m sure plenty of other countries in those regions, skin products contain bleach. You heard me right, bleach, so that everyone can look beautiful like the actors and models on the telly.

Our daughter, Kavya, is a little under two years old now and has no concept of gender roles. She takes things she wants and declares an item, regardless of what it is as “mine.” She will wear whatever we give her: onesies, dresses, skirts, trousers, jackets. She has no problems letting out a massive belch and then laughing so hard she almost falls off the sofa. She also has some slick bhangra moves, which was traditionally a Punjabi dance form performed exclusively by men after a good harvest. While there are plenty of co-ed Bhangra teams today, there are still many who still believe moves like the “dhamaal” are considered too “vulgar” to be performed by women. The counterpart is an equally slick, but thought to be more ladylike dance form called the Gidhha. The completely unnecessary video below was taken when Kavya was about two months old and it shows you where her loyalties lie. The video is flash based. Sorry iPhone and iPad users:

For now, we can monitor the shows she watches and the books she reads. But it is only a matter of time before she is introduced to an explosion of pink with barbie, princess lunchboxes, dolls, tea sets, the notion of prince charming coming to rescue her, and who knows what else coming at her from every direction, including from her classmates. It isn’t that I have anything against princesses or the colour pink. I just bought Kavya a pink tutu and a tiarra. She is, after all, my little princess. What I have a problem with is the lack of balance.  And as annoying as I find Dora the Explorer, she really is the only female protagonist in children’s shows that is normal, does things other than wave a magic wand and isn’t pink. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s also nice that she shows people that brown children exist too. Once Kavya is introduced to Dora, we will unfortunately have to completely refurnish our flat with Dora merchandise though. Speaking of which, if you find the Dora the Explorer with the message of empowerment too boring, just buy your daughter a Dora the Princess doll so she can comb her hair and make her look pretty.

Anyone who knows even a little bit about me knows that I am a massive bhangra-head, especially for old school hits. The catchy Punjabi song, “Gal Ban Gaye” by Sukhbir, from the 1990s that I have bhangra’d my head off to many a time without paying very much attention to the lyrics (below) makes it fairly clear:
“Munde bhangra paunde te kudiyan gidha pavan” (0:24)
“Munde car chalaunde te kudiyan pedal javan.” (1:24)

These lines literally translate to:
“Boys perform the bhangra and girls perform the giddha”
“Boys drive cars while girls walk.”

This of course is not exclusive to Punjabi music videos. Don’t get me started on the sorry state of the current Bhangra music scene, which is getting pretty much every single one of their cues from American hip-hop videos, complete with the sexed up “hip-hop honeys” and sunglasses in a nightclub (cheers for that tip, RDB).

Birpal Kaur was one of the subjects of an L.A. Times article on Sikh women and their relationship with their kesh/hair. The entire L.A. times “A Decision On The Razor’s Edge” piece situated Sikh women, not within their own spirituality and relationship to their faith, but within the context of their potential husband. After all, how can Sikh women ever find a husband “who is attracted to a hairy-legged, mustached woman?” It’s not like the French ever get married. That quote pretty much sums up the tone of the L.A. times piece. In Birpal Kaur’s rebuttal post on The Langar Hall, “Separate But Equal,” she explores this cultural double standard; Sikh males aren’t warned that Sikh women won’t find them attractive unless they wax their eyebrows, cut/trim/shave their facial hair, or wax their chest and legs. Their turbans and facial hair are a sign of masculinity. Ironically, the Sikh religion is probably one of the only religions in the world which gives equal rights to women in no uncertain terms within the religious text of the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh Holy Book.

There is a fantastic documentary called “Miss Representation” that I encourage every single one of my readers to watch. It will make you think about the role media plays in shaping the minds and values of grown adult women starting with little girls, around my daughter’s age. Here’s an official excerpt:

“the film explores how mainstream media contribute to the under-representation of women in influential positions in America and challenges the media’s limiting and often disparaging portrayals of women, which make it difficult for the average girl to see herself as powerful.”

Here is the trailer:

If a woman is raped in America (and most of the sane world), she doesn’t have to produce four witnesses to the rape or face being prosecuted for adultery. Sex trafficking is not a publicly accepted part of our “civilized” society. Women can work in almost every profession men can work in, except for military combat. They can, however, guard a combat vehicle unarmed in a combat zone, which is much safer. So, comparatively, women in America are free. And in this post women’s liberated land of ours, there is outrage against overt forms of sexism and of course, violence against women, including rape. But both the subtle and no so subtle messages we have allowed our media to put forth (and that is being emulated around the world) we have somehow accepted as a part of our ethos.  This documentary brings up a simple, yet deep rooted question: Why?

Yesterday, while most of us squeezed out the last bit of fun from the weekend by lounging at home and watching telly, Fauja Singh earned a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the oldest person to complete a full distance marathon. To put it mildly, he wasn’t the fastest bloke at the marathon. Kenneth Mungara of Kenya ran the marathon in 2 hours and a bit, winning for the fourth year in a row, while it took Fauja Singh over eight hours to complete it. So why was there no bhangra music playing when Kenneth Mungara crossed that finish line, and more importantly, why isn’t Kenneth Mungara in the Guinness Book of World Records? Because Kenneth Mungara isn’t 100 years old and made of pure steel.

To put this distance into perspective, a half marathon is 13 miles (20ish km), and the full marathon is 26 miles (40ish km). I live a relatively active lifestyle. I take long walks with my wife and daughter, I do kickboxing, I practice yoga a few times a week, but I cannot even fathom walking 13 miles, let alone running 26!

What I find so inspiring about Fauja Singh’s accomplishments has nothing to do with his breaking world records, although that is lovely icing on the metaphoric cake. The world is clearly gobsmacked that he is 100 and is defying conventional medical wisdom to take it easy. But for me and I’m sure for all those who have been following his story, it goes deeper than that.

Fauja Singh never had any intention of moving to England. He was living a very contented life as a farmer in his village of Beas Pind in Jallandhar, Punjab, and would jog to places he needed to go. When his wife died and he was left alone, he moved in with his eldest son in England in 1992. He had the usual sense of loneliness, difficulty with the language barrier, and culture shock that afflicts so many older immigrants to the “western world” where they find themselves without much of a social life and living largely sedentary lifestyles with weekly visits to the Gurdwara to eat incredibly unhealthy food from Guru ka Langar. To add to that, his son, who was 45 in 1992, and his daughter-in-law were killed in a car crash, which led him into a state of depression. But rather than succumb to it, he started jogging. He has run countless half marathons, and completed his first full marathon in 2000 at the age of 89.

He runs wearing his very neatly tied turban and is the classiest runner I have ever seen. He has run for charities like B.L.I.S.S. that help premature babies, as well as those promoting Sikh culture. In 2004, he was part of an Addidas advertising campaign alongside David Beckham and Muhammad Ali’s daughter, and he replaced Beckham in the posters!

What I love about his message is not just that you should never think you’re too old to accomplish your dreams, but his entire outlook on life is incredibly optimistic, despite what he has gone through.

One his best words of wisdom (there are many great gems):

“The secret to a long and healthy life is to be stress-free. Be grateful for everything you have, stay away from people who are negative, stay smiling and keep running.”

Growing up in Iran and New Jersey (U.S.A.), Sona and her sister, Meena, have heard most of Jagjit Singh’s ghazals, which they can sing verbatim and with much vigor. But they don’t listen to his music on a daily basis the way their father does. They listen to a mish-mosh of hip-hop, pop, grunge, old Bollywood, new Bollywood, “pop” bhangra, and sometimes Jagjit Singh as the only classically rooted singer in their collection on iTunes.

My father-in-law is not exactly a connoisseur of poetry. He doesn’t own any poetry books in any language, but has quite a lot of manuals for installing electrical wiring or DIY plumbing. He has sentimental value for his old Hindi records and record player he refuses to throw out. He appreciates good poetry that is sung, occasionally that is recited, but not enough to go to their live performances or buy their cds. He finds the ghazals of Ghulam Ali and Pankaj Udhas, too slow and doesn’t connect with their poetry the same way he does with Jagjit Singh’s. And it isn’t simply because he uses modern instruments. It’s much more complex than that. He owns every single one of Jagjit Singh’s collections. Even the repeats and “best of” collections.  He has been to countless Jagjit Singh live shows, and remembers playing “Ahista, Ahista” with such frequency in the car, that Sona used to sing along in Iran before she was 2 years old.

The first concert he went to was in Iran and when he came to The United States in the 1980s, he would drive for hours and brave traffic, just to go to packed auditoriums in places like Long Island, Washington D.C., Washington Square Park in NYC for the worst seats all the way in the back, just to catch a glimpse of the man and to hear him sing his heartfelt tunes, live.

My father, on the other hand, is a Punjabi poet and singer, who lives, breathes, and writes about poetry (view post for an overview of terms used in Punjabi poetry)  and is much closer in age to Jagjit Singh. He has stacks of poetry books on the shelves in Urdu, Punjabi, and some, though not many, in Hindi. Like Jagjit Singh, my father is a traditionalist and yet a modernist at the same time. He believes in the purity of the message and the artform of the ghazal, but he isn’t a “purist” or elitist that uses overly complex literary language as to not be understood by the general population. Nor does he have anything against the use of modern instruments (most of my dad’s poetry is accapella anyway though) to enhance the poetry. While he does own many of Jagjit Singh’s cds and dvds, he also owns collections by old school classic ghazal singers like Begum Akhtar, and more modern singers like Ghulam Ali, Noor Jehan, Attaullah Khan, and countless Punjabi singers of the ghazal from both sides of the border. He watched many of Jagjit Singh’s concerts and interviews on the BBC, and has a deep respect for the man. He was truly saddened when he heard of his death because of what it meant to the world of the ghazal and the end of what he called “the era of the ghazal.”

Jagjit Singh With His Turban

My father respected Jagjit Singh for coming from a humble Sikh family and making it in an industry wrought with competition, and for popularizing the ghazal to the masses, which had until then been only accessible to the elite. He even understood why Jagjit Singh shed his Sikh identity by cutting his beard and hair after he was ridiculed for trying to sing a Gujarati song. He wanted to be “mainstream.” These were issues my father faced (and Sikhs everywhere continue to face). My father faced these issues, not as a singer, but as a landcape architect in many parts of the world where he was judged before he even opened his mouth. My father respected Jagjit Singh for his achievements and the values he espoused as a human being and a singer.

It has always been a source of curiosity to me as to what makes Jagjit Singh so enamored to a cross section of people of different faiths, generations, economic and political backgrounds, and even people in Pakistan hold him in high esteem. And it wasn’t because he stayed under the radar and didn’t voice his dissent on issues. He has come out against the Bollywood film industry as a whole, against its “item numbers,” and the values music shows mimicking American Idol espouse. He has talked about the complete lack of variety in Punjabi music and how it has become completely vulgar in both its lyrics and content of its music videos. His view on shows like Indian Idol and Sa Re Ga Ma Pa was that “If you bring competition into music, the soul is lost.” And he knew plenty about soul.

He even divided Bollywood when he questioned the talent of A.R. Rahman and the “poetry” of Gulzar. Of ghazals, he said that intrinsically “good” ghazals will continue to be popular despite not being played on the radio or in films. Interestingly, there were some who claimed that there simply was no place for a ghazal in Bollywood, and Pankaj Udhas, who owes a nominal amount of his success to being a playback singer in Bollywood predictably came to their defense. He argued that A.R. Rahman had tremendous talent and could easily write a ghazal. Of course, he hasn’t and probably never will. Why does he need to? Not that this makes him any less talented. A.R. Rahman undoubtedly has an incredible voice, but Jagjit Singh’s point was that while A.R. Rahman’s singing ability and the musical composition is catchy, the lyrics/”poetry” of what he is receiving such accolades for are vacuous and are mimicking western musical melodies. “Jai Ho, Jai Ho” is really as profound as the “poetry” gets.

Jagjit Singh’s impact on popularizing the Ghazal genre is unquestionable. Before Jagjit Singh, the ghazal was performed in intimate settings at mushayras for the elite in both India and Pakistan. It was laden with literary vocabulary steeped in old Urdu that the average person found too complicated. This highly refined and nuanced form of poetry was not supposed to be understood or accessible to the average person. But Jagjit Singh saw it much differently and brought soul to the Ghazal combined with poetry that anyone could understand.

He had an incredibly melodic and soothing voice that prompted some psychiatrists in metros of India to prescribe his ghazals to de-stress. For a man who sang such heart-rending songs, he had a great sense of humor that often came out during his live performances.

He made the decision to stick to ghazals in 1972 when he went to perform in East Africa. His group told him to gyrate his hips a little and sing the super-filmy song, “mere sapnon ki rani,” which he did well, but afterwards he famously yelled at his group and told them he was not going to sing these silly filmy songs, and would only sing ghazals. And he stayed true to his word. Even the songs he’s done for Bollywood films like Arth and Sarfarosh have all been ghazals.  And instead of relying on just classical music instruments like the sitar, he incorporated modern instruments like guitars and even synthesizers into his ghazals.

What many people liked about Jagjit Singh, aside from his silky smooth voice, was that he didn’t come from a long lineage of singers, or have connections in the music industry. His beginnings were very humble in this regard. He was born in Sri Ganganagar, Rajasthan, to Amar Singh Dhiman and Bachan Kaur, and raised Sikh. He was on-track to fulfill his father’s wishes that he be an Indian Administrative Services (IAS) Officer. After graduating from Khalsa High School, he went onto studying science at Government College, and eventually received a degree in history from Kurukshetra University in Haryana. His father saw singing talent in his son and let him study singing under the tutelage of very reputable musicians, starting at 12 years old. He studied many forms of classical Indian music like the Khayal, Thumri, and Drupad.

Jagjit Singh moved to Mumbai to pursue a singing career without any contacts, no “godfather,” or any real plan. He shed his Sikh appearance by shaving his beard and cutting his hair to be more “mainstream,” but still held onto his Sikh values, which came out especially after the death of his only son, Vivek, in 1990. He met his wife, Chitra, when they both sang jingles for advertisements and for private events like weddings. His first album, “The Unforgettables” created quite a splash and was criticized by ghazal purists, but loved by the people, who he intended it for anyway.

Jagjit and Chitra Singh with their Children

Chitra became extremely depressed after the devastating loss of their son in 1990 in a car accident, and they did one final album together where they bore their souls before she quit singing publicly. Her grief was private. But Jagjit Singh shared his grief with his listeners. He turned to religion and sang Hindu Bhajans and Sikh Gurbani as a way to deal with the pain. He wrote incredibly introspective ghazals that delved deep into the human psyche. And just a few years ago, in 2009, Jagjit Singh’s adopted daughter from Chitra’s first marriage (Monica Chaudhry), committed suicide.

Jagjit Singh is much more well known for his ghazals in Hindi and Urdu, and while many have heard his ghazals in Punjabi, he is not particularly well known for them, which is a shame because they are very beautifully sung.

He has sung ghazals from the Guru Granth Sahib (the Sikh Holy Book) to help him cope with the loss of his son, and he has also sung Punjabi folk songs. But what really shows his comfort and ease with the language is the way in which he renders the haunting words of Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s, “Maae Ni Maae.” This is not an easy poem to pull off without really understanding not just the Punjabi language, but the language of poetry, the meaning behind the words, and the intense amount of emotion that it hides behind. Here is a direct English translation of the first stanza:

(check out the full translation here: http://www.apnaorg.com/poetry/suman/17.html)

Watch his rendition for yourself:

One of my favourite ghazals that he sang five years after the death of his son captures the universal message he tried to convey throughout his life and that we still see the truth of today. “Main Na Hindu Na Musalman” from the album Mirage. The first lines are incredibly simple and yet so powerful. “I am neither Hindu nor a Muslim. Just let me live.” It reminds me of the human rights message of Guru Arjan Dev’s shabad in the Guru Granth Sahib (page 885):

“koee bolai raam raam koee khudhaae ||
Some call the Lord ‘Ram, Ram’, and some ‘Khuda’.

koee saevai guseeaa koee alaahi ||1||
Some serve Him as ‘Gusain’ (Jesus Christ), others as ‘Allah.’”

I wrote a blog post not long ago (link to the post) on the death of Sardar Gursharan Singh, also influenced by the poetry and universal message of the Guru Granth Sahib. He dedicated his life to bringing street theater – “thada” in Punjabi meaning “platform” to the people in Punjab. And that’s how I feel about Jagjit Singh. He was a revolutionary in his own way, both in terms of bringing the genre of the ghazal to the level of popularity it enjoyed in both Bollywood and at sold out concerts in Pakistan and India.

According to Jagjit Singh, popular Bollywood songs – what he refers to as “item numbers” – shouldn’t be called music because they lack any kind of lasting quality or art. They have been made popular through radio air time and being played on the television. He has also said that Bollywood music and movies used to be an extension of literature, and now are devoid of any art. And I completely agree with him. Jagjit Singh’s ghazals from decades ago are still incredibly popular, not because of the media playing his music over and over, but because they were and still are artistic, poetic, honest, and transcend any time period because of their emotional honesty.

Jagjit Singh’s death is a tragic loss to the world, and especially to his wife, Chitra who must be devastated by his loss. And his death symbolizes so many things to so many people. He impacted the lives of people from all political, ethnic, linguistic, and religious persuasions. Even across national boundaries. Some focus on his contribution to the world of poetry, others to how his emotive voice shaped their experiences of life. My wife grew up with his voice, and my father-in-law connected with the values he represented, as well as the emotional honesty he brought to all of his songs. His ghazals will live on for the simple reason that they are well written, beautifully and powerfully sung; in short: they are good based on any criteria. They will reach many more generations, including my daughter, Kavya, who will be singing along to “Ahista Ahista” soon enough. I leave you with an interview where Jagjit Singh talks about the integrity with which he conducts himself and how he chooses the ghazals that he sings:

Kavya having brunch at Agave in New York City

Weekends are a special time for our little family. During the week, Kavya, our 20-month-old daughter, goes to daycare, while Sona and I “work” on our novels, I go to work in Manhattan and Sona does her “work-work” (freelance articles for magazines and such) from home in Jersey City. The weekend is the only time when we all hang out as a family without the distractions of daily life.

On Sundays at noon, we sometimes go to Chelsea for storytime at Books of Wonder, a bookshop just for children. Sometimes we take Kavya to the Village and just roam around. Or we go to Washington Square for a bit of a splish-splash in the fountain, and along the way, she points at random flowers and calls them all purple. Often, we start our Saturday or Sunday with the New York institution of brunch.

To Kavya, yesterday was just another Sunday. I have no idea how or when we will explain 9/11 to her, but she will start speaking in complete sentences any day now. If it had just been me, Sona, and Kavya, we probably would have just stayed put on our side of the Hudson, taken Kavya to our local park in Jersey City, watched some Sesame Street at home, and remembered 9/11 in our own way. But, as it happened, Kathleen, an Australian friend I met while living in China, was visiting New York and wanted to see Ground Zero, as well as the Memorial Preview site.

Kathleen has traveled by herself to plenty of countries, and was more than capable of tackling New York on her own. Although the World Trade Center PATH train stop is easily accessible from where we live, we have never actively made the decision to go. This is partly because we really have no business there. Sona has never worked near there, and my work is all the way in the Flatiron-ish area at the School of Visual Arts. There is nothing all that exciting to see, eat, or do in the immediate area of World Trade except look through the boarded up and covered area where the Twin Towers used to stand. But the main reason that we both avoid it, is that it unleashes a flurry of unresolved emotions within both of us, and this is exponentially underscored on September 11th. My unresolved emotions, however, come from a different place than Sona’s, both in a literal and metaphoric sense. My experience of 9/11 was almost entirely steeped in California, and I have only relatively recently begun to understand what the New York experience must have been like. We went with Kathleen to see Ground Zero because we were both curious to see what the marking of the tenth anniversary of 9/11 meant for us, not just as “New Yorkers,” but as Americans.

Vandalism at the Dakota Sikh Temple in Fresno, California

Sona was living in New York and had just walked into work at Rockefeller Center when the attacks took place. At first she just thought there was a fire downtown.  Later, she remembers seeing the billowing smoke outside her window, the panic and fear of being in Rockefeller Center while the towers burned, eventually collapsing, and hearing rumors of more terrorist attacks. She remembered the eerie quietness of Times Square on the morning of September 12, 2001, her inbox full of emails about the harassment of South Asians, Sikhs in particular, and of her panic-stricken family in New Jersey, who worried about her safety (read her full reaction here).

While Sona’s experience was that of a New Yorker, mine was that of a Californian, thousands of miles away. Most of the people I knew – from my family, my friends, to my fellow shipmates in the Navy – had never been to New York or even met a New Yorker. We had no idea where the Twin Towers were in relation to the rest of the City. Words like “Lower East Side, Mid-town, the Village, Outer-borough, the F train, the NR, Uptown and Downtown,” meant absolutely nothing to the majority of us. So the fact that the skyline now had two gaping holes in it was, of course, monumental news, but it didn’t hold as much resonance with us as it did with Sona and her fellow New Yorkers.

The novel that I am working on weaves a narrative using the backdrop of 9/11 (as well as 1984 and elements of 1947) as part of its particular place and time. I can talk to Sona about character development, outlining, plot devices, the violence and political landscape of pre and post-1947, as well as the cacophony of violence erupting in Punjab during the 1980s and 1990s. But, ten years on and 9/11 is still a relatively fresh wound for her. She is visibly shaken whenever she thinks about it. She can’t even watch a documentary on it. So whenever I visited Sona in New York over the years, we rarely ventured into Lower Manhattan because it was painful for her to revisit those emotions. Since I moved to the area about four years ago, and explored the City on my own, my connection to the City and to 9/11 have changed drastically.

In 2001, I was at home, sleeping, when a friend of mine phoned me and told me to switch on the television. As I heard and saw what had happened, I was in shock, and devastated to see people throwing themselves out of these incredibly tall buildings in acts of sheer panic and desperation. It was really upsetting to watch how senseless it seemed and the fact that it was deliberate. It sent chills down my spine knowing that this did not take place “over there,” but had happened on American soil in “my country.”

Image of Osama Bin Laden

And then the emails started coming. First it was in trickles, and then almost a downpour.  It started with a few brown people being chased and called names in the immediate aftermath at Ground Zero or in Times Square. Then the emails started coming from around the country, especially Sikhs. And as I looked on the Internet and watched my television, I saw none of this being covered. The same footage of the airplanes crashing into the towers, the flames bursting, black smoke rising, the towers crumbling down, people covered in white ash, bodies in mid-air. This was immediately followed by an image of a turbaned and bearded Osama bin Laden. Then the rhetoric began, talks of “unity,” and  “getting the terrorists,” took over every news station without any mention of the “backlash” until a few days later when Balbir Sodhi, a Sikh gas station owner in Arizona was shot five times in the back by a self-professed “patriot.” This warranted a 30-second slot on the news before returning to those same images. There were stories of how easy it would be to kill thousands of people with one squirt of a spray bottle filled with anthrax, of sleeper terrorist cells, of the Middle East versus the “West,’ but nothing more about the backlash until a full week later when Bush finally made an announcement condemning these acts.

Brown skinned Americans, especially Sikhs suddenly had to prove they were American. I remember American flags being placed everywhere – in front yards, in cars, at the Gurdwaras (Sikh temple), and some Sikhs even wore these daft turbans made out of the American flag. I don’t remember any lanky white Christians doing any of that after the Oklahoma Bombing.

Sikh American Boy

What was sad about the whole frenzy of going overboard with showing our American-ness was that in the zeal to explain to the average American that Sikhs were not Muslim or from the Middle East, or followers of  Osama bin Laden, it created the impression that we were condoning anything dished out to Muslims. This impression has thankfully changed with organizations like SALDEF, Sikh Coaltion, and United Sikhs.

This “mistaken identity” was nothing new for Sikhs. Since the 1970s, Sikhs have been called “dirty Arabs,” “towel heads,” “rag heads,” “Khomeini,” “Ghaddafi,” “Saddam Hussein,” and of course, “Osama bin Laden” since 2001, as well as all the other derogatory remarks associated with members of these various communities. And before then, there was just flat out racism where Sikhs and anyone brown were simply referred to as “Hindoos,” with riots routinely taking place against them on American soil.

Ironically, the people towards whom the derogatory remarks were geared towards don’t look anything like what the media shows them to resemble. The 19 hijackers, for example, were clean-shaven, and didn’t wear anything resembling a turban, which is used in that part of the world mainly to keep out dust, rather than as a religious symbol.

And it is sad that ten years on, people are still completely ignorant of who the Sikhs are, and also so full of hate towards the perception of the “other,” who at the moment is anyone who looks like they’re from the Middle East and/or Muslim. Although there are signs of progress, on some level, traces of that xenophobia are still here in New York: reaction to the “Ground Zero Mosque” which is neither a mosque, nor at Ground Zero; harassment of Muslim women and girls who wear the Hijab; bullying of Sikh boys  in schools, where they continue to be called a “terrorist” or “Osama;” and hate crimes against Sikhs are still taking place across the country because of a “mistaken identity.”

In the coverage of the ten-year anniversary, I didn’t read a single mainstream newspaper article or watch a report on television covering the “backlash” or even mentioning South Asians, let alone Sikhs. We have largely been left out of the narrative of 9/11, as if there wasn’t a single brown life lost in the Towers, and there were no brown firefighters or medics who rushed to the scene. If we base our perception of 9/11 from the news coverage or what’s presented by Hollywood, you would think that New York is a racially homogenous city.

Yesterday, as we ventured into the City with Kavya saying “hi” to everyone like it was just a regular outing, I was worried about a return of the xenophobia that had paralyzed what seemed like all of America, if not the world, in the days, weeks, months, and years since 2001.

There were several vague announcements in the media, including one by Mayor Bloomberg about the Terror Alert in NYC. He told New Yorkers to be on the lookout for three men of Middle Eastern origin, “possibly in a van.” What about a brown couple with an 20-month-old on a train to World Trade? Or three South Asians talking on their cell phones in Time Square? How about four Muslims sitting on a bench together? What about one? Should we report it just to be on the safe side?

NYPD Police Officer With Assault Rifle on September 11, 2011

Police officers were checking bags at the subway and the World Trade PATH stations. They were all over the streets of lower Manhattan, going all the way to Chinatown and Little Italy (where the San Gennaro festival was still going on), checking IDs to make sure people lived in the area and were who they said they were. Without these IDs, residents weren’t allowed to even enter their apartment buildings. The police were wearing bullet-proof vests and carried guns and assault rifles. It all felt surreal and didn’t feel like the New York I had grown to love in the past five years of living and working here.

A wave of emotion overcame both me and Sona, and we left the area rather quickly. We walked to the Village, to the Highline Park, to Chelsea Market, and found a bustling New York full of energy. Eventually we made our way back downtown to grab a bite to eat in Chinatown, where my friend Kathleen and I reminisced about Northern Chinese food, our old friends in China, the paranoia of SARS, how awesome the film “Contagion” was, and she told me how “nice” she thought New Yorkers were. Both Sona and I laughed when she said it, but the more we thought about it, the more we realized how true it was.

As strange as it sounds, I have yet to meet a rude New Yorker. I am sure they are out there, but I haven’t met anyone genuinely rude. I have met grumpy New Yorkers who complain about absolutely everything you could possibly think of; New Yorkers who are in an absolute rush for everything: work, entertainment, shopping, food, walking, exercising at the gym, even going for a beer at a bar can become a stressful situation. Some even have stress-face when they’re “relaxing” in a bikini on the Great Lawn at Central Park.

But those same grumpy, stressed out people have always stopped and offered to help lift Kavya’s stroller over the turnstile or up/down the stairs whenever one of us takes Kavya into the City. Strangers are often good sports about engaging Kavya in conversation. If she waves at them twenty times or says “hi” to them a million times, they have always responded. I have forgotten how often I’ve asked people for directions to a particular subway line. Once an NYPD cop pulled out an iPhone and even wrote down the specifics for me on a piece of paper!

It was nice to see the rest of the City behaving normally without policemen in riot gear ready to “get the terrorists.” People were all remembering in their own way. Some businesses had an American flag in their window, others had sales on white roses, and bakeries had commemorative 9/11 cupcakes. After walking in silence for what seemed like ages, we slowly made our way back to Ground Zero, where we’d grab the World Trade Center Path train home to Jersey City.

Ribbon of Remembrance at Saint Paul's Chapel

There was still a crowd, but it had greatly diminished. The big screen was off. Nobody was making galvanizing speeches. The police had mostly disappeared from the immediate area. There were firefighters sitting outside a bar having beers and talking about people they had lost. People were hugging one another. There were ribbons of rememberance outside Trinity Church on Church and Vessey, with heartfelt words written on them. The atmosphere was that of resilience, a word I associated with the rhetoric of 9/11, but one I came to understand last night. The Memorial Preview Site had closed its doors for the night, but there was a video on a flat screen in its windows that showed what it was going to look like. It looked impressive, with a futuristic design, but it left me feeling funny. Maybe, like my wife and my daughter, I’m just slowly becoming a New Yorker – and finally feeling the weight of what that means, ten years post-9/11.

Me and Kavya Bhangra-ing On the Beach

This Summer, I had big plans to make amends for my word count of about 0 since January. Needless to say, my New Year’s resolutions didn’t pan out quite as well as I had hoped. I’d like to say it’s because of my work and duties as a father and husband are exhausting. But the primary reason is pure laziness. I had a tiny bit of a bump in the road with my story and rather than sit there and work through it like a proper writer does, I opted to take the approach a muppet would: to go muppetting about and do anything except my writing. Some of it was indeed legit stuff: tidying the flat, grading papers, working on syllabi. Those sorts of productive things. And when I couldn’t be bothered with that, but still didn’t want to face the mess of my novel, I went on FaceBook, which was the beginning of the end. Then there was Twitter. YouTube. And channels on the good ole telly.

Over the Summer, time has been the culprit for my not writing, and I really am a victim this time. Really. Alright, not really. But it is taking much more effort for me to focus because we’re on “holiday” to visit my Mum and Dad in Central California for a month. Before that, Sona’s cousins came to New Jersey for a visit, so of course, we “had to” go to Point Pleasant, chill out on the beach, and scarf down deep-fried oreos and chocolate covered potato chips. Here in California, Sona still has freelance assignments she’s doing, my Mum is at work till 5pm, and my Dad . . . well, let’s just say he’s easily distracted when he gets a phone call or gets on the computer. So, essentially, me and Sona are balancing doing our work with watching Kavya, and our writing has taken a massive backseat.

Tandoor in Back Garden of Central California

Added to the mix are fresh berries, fruit trees, chickens and roosters strutting about, a tandoor and a barbeque (sometimes used to cook the aforementioned chickens) in the acre and a half backgarden of my parent’s home, not to mention a paddling pool, and a shaded patio. So, even if sitting indoors with my laptop open was an option, you can see what a struggle it would be to choose that over a paddling pool. Oh yeh and then there’s that daughter I’m a father to. I love the quality time I’m spending with her, but she is quite knackering. Sona and I are absolutely shattered by the time my mum comes home. And Sona has erratic assignments that she has to do on top of all that, so it’s difficult for either of us to have a solid writing routine.

So, while Sona does her interviews or watches her shows for work, I end up playing . . . I mean taking care of Kavya, This involves a lot of bhangra, running, splashing, tickling, changing of nappies, combing of hair, attempts at putting rubber bands in Kavya’s hair (my wife doesn’t appreciate my artistry in styling my daughter’s hair).

The Challenge
Starting this week, both Sona and me have been trying to get a routine going for our writing. I drop Sona at a Starbucks in the morning and then hang out with Kavya for two hours, sometimes roaming through various shops and the bookstore. Other times just dropping Sona off and coming home and playing in the paddling pool with her. Once we just parked in a shady spot, Kavya took a nap for a good solid hour, and I worked on my outline in my notebook.

Speaking of outlines, I haven’t fully crossed over and embraced the outline, but I am definitely seeing the merits in it. So far, I’ve been doing what I found out is the “skeleton outline” through Scrivener. Basically, I write a general gist of what is going to happen in a scene. The “cons” in this type of outline, I read about in a novel writing book I glanced at while at the bookstore with Kavya, is that it isn’t very thorough. This I can attest to, but it does allow flexibility, which you can see how well that worked out for me and my writing process.

The other type is one I don’t think I’ll ever use for creative writing: the “structure plus.” It’s too analytical. You basically have to know what the purpose of a scene is, and also who exactly is going to be in it, and what some of the lines will be. I wish I could have it all mapped out like that, but just not my style.

I’ve started fiddling about with a hybrid between the two for my own notes. I’ll still use the Scrivener notecards describing the gist.

So far, this hybrid has really helped me shape things up by breaking down the structure. One of the problems I was having was figuring out what happens after a secret is revealed in my novel. At first, I thought the partition of 1947 or 9/11 in and of itself is a catalyst for something. And it very well might be, but that’s not the type of story I’m writing. What I’ve found helpful is to use screenplay structure to break it down. Screenplays are obviously much more rigid in the sense that turning point 1 must occur by page x, or Act I and Act 3 must be 30 pages each, and Act 2 must be 60 pages. Fortunately a novel is more flexible, but can benefit from this structure.

There are three acts or parts of a story: Act 1, 2, and 3. Act I introduced the status quo (characters, setting, current situation, etc). Act 2 complicates things, and Act 3 gives us the new status quo/offers some form of a resolution.

Once I thought about my story in these terms, it made my objective with the outline a little clearer, but I still didn’t know how to integrate some of the historical facts into the narrative, or breathe life into some of my characters that I initially thought would be minor.

My only time to write is late at night, even though I have to be “on” starting relatively early in the morning. I am awakened to Kavya pointing at my stomach and saying “tidoo,” followed by wild slaps and hysterical laughter. So, no snooze button available there. My strategy, for now, is to write a paragraph or so for the crucial parts of my novel, including some transitions, and logistical bits. I’m giving myself four weeks to hammer it out. Then I’ll worry about word count.

Day 1 for me officially starts tomorrow: Thursday, August 11, 2011
Four weeks from tomorrow: Thursday, September 8, 2011

Sona already has a pretty solid outline, so is zooming along. Here’s her post on her Summer Writing.

Wish me luck! And wish Sona luck as well =)

Merriam-Webster defines a hoarder as “a person who accumulates things and hides them away for future use.” For as long as I can remember, I have done this with words. This phatta experience was not fun when I realized the permanent loss of data that was to follow. If I had my way, we would have returned to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, with suitcases filled with nothing but stacks of wooden planks, all black with the profound thoughts of an eight year old. Since this phatta thing didn’t work out, I became paper mad (I still am, but to a much lesser degree). I still keep journals. I still write on napkins. And I feel odd leaving the house without paper and a pen or pencil. In graduate school at California State University in Fresno, I rarely used a computer for my writing. Almost all of my work was initially handwritten in notebooks, and then reluctantly written in Microsoft Word to be printed and pimped out for workshop critiques.

But my first novel that I’m in the midst of writing now didn’t even move with this approach. As the research for my novel set around 1984 started piling on, I got lost in entire notebooks and a sea of random papers filled with notes on books, articles I’ve read, on potential characters, real life incidents, ideas for fictional scenes, facts, etc. It all became quite overwhelming. So, I attempted to organize things on my own. I named the main folder on my MacBook Pro, “Writing” and within it, subcategories with names like “Research on Blue Star,” “Bhindranwale,” “Militancy in Punjab,” “Operation Black Thunder,” “Things I May Use,” “Actual Writing,” “Drafts,” “Timelines,” “Characters,” and “Possible Storylines.” Needless to say, that didn’t go very well at all.

During one of my googling binges, I found out about the niche market of Mac applications/software catering to fiction writers that went beyond Final Draft, which is specifically for screenwriters. I’ve tried almost all of them, starting with the free ones, and moving on to the paid ones. All of the paid ones offer generous trial periods, which is what I used to make my decision of which writing software to use (you should too!).

Almost all of the free applications have the full-screen feature, which, in theory, is the only thing you really need. And if you already have Microsoft Word, it has a very nice full-screen option that blacks out the screen and lets you focus just on your writing. There are plenty of free alternatives to Microsoft Word and many, many free writing applications if that’s all you’re looking for though.

No, not Mr. Bean. Just "Bean"

The only free product worth commenting on and one I recommend if you’re just looking for full-screen capability is The Bean. It is essentially a word processor specifically for fiction writers. There are four appealing things that are useful about it: 1) a completely customizable full screen option that doesn’t look hideous, 2) live word-count, 3) exporting to a variety of formats, including .doc and .pdf, and 4) the best part is that it is COMPLETELY FREE. No trial or gimmicks. Download it here.

It is crucial to figure out what kind of writer you are before deciding on a writing software. Every writer works very differently, and just like it is impossible to make the declaration “outlining is the best writing process,” it is equally impossible to claim one writing software is “better” than the other. Each of them is good, and although you will notice an overlap, they each serve the needs of different writers. You will be surprised at how huge of a role personal preference will play in your decision.

If you’ve done even cursory research, you should know that the only three writing applications you should be considering spending your money on are  StoryMill 4.0.1 ($49.95),  Storyist 2.3.1 ($59), and Scrivener 2.0 ($45).

1) StoryMill 4.0.1 ($49.95)
The main draw of this application was that in addition to fitting most of my criteria, it also allowed for the creation of time-lines. So, I was excited to try it. Everything worked fine, but I didn’t like the time-lines as much as I’d hoped.  The issue I had with it was that I couldn’t just create one time-line. I had to create several and they would always have to be searched separately. The full-screen feature was also one I was underwhelmed by. The background is black, which I like, but I didn’t like that the text went clear across the page. This worked fine for my laptop, but on my 27 inch desktop, this looked really odd, and some of my paragraphs looked like they only had one or two lines!  It didn’t exactly put me in the mood to write.

StoryMill Full Screen Feature on a 15 inch laptop

The one thing that I really liked about StoryMill that I never saw emulated anywhere else was its word count feature (see image below). It is unobtrusively viewable right on the toolbar, and you can set it to make sounds (or just leave it silent) when you hit your goal for that session.

Screenshot of StoryMill Progress Meter

Final Thoughts: One writer I spoke to who bought version 4.0 (not 4.01) told me that the reason she didn’t like this product was it wasn’t saving properly and she constantly needed to restart in order to see the changes (and sometimes, it wouldn’t show up at all). So she just abandoned ship and shifted to StoryMill. I never experienced any of that during my 30 day trial. Aside from the full-screen feature, the mechanics of the software worked fine. So, make sure you try the 4.01 version (or whatever the latest version is. Maybe they’ll even fix the full-screen feature in the next update)

2) Storyist 2.3.1 ($59)
This is a very easy to use application and it has a lot of great features, but there are two issues I couldn’t get past. I’ll start with the good: The layout is very easy to navigate. You have access to everything you really need on the toolbar, except for full-screen, which you can easily use a keyboard short-cut for anyway. On the left side is the “project” folder, which contains your manuscript, folders, and sections broken down into things like plot, characters, settings, and notebook (that looks like lined paper).  The center is where your manuscript lies. This looks like a normal wordprocessor and it can be changed to look like a corkboard or lined paper, although I’m not sure why you would want to do that (where do you write?). The entire left side can be hidden.

Screenshot of Storyist Main Layout

In order to use the word count feature, you do have to click the Inspector button, which I didn’t have much of a problem with because the word count is written at the bottom of the page, as is the number of pages. The storyboard (which looks like a corkboard) is by far the coolest thing ever. It allows you to “cast” actors by adding images of what you imagine your character to look like. You can even insert images for places. And it is very easy to do: just drop it in from anywhere, including the web. These images are automatically updated in the character sketches, which involve details of your characters that are fully editable. You can also amend them or create brand new ones and save them as templates.

Screenshot of Storyist Storyboard Feature

You can insert links within the text, which is dangerous for me because it leads me to the internet and then I get into either entertainment, or research mode. Theoretically, this is a good though. Lastly, it allows you to export to a variety of formats, including .epub used for reading ebooks.

The bad: I absolutely hate the full-screen mode (see below). The colors are fine, but it basically presents everything in the layout (corkboard and all) in full-screen.  It doesn’t give you the option of decreasing or increasing font while in full-screen, and you need to input all of that information in the preferences.

Screenshot of Storyist Full-Screen Feature

3) Scrivener 2.0 ($45)
After trying all of the applications out, this is the one that I felt suited my needs flawlessly. It does every single thing that Storyist does well, and also has a fantastic full-screen option that allows you to customize font size even while in full-screen mode. There are three views: outliner, corkboard, and document. On the left side of the screen, is the binder option where you can organize your folder with subfolders (I usually have this hidden). Below is a screenshot of the main layout. Notice everything you would need, including full screen, is on the toolbar (there are also keyboard shortcuts).

Screenshot of Scrivener Main Layout

I also like that you can assign keywords to each section, and can search the entire manuscript for those keywords. You can insert links into the text if you really want to, which I am steering clear of for the time being because I know only bad things will happen if I have the option to click a word within Scrivener and it takes me to the internet. In theory, it can help if I use the word “ghallughara,” or the line “When Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards,”by linking to an article about it. But in practice, I have a feeling I am going to get into entertainment and/or research-mode.

It is a tiny bit confusing at first, but the layout is very simple and the software is incredibly user friendly. In order to create a pdf file or an epub of your manuscript, you would think you go to “export,” but you actually have to go to “compile manuscript” where you can select various options for the file format.

The full screen mode has a couple of options, but I only use one. I put the font at 100% and the background at black so I don’t see any icons or my desktop at all, and I can edit freely. I like that I can adjust the font while in full-screen, but as soon as I move my mouse, the toolbar disappears, leaving me with just my manuscript (see below).

Screenshot of Scrivener Full Screen Layout

The other flexibility I love about the full-screen mode in Scrivener is that when I return to half-mode, I still have my original layout, which usually consists of having an index card outlining the main scene taking place in a chapter. There are a variety of templates that you can edit or create from scratch. Some people view the casting for the characters in Scrivener as slightly inferior to Storyist’s, but I find it to work out better for me. It is inferior in the sense that you can’t just grab a photo from the internet and drop it. The image has to be on your hard drive. It also doesn’t automatically update it in the character sketch. The reason this works out better for me is that I waste a lot of time looking up actors and actresses, which inevitably gets into entertainment mode. This is something I am glad is not being encouraged. The default for the character section is actually an index card, not an image. So you have the option of not dilly dallying and just writing down the character traits, or whatever characteristics, conflicts, etc. of your character, rather than going out of your way to find images of people. Below is an example of how I waste my time with this feature as it is:

Screenshot of Scrivener Character Layout

The word count feature isn’t as cool as the one in StoryMill. There are keyboard shortcuts you can use, and it is visible on the bottom of the page like in any standard wordprocessor, but you can’t set sounds to it.  It can, however,  notify you via Growl. Other than that, I think this application is absolutely brilliant. Try all of these applications out and see for yourself which one is your cup of tea.

Tip: If you can hold off, wait until November 1-30 for NanoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) to buy your software. There are some excellent discounts for participants (http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/offers). Scrivener is 20% off and Storyist is 25% off. Also check if there are educational discounts (Scrivener offers a $7 discount for students and educators).

To reiterate, these are my experiences with the software. Yours may very well be different. Either way, I would love to hear from you.

Happy Writing!

Download the script here. Read and print the first 20 pages for Monday

https://www.texarkanacollege.edu/PDFFiles/Academics/Humanities/English/AshBowen/DenisJohnson.pdf

It brought back a lot of painful memories that didn’t just involve this one man. Aside from feelings of utter panic, helplessness, and a tremendous sense of loss for human life, brown folk, especially Sikhs, were suddenly viewed of as different. We weren’t included in the “us” and had become the “them” unless we could prove otherwise by elaborate displays of patriotism, which included waving the flag, belting out “U.S.A.” and in some cases, wearing a turban made out of the American flag.

It wasn’t a shock that the first hate crime victim after 9/11, Balbir Singh Sodhi, was a turbaned Sikh, but it was still a devastating blow. And just recently, Arizona Rep. John Kavanagh introduced a bill wanting to remove Sodhi from the state’s 9/11 memorial because he wasn’t a “9/11 victim.” Thankfully that bill was vetoed, but what I’m concerned with is that this bill was even introduced. And it was clearly attempting to remove the name of a man who didn’t look like “us.” Can we expect more instances where brown folk, Sikhs in particular, have to prove how American we are? Better stock up on those flags.

All over New York, police are strapped with guns to make us feel secure, and MTA police are armed with machine guns (not like the terrorists have bombs or anything). There are announcements telling people to “remain vigilant.” The same announcements after 9/11 that created the environment of mass xenophobia. A few days after 9/11, I remember reading about a Mexican farmworker in California being driven off the side of a road because the guys chasing him thought he was Middle Eastern.

Although very different in many regards, it reminds me of the Sikh reaction to Indira Gandhi’s death at the hands of her two Sikh bodyguards in retaliation for her hand in giving the order for Operation Blue Star. It was a psychological “win” for a short time.

Some Sikhs in Punjab were celebrating her death by handing out mithai; there were public demonstrations in places like the U.K., and Canada where the media showed Sikhs rejoicing in her death, even celebrating with fireworks, while many Hindus were in mourning. I understand the reason that many Sikhs were out celebrating her death back in 1984, just like I understand the reasons many Americans are celebrating Osama bin Laden’s death today. For the time being, his death is a psychological “win” for “us.”

September 11 took something away from all of us, and it took something extra from Sikhs and brown folk: the sense of security and the entitlement we felt to share in the pain of America. Osama bin Laden was a symbol of everything horrible that 9/11 represented, from the actual attacks, the devastating loss of life, to the hate crimes committed by Americans on Americans. And now he is dead, we are hoping it brings a sense of closure. So, we celebrate.

My wife feels very uneasy by the celebrations because of the memories that are being forced out, the strangeness of celebrating a man’s death, but also because we have a daughter and live right across the Hudson, a seven minute commute on the train or ferry into Manhattan. We constantly take our 1 year old, Kavya, into the City, so, if there is a retaliation attack spurred on by the celebrations, we could very well be in the middle of it. She wrote a blog post about her reaction moments after we heard the news (Read “Closure at a Cost” by Sona Charaipotra), and here is a link to my post (Read “Osama bin Laden is Dead. Now What?“)

I am also worried about a possible retaliation, but not just from terrorists. From other Americans as well. My thoughts immediately returned to 9/11 and the days, months, and years afterwards. Even today, a remnant of the aftermath from ten years ago, Sikh boys are bullied and called “Osama” like it’s no big deal, the general population are still completely ignorant of the Sikh identity, hate crimes targeting Sikhs are on the rise (link).

In the above video, entertainment journalist, Aseem Chhabra is being interviewed by New York 1 at Ground Zero. He is carrying an American flag, and has to explain to this duffer reporter that although he is originally from India, “this is my city, this is my country also.” I find it interesting that he joined in the celebration, but understand his reasons, and he is certainly not alone in celebrating. Osama bin Laden was a clearly evil man with no regard for human life, Muslim or otherwise, and the world is a better place without him in it. But is this a time to be happy and joyful?

Today, it’s a fist-pumping, flag waving, multicultural street party, but what happens after the party is over?

When my daughter slumbers, I slumber.

Some of you have emailed me or left comments wondering where I’ve gone, expressed in various shades of concern/relief/glee/distress/ambiguity. Not to worry, I am back from my slumber. The image above is obviously not of me. It is of my daughter. And, as indicated by the caption, when she slumbers, I slumber. That’s how this small family of ours works, otherwise we are both grumpy.  In case you are wondering what this image has to do with the rest of my post, I’ll tell you: absolutely nothing. I needed an image conveying slumbering. She’s my daughter. She’s pretty. She’s slumbering. And this is my blog. Now, on with my post!

A few months ago, I was asked by a friend of mine if I’d like to contribute to The Langar Hall (TLH): a “progressive” Sikh blog (link to learn the basics of Sikhism). Normally, I stay far away from anything connected with religion, because it inevitably involves drama, and a seemingly innocuous comment or idea becomes politicized in a blink of an eye. In real life, these perceptions turn into long feuds, sometimes culminating in violence (the use of tables and chairs by “modernists” in Canada is just one example). Online, it doesn’t turn to violence, but does result in a lot of drama with a lot of people angrily punching keys on their keyboard in an effort to prove their point.

TLH is run by a handful of youths from all over the country, some of whom are active in the Jakara Youth Conference, which I attended a few years ago (on the subject of 1984). TLH aims to connect my generation with their religion and culture in their respective countries and engage them in dialogue with an array of issues. Since I don’t have very many Sikh friends and most of my family are much more spiritual in their relationship with Sikhsim than hardliners evoking rules and regulations (aside from the basics tenets from the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy book), the opportunity to be heard by Sikhs from all over the world with very different interpretations on many issues was too good to pass up.

Guru Nanak Dev Ji and Bhai Mardana, his Muslim disciple

My first few posts were very insular in that they directly affected Sikhs, and there wasn’t much controversy involved in the comments. They raised issues like the representation of Sikhs in Pop Bhangra, eating unhealthy food at a place of spirituality, and the underlying issues of 1984. Here’s a link to the posts: Sikh Turbans, Designer Dahris, Bollywood, and Salman Rushdie? Moving Past the Event of 1984, Fatting it Up at the Langar Hall. So, essentially there wasn’t much debate, or people weren’t that vested in the issue to make a comment one way or the other.

Then I wrote a blog entitled “Anti-Muslim hate comes to Orange County” highlighting a shocking protest by Tea Party members screaming racial epithets at Muslims attending a fundraiser in the O.C. for homeless shelters and battered women. Suddenly, there was a backlash by some Sikhs and the reasons were . . . interesting.

There were some ultra right wing conservative Sikh commenters from England and the U.S. (who knew!) who felt that the human rights element of Sikhism didn’t apply to Muslims because every single Muslim wanted to enact Sharia Law all over the world and at its core, Islam was an evil religion that promoted violence towards non-Muslims. Then there were other Sikhs who thought that the Muslims should fight their own battles, and that by aligning ourselves with them, we were melding our identity with Muslims, confusing the “average person” making them assume Sikhs and Muslims were one and the same, raising violence and racism against turbaned Sikhs. People from both of these camps selectively ignored the fact that there are many verses in the Guru Granth Sahib written by Muslims, a Muslim laid the foundation stone for the Golden Temple, our first Guru’s companion was a Muslim, and in addition to the words of the first Guru, all ten Sikh Gurus in some way fought for human rights (some even gave their lives), even when they clearly disagreed with the ideology of those they were fighting for. Here is an excerpt of a religious hymn found in the Guru Granth Sahib composed by the first Guru, Guru Nanak Dev Ji:

“Some bathe at sacred shrines of pilgrimage, and some make the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Some perform devotional worship services, and some bow their heads in prayer.
Some read the Vedas, and some the Koran.
Some wear blue robes and some wear white.
Some call themselves Muslim, and some call themselves Hindu.
Some yearn for paradise and others long for heaven.”

Thankfully, a majority of the responses presented a saner view that saw the hypocrisy of these viewpoints and that the underlying ideology of Sikhism is firmly rooted in standing up for human rights, not in cowardice, even if it is the easy thing to do. The comments to not only my post, but posts written by other bloggers showed me that just like there is no united Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic, White, Black, American, British, Indian, Democratic, or Republican front on many issues, there is no such thing as a united Sikh front on many issues. Especially when you have Sikhs from all over the world and from all walks of life.

I’ve also learned some interesting things about conflicts within Islam sparked by a blog post on the Langar Hall (Nikaab Ban in Action) written by Brooklynwala in response to the face veil (Nikaab) ban in effect in France.

Take a look at the video above and see if you can decide whether banning the Muslim face veil (a move many Muslim organizations and women’s rights organizations all over the world support) is a step towards or against the liberation of women’s rights. The main argument against the law has nothing to do with its cultural or religious ties (some argue it is not mentioned in the Quran and therefore against Islam), but that the government shouldn’t be making these decisions because it starts to blur lines. Even as I was watching this video, I thought I could easily answer the question of whether the Nikaab was oppressing or liberating women. And then the woman wearing the nikaab made her argument!

The direction of the novel that I am writing (a little too slowly) will certainly not change based on opinions from online commenters, or real life people for that matter. But I’ve come to appreciate different positions people take on issues based on a variety of factors, and that in addition to making connections with people outside of the Sikh community through the characters and setting of my novel, I have to remember to make those same connections within the Sikh community. But I also have to be careful not to create a character to represent the views of an entire community. I’ve always been annoyed by characters with no depth, so will try and make a conscious decision not to let that happen to my characters.

I’m also planning to write a post on TLH on the creation of complex characters who happen to be Sikh (I’ll update a link to it when it’s posted).

In the meantime, feel free to harass me over the progress of my novel!

The mere mention of Martin Amis’s name (in England, anyway) sends grown men hurtling towards a nostalgic past they were probably never a part of, and women into hysterics. The sort reserved for Michael Jackson when he did the moonwalk. I can’t think of any other author who has ever had the power to elicit this sort of behaviour from grown men and women, let alone still be able to pull it off in their late sixties.

Martin Amis is the grand-daddy of Lad-Lit (classily referred to as Dick-lit in America). He exploded onto the literary scene at 24 years old, winning the prestigious Somerset Maugham Award with The Rachel Papers in 1973.  The plot of his novels has never been very exciting, but he has managed to amazingly move past cliché, despite the story he’s telling, and even the characters controlling the story epitomizing cliché itself.

The Rachel Papers, for example, tells the story of Martin Amis. I mean, Charles Highway. He has all the ingredients of an unlikable flat character: Like Chekhov’s Gustov Dmitri in the Lady and the Little Dog, Charles is an arrogant womanizer who falls for a girl he initially thinks is just another girl on his list.

Two years later, in 1975, he wrote Dead Babies about a group of guys who meet at a house in the English countryside to take drugs.

He has written tonnes of novels, some of them have been disappointing in plot, but nobody has ever accused him of writing cliché. And that’s a good thing because that would be a bit embarrassing with a collection of essays brassly titled “War Against Cliche.”

He calls literature a war against cliché, and uses some brilliant examples. “Whenever you write ‘the heat was stifling’ or ‘she rummaged in her handbag,’ this is dead freight. The war is extended onto another sphere.  People who use these moldering novelties ‘seen it. Done it. Got a t-shirt.’ ‘He went ballistic.’ ‘I don’t think so.’ ‘Hellooo.’ These are dead words. They’re heard words. And what cliché is, is heard writing, heard thinking, and heard feeling.”

I don’t think I’ve ever heard it being put so eloquently. Screenwriters often say that despite the limited storylines in genres like the romantic comedy or horror films, a successful screenplay transcends this cliché in its execution. And it wasn’t until I read the ingenious screenplay I Love You Phillip Morris (and later watched the film with amazing performances by Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor) that I understood what that meant. It is the story about two men who meet in prison. It is not the typical romantic comedy, and it is not the typical “gay” story either. It brilliantly mocks cliches associated with of these genres brilliantly, but is by no means satirical. They don’t end up happily ever in the way Hollywood has conditioned us into viewing love stories. But in the end, we believe in the power of their love. Yes, I just used a clichéd line to explain how uncliched the script was =)

Martin Amis is eloquent in describing what a cliché is, but I loved how he responded to the question he was prodded into answering: How do you not write cliché?

He says: “It’s not that you get a cliché and then wiggle it about or use synonyms. You don’t take an ordinary decorative paragraph and give it style. What you’re trying to do is be faithful to your perceptions and transmit them as faithfully as you can. I say these sentences until they sound right. There’s no objective reason why they’re right. They just sound right to me. “

Essentially the lesson to be drawn from this short interview from Martin Amis, is that instead of trying to find rules to follow on how to avoid cliché, you need to shut up and start writing. And that is sage advice when it comes to silly questions like “how do you write a novel?” or “how do you write a short-story?” You can buy really formulaic “how-to” books on things like writing a novel or writing a poem, but really, how good is it going to be if you take such a systematic and clinical approach to writing.

But Martin Amis isn’t the only person with sage advice.

I leave you with the profound wisdom of Yoda from 1980’s Episode V of  Star Wars, “The Empire Strikes Back”: “Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.”

In case you’re wondering what I am on about in the video above (it’s mostly in Punjabi), here is a translation:
Kavya Kaur, what are you reading?
What magazine is that?
I see. You want to get an agent already?
You’re getting very angry.
I agree, finding an agent is no laughing matter.
My baby is so talented that she can laugh in the face of an agent and still get one.
You got angry again. Still reading that article about getting an agent?

Since that first Borders visit at 2 months old, we’ve taken Kavya on countless visits to Borders with trips here and there to independent bookstores like the children’s bookshop, Books of Wonder in NYC. I’ve lost count how many times me and Sona have gone on bookstore dates to Borders. Both of us belong to various listservs and forums discussing writing bits and ends, so despite the official denials, we knew Borders was losing money. And yet, we still bought gift cards. So, it wasn’t a shocker when Borders filed for bankcruptcy a few days ago. But it was still depressing to think about a world without Borders.

We were happy to hear that the 200 stores Borders was closing didn’t include our regular spots in New York City: Columbus Circle and 33^rd street, or the one in the Riverpark area of Fresno, California, across from Barnes and Noble. The two in San Jose mildly affected us, but we were relieved our main spots were safe for the time being.

For the past year, some interesting discussion topics have been brewing in the literary world through email groups and listservs that goes beyond, “Oh donkey bollocks. Now I’ll have to drink coffee and read books somewhere else.”

Here are three of the ones I’ve been avidly reading about:

1. Gift Cards
For now, Borders has said it will still honor gift cards, and reward points can still be redeemed, but people are still panicking and using their gift cards on books they’re not that interested in keeping. We’ve got tonnes of points and over $100 in gift cards, so we’re not sure what to spend it on, but with a bookshelf that is packed, and boxes of books in the basement, we’re not going to go crazy. That’s the theory anyway.

2. Authors and their Royalties
Not only are authors concerned about what Borders declaring bankruptcy means to them, but consumers are concerned about the fate of author royalties for books they purchase from Borders. Of course, it affects authors much deeper than just with royalties, even though Borders claims that everything is running normally, just minus 200 stores. Firstly, publishers are owed plenty of money (280 million last I heard), and publishers are the ones who cut the authors their check.

There are also those authors who rely on Borders for book sales through book signings, which may not happen for lesser known authors (I don’t think Stephanie Meyers or Salman Rushdie have anything to worry about). And obviously, if you close 200 stores down, you can’t hold a book signing there. Borders has made the claim that by filing for bankcruptcy, everything after today is all good, so publishers and authors will get paid. Fingers crossed.

3. The Future of Book Publishing
The bankruptcy and closing of 200 stores seems to have changed the fate of Borders for the short-term, but the long-term survival is still a huge unknown. With magazines and newspapers folding left and right, e-books and online stores seems to be the trend. And Borders has been incredibly slow to make embrace the changing habits of today’s reader. A lot of people think Barnes and Noble shouldn’t waste its energy in claiming the momentary spike in sales created by this bankruptcy, and should continue expanding their success with the Nook e-reader and online store. Borders made its first colossal boner move by parceling off its online store to Amazon. What on earth were they thinking? The closing of the 200 stores and declaration of bankruptcy has let it breath a few more breaths, but Borders has to do something drastic very quickly. It is in no position to go toe-to-toe with companies that sell books exclusively online, and can’t claim to be the underdog in the book wars. A solid customer base is what keeps an independent bookstore afloat, but Borders isn’t quaint or charming enough to pull that off, so it’ll be interesting to watch them one up the Nook, and finally realize that nobody buys DVDs and CDs.

Love is in the air. Well, perhaps not exactly, but it’s being advertised all over the internet and you can buy massive bouquets of flowers that will die slowly come February 15th. That’s love for you: full of vibrance one day, wilted and dead the next. On that happy note, here are eight of my favourite love poems:

1.  A Summer’s Day by Tom Leonard

This is at the top of my list primarily because of the elegance of its inelegance. Tom Leonard isn’t as well known as other Scottish poets, so here’s all you need to know about him to enjoy this poem: he writes in a glasgow accent.

Tom Leonard, a Scottish Poet

Yir eyes ur
eh
a mean yir
pirrit this wey
ah a thingk yir
byewtifl like ehm
fact
fact a thingk yir
ach a luvyi that’s
thahts
jist thi wey it iz like
thahts ehm
aw ther iz ti say

2. Sonnet 116: “Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds” by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

3. Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath


I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
I think I made you up inside my head.

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
I think I made you up inside my head.

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
I think I made you up inside my head.

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I think I made you up inside my head.

4. Never try to trick me with a kiss by Sylvia Plath

Never try to trick me with a kiss
Pretending that the birds are here to stay;
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.

A stone can masquerade where no heart is
And virgins rise where lustful Venus lay:
Never try to trick me with a kiss.

Our noble doctor claims the pain is his,
While stricken patients let him have his say;
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.

Each virile bachelor dreads paralysis,
The old maid in the gable cries all day:
Never try to trick me with a kiss.

The suave eternal serpents promise bliss
To mortal children longing to be gay;
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.

Sooner or later something goes amiss;
The singing birds pack up and fly away;
So never try to trick me with a kiss:
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.

William Wordsworth

5. Speak! by William Wordsworth
Why art thou silent! Is thy love a plant
Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air
Of absence withers what was once so fair?
Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant?
Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant–
Bound to thy service with unceasing care,
The mind’s least generous wish a mendicant

For naught but what thy happiness could spare.

Speak — though this soft warm heart, once free to hold

A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine,

Be left more desolate, more dreary cold

Than a forsaken bird’s-nest fill’d with snow

‘Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine–

Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know.

6.  My Love is Like a Cabbage by Anonymous
My Love is Like a Cabbage
That’s easy to cut in two
The leaves I’ll give to others,
But the heart I’ll give to you

7. To Celia by Ben Johnson
Drink to me, only, with thine eyes
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kisse but in the cup,
And Ile not look for wine.

The thirst, that from the soule doth rise,
Doth aske a drink divine:
But might I of Jove’s Nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.

I sent thee, late, a rosie wreath,
Not so much honoring thee,
As giving it a hope, that there
It could not withered be.

But thou thereon did’st onely breathe,
And sent’st it back to mee:
Since when it growes, and smells, I sweare,
Not of it selfe, but thee.

8.  The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot
Here is another poem that talks about the “other” side of love. This is such a powerful poem of the loneliness felt by people who don’t fit into society’s definition of “beauty.” J. Alfred Prufrock will probably never find the romanticized love he envisions, but then, how often does anyone?

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question. . .                               10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,                               20
And seeing that it was a soft October night
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;                                30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—                               40
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all;
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,                       50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?                    60
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
.     .     .     .     .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets              70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
.     .     .     .     .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?                  80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet–and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,                                             90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say, “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,                                           100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”                                          110
.     .     .     .     .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .                                              120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown               130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Navdeep Singh Dhillon: An Unintentional New Father

Ever since my wife started her MFA in creative writing at the New School last fall, I’ve been spending a lot of time hanging out with my daughter, who just turned one a few days ago. I watch her three nights out of the week, and I’m often asked how I get any writing done when I’m watching her.

The answer is simple: I don’t.

Initially, I attempted to balance the two, which did not end well. I was exhausted, didn’t get any writing done (I calculated once that I’d written 7 words, including pronouns, in five hours), and didn’t feel like I’d spent any time with Kavya. So, I decided to embrace spending time with my daughter properly, and a rather brilliant way of thinking about my writing (pat on back).

Call me a horrible father, but two of our favourite activities, regardless of the season, is to stay indoors and watch youtube, or something on the telly. And yes, we eat at the sofa, crumbs and all, much to Sona’s irritation (“I don’t know why there are crumbs on the sofa, Sona. Maybe YOU put them there from that pizza you had earlier in the week!”). We do, of course go out for excursions to New York, the mall, out for dinners, the park, coffee shops,  museums here and there, and the bookshop (an absolute must). But this is what we end up doing when it’s time for papa to “work.”

Maula Jatt, the best film to come out of Lollywood

And what do we watch? Movies. Television Shows. British Soaps (Eastenders yip yip). We also watch plenty of old school Bhangra videos that don’t feature scantily clad girls dancing around men wearing sunglasses inside strobe lit dance clubs. I’m raising a fiery Punjab di Sher Bachiye (little lioness), not a piece of furniture.

The reason I call this “work” is because that’s how I view it. Before Kavya, I never actually watched television for anything other than entertainment, and relied on novels, short-stories, and plays for sources of inspiration and narrative structure. Now, I still use those forms when she’s asleep (nothing beats a Shakespearean villain/hero, and nobody can create tension through dialogue and minimal description like Flannery O’Connor or Ernest Hemmingway). But I have come to truly appreciate the 3 act structure and A/B story of writers behind the television shows and movies I am drawn to. My novel has finally gotten off the ground, and I am attempting to create characters that move beyond stereotype, and have real depth to them. I tried reading some Shakespeare while watching Kavya, but she tried to eat and rip up the pages of his plays. Even e-books don’t work because then she climbs onto my computer and beats the keyboard and screen with all her might until she’s shown something more visually alluring.

The title of this post is a bit misleading because having a clear cut “goodie” and a clear cut “baddie” makes for a really boring story. There is a technique in screenwriting that I absolutely love the name of: “saving the cat.” There is a book out that is reasonably priced. In a lot of old movies, the screenwriter wanted to make sure the audience knew who to root for, so they would have the hero literally save a cat from a tree to show he was a nice guy. All of the genres coming out of Hollywood, especially romantic comedies, use this technique metaphorically. In “Love and Other Drugs” starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway. Jamie, the main character, is a womanizer, and uses sex as a way to escape his life. The blurb uses the phrase “addicted to one night stands.” This is not the kind of hero that people want to root for in a romantic comedy. But he saves the cat by declaring his love for Maggie, the female protagonist in this film, and completely ending his sex addiction. He is a good guy. And he is willing to be there for her as she goes through Parkinson’s. He is really a good guy. She’s the one that pushes him away and at the end of Act III, he rushes to stop the bus she is on and declare his love for her. The screenwriters, Charles Randolph, Edward Zwick, and Marshall Herkovitz, did a remarkable job in taking a man with very sleazy values and still have him perceived as a hero by having him “save the cat.”

A truly good story, I feel, is one that doesn’t have clear cut goodies and baddies, but rather has complex characters. Even minor characters that have more to them than just the character traits assigned to them. Another great television show that embodies this is HBO’s True Blood, which me and Sona (and by extension, Kavya) are obsessed with. The character of Lafayette was supposed to get killed off in the first season (he is killed early on in the Southern Vampire Series by Charlaine Harris), but through some steller writing, Lafayette is alive and kicking well into Season 4. That being said, I still love films that have clear cut goodies and baddies.

Mr. T. is Clubber Lang from Rocky III

In every Rocky film, the premise is that Rocky Balboa is a working class Italian-American with a lot of heart. And the villain is always over the top, with no sense of decency, and someone you want to hate. There isn’t an iota of goodness in him. So you really feel for Rocky when he gets his ass kicked, and root for him when he inevitably beats the villain in the last few minutes of the film. Last night, I was watching Rocky III with Kavya (and my wife wonders why she’s so aggressive!) which has one of my favourite villains from Rocky: Clubber Lang played by now preacher Mr. T. I would have loved it if he’d said, “I pity the fool!” But, alas, he did not. There is zero redemptive value in him. He is crass, loud, and obnoxious. And to top everything off, he killed Mickey, Rocky’s beloved coach.

Fast forward to the television series, “Heroes,” which really should have been named “Villains.” The premise of this show is that random people all over the world have some sort of super power and are attempting to understand their powers. The driving force behind creating such riveting characters is the way they handled morality. Some of the evil characters sometimes did nice things, and some of the good characters did horrible things, and you weren’t sure who to root for because, unlike the black and white world of Rocky or Harry Potter, there was no clear cut goodie or baddie.

As I’m watching these shows, I often make mental comparisons with some of my favourite villains from literature. I’ll cover two of my all time favorite ones, and reserve the others for another post:

1)

"Frankenstein"

An often overlooked villain is Frankenstein’s unnamed creature. Whenever I teach Mary Shelley’s novel (who was amazingly nineteen when she wrote it), fist fights almost break out when people start discussing whether his actions were justified, or whether he was inherently evil, and made the way he was because of his environment. The argument of nurture vs. nature was not new during Mary Shelley’s time, but because the creature is so eloquent and sounds civilized, despite doing such horrible things, he isn’t the stereotypical villain. And Dr. Frankenstein suffers such immense guilt, and all he really tried to do was create life for the benefit of human beings (with a bit of fame for himself). So he isn’t the cut and dry hero or villain either. And it’s that grey area that really piques the interest in these characters. Aside from the spectacular Hollywood film, “Frankenstein” with Robert Deniro and Kenneth Branagh, Hollywood usually makes Frankenstein the “monster,” complete with murderous tendencies for no reason other than the fact he exists, and has him making a series of grunting noises, rather than the poignant speeches he makes to his creator.

2)

Al Pacino playing Shylock "the Jew"

Hollywood’s rendition of Shakespeare’s Shylock in Merchant of Venice I thought was powerfully performed by Al Pacino, but I didn’t like the way they had changed the subtle nature of the original play. Hollywood made it very clear cut that Shylock was indeed the victim, despite the harrowing courtroom scene where Shylock is about to cut out a pound of flesh from Antonio. The word “Jew” is used an obscene number of times, and the hypocrisy is thoroughly underscored throughout the film. The play, on the other hand, uses much more finesse. Shylock is shown as a human being who is understandably bitter, but who wants to exact vengeance on the hypocritical Antonio for everything done to him, including the loss of his daughter, Jessica (who we see weeping at the end of the film).

No, I’m not referring to George Orwell’s 1949 dystopian novel about a country whose citizens are being oppressed by a totalitarian government.  Yes, I’m being facetious.

There are some very eerie similarities between what occurred in Orwell’s Oceanian province, Airstrip One, and the continual oppression and denial of justice that culminated in the government lead Sikh massacre that same year – 1984 – in India, the self-proclaimed “world’s largest democracy.” But I’ll save that for another blog.

There are even more eerie similarities in the shared nature of oppression and struggle for human rights in more “civilized” nations like the United States, France, England, and Canada to name a few. This oppression comes in the form of the creation of – in the words of Edward Said, author of Orientalism – “the other.”

The easy way out is to give you a quick overview of my two cents and leave you a list of links to some great books, articles, and organizations which have compiled some excellent resources on the subject. But I’ve never done things the easy way. Besides, my aim is not to simply disburse information that has already been compiled. It is to attempt to come to an understanding and start developing characters for my story.

In addition to providing you with list of resources that I found invaluable during the course of my research, I will be attempting to provide you with my understanding of the background and the universal lessons we can draw from it. And fairly in-depth information from the countless sources I have voraciously scoured through. Initially I attempted to cover all of this in one post, but 4000 words later, I realized I cannot possibly cover everything I need to in one post. So this will be a series, which I will try to update regularly.

1984
When people talk about 1984, it’s as if everything hinged on this one year. As if prior to 1984, everything was running smoothly, and after 1984, everything returned to “normal.”

When I first started my project, I wanted to tell the story, in the form of a novel, of the Sikhs, in what I thought were the three key defining moments in my lifetime of the Sikh identity: 1) the storming of the epicenter of Sikh sensibilities and spirituality – the Golden Temple – during Indira Gandhi’s sanctioned and K.S. Brar’s lead “Operation Bluestar” in June, 1984, 2) the era of faked encounters by K.P.S. Gill where many innocent Sikhs were tortured and killed and all of these deaths were dressed up as daring police encounters with dangerous terrorists in some remote area of Punjab, and 3) From November 1-3, 1984, a full day after Indira Gandhi’s assassination, the anti-Sikh pogroms –state sanctioned massacre of Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere – at the instigation of congress leaders like Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar, who will, in all likelihood, never face a day in jail.

Jagdish Tytller and H.S. Phoolka in  live interview on NDTV

And then, during my own lifetime, the unthinkable occurred on September 11, 2001.  Within my lifetime, there was yet another defining moment for Sikhs. This time, instead of having to differentiate themselves from the Hindu religion, they had to differentiate themselves from Islam. And from terrorism.

Researching 9/11 was a surreal experience because, in a sense it is history, but in many other ways it is not. The same could probably be said for the victims of 1984 who are still living with the atrocities and waiting, most likely in vain, for justice at the hands of the government.

September 11

It’s hard to believe September 11 occurred ten years ago. Ten years ago, I was nowhere near the twin towers and had no real attachment to the New York skyline. I was living in Fresno, California, 3000 miles away from New York, and yet it affected me profoundly.

As Americans and as a nation in shock at this act of absolute terror and tragedy, we all shared the sorrow, pain, and shock of it all. But Sikhs bore the extra burden of being the visible “enemy” of America.  Many Sikhs who were at ground zero when the attacks took place were, on one hand, in shock and running to get out of Manhattan like everyone on the streets, and on the other hand, were also being blamed for the attacks. As they were running from the same thing everyone else was, they were being called terrorists and in many cases, physically assaulted.

Although a completely separate religion from Islam, Sikhs had long beards and wore turbans, which ironically none of the 19 terrorists responsible did.

The constant flashing images shown over and over again on our television screens didn’t help: plane crashing in tower followed  by an image of Osama bin Laden with his beard and turban. There was now a face to place the blame.

But this didn’t affect just Sikhs. There were countless attacks on immigrants – from Latinos, Indians, Pakistanis, to anyone with dark skin who potentially looked middle-eastern. Mosques, Sikh Gurudwaras, Hindu Mandirs, and other places of worship were all vandalized, some were even set on fire.

And very little of this was being reported by any national news media. I heard about the collective experience through emails and media newsgroups I happened to be a part of. And then the inevitable happened: An Arizona man was shot five times in the back in the first documented hate crime on September 15, four days after the attacks. His name was Balbir Singh Sodhi and he was a turbaned and bearded Sikh.

What started off as research into a Sikh story had become much deeper than that. In the shadows of 9/11, we suddenly had to view the world in terms of “us” and “them.” And brown people, even those who were 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th generation, had now become “the other.”

As soon as I made the connection, the direction of my novel had taken an abrupt turn. I was now less concerned with staying in the heated political arena of India in the 1980s, recreating an atmosphere entirely imagined from books and talks. I now wanted to bring the story home to America. A land I was familiar with. And could actually draw on memory to recreate some of the scenes.

The last conversation concerning 1984 I had was the one that affected me the most. It was at Jakara 2007 with Ajeet Singh Matharu. Click here to read more.

A Quick Background

Growing up in Fresno, there really was no excuse for me not to have attended Jakara until I was 30, the cut-off age. I always found something else to occupy my time with: in 1999, when they first began, I was 21, in the Naval Reserve, and had just started taking depressing Victorian literature courses at Fresno State. So that summer I had extended my Annual Training in Spain to go travel around Europe. In 2000, I wasted most of my time swimming and playing video games. The year after that I was working on my thesis, then I left to go teach in China for two years, and then I was in graduate school. In the summer of 2005, I got married. Then my wife and I went on a backpacking honeymoon across India for six months. The point is, for some reason, although I was a stone’s throw away, I didn’t think to make it a priority to go. And it isn’t that I found the topics being explored boring; I didn’t bother to see what they were. The truth is, I found the idea of being confined for an entire weekend discussing Sikh issues utterly miserable.  Yes, I was one of those people.

It wasn’t until 2009, the year I turned 30 that I spent $800 on airfare for me and my pregnant wife to fly 3000 miles to Fresno so we could attend a conference that I could have driven to in fifteen minutes flat when I lived in Fresno. And on one hand, I do regret my decision of not attending past conferences. But, on the other hand, I think it did make me appreciate the experience of going at 30 much more. The topic in 2009 was 1984: Reflect. Respond. React. A kind of revisiting of their conference theme in 2004, which I didn’t attend.

The whole purpose of Jakara is really something I admire. It is to regain the generation that don’t feel like they have a say in their religious identity and don’t know how to connect with it because their voices are drowned out by the adults. And Jakara really empowers the next generation of Sikhs by providing them a platform to to think about the issues affecting their identities, their understanding of their religion, and their place in this world. The Jakara Youth Conference takes place in the summer over a weekend in Fresno, California, with activities from morning until evening. Each year, the topics change.

The Experience
Jakara has a fantastic policy of separating couples (which my wife didn’t think was nearly as fantastic as I did initially) and pretty much anyone who seems to have come with other people, thereby getting people out of their comfort zone. After making our way to the music building at Fresno State, my old stomping ground, we all congregated in a large room, and played some ice-breaker games before the presentations began. Some of the presentations were collected youtube videos that I had seen before, while some of the presentations were a mix of power-point, or just lecture/interactive sessions that offered fresh and contemporary perspectives on the issues.

We were later divided into groups of about five or six and went off to different rooms in different buildings on the Fresno State campus. What I really liked was the fact that instead of teachers, they use the word facilitators to describe the role of the one or two people who run the classes. Teachers imply that they have the answers, while facilitators are there to guide the conversation towards a particular objective.  My facilitators, Sarina Kaur and Preeti Kaur, were fantastic. But I did feel a little out of place in my group as they were all fairly young. I would guess between the ages of 16-21. And some of them had an overly simplistic notion of 1984. One reduced it to “Hindus being jealous of Sikhs.” But it was interesting listening to how these kids from various states, and one from Canada, were processing the information. My wife, Sona, fared a little better with her group because her co-participants were older and her facilitator,  Ajeet Singh Matharu, was the one who had designed the lesson plans. So he was incredibly knowledgeable on the issues and was able to challenge them, as well as veer the conversation away from the “Sikh vs Hindu” argument.

One of the major eye-openers for me was meeting my wife’s facilitator, an old friend of mine, Ajeet Singh Matharu, who had just completed th first year of his Ph.D. in History at Columbia University in New York City. He had even utilized his expertise as a Teach For America teacher in NYC to create lesson plans and provide training for all of the facilitators. He was very knowledgeable about “the events,” “the non-events” and the major characters involved, and combined with his university training, was able to analyze it in a way I had never really thought about. He died much too early (July 25, 2010) in a road accident while in India. His death came as an absolute shock and continues to sadden all of those who knew him. Or even of him. The last conversation I remember having with him was about Indira Gandhi and Bhindranwale, the controversial figure attributed with, in a sense, being either the hero or villain of 1984. That one conversation with him really helped to put things into perspective.

One of the most interesting things we started talking about over lunch was the level of importance attached to Bhindranwale and the assumption that you couldn’t discuss 1984 without talking about this polarizing figure, as if he was ’84. Then we started talking about the different views, all involving Bhindranwale (which was partly what his joint presentation had been about). Here is what I remember of the conversation:

A) Scenario 1: Bhindranwale is the villain and is the cause of all the violence and communal disharmony in Punjab. He has called for the death of Hindus and advocated the use of murder in order to achieve his aim for Khalistan, a sovereign Sikh nation. He is the reason the government was forced to storm the Golden Temple so that they could restore peace. The fact that it was one of the busiest pilgrimage days, which apparently not a single Intelligence Agent knew about, is irrelevant. Bhindranwale was the root cause.

B) Scenario 2: Bhindranwale is the hero for standing up for Sikh rights and identity. He never actively engaged in violence and listening to his speeches, there is no evidence to suggest he condoned the use of violence against Hindus or anyone else. He has never said that he was for or against Khalistan, or that he was in favor of violence in order to achieve it. The villain, in this scenario, is Indira Gandhi and her government. In order to discredit the only recognized Sikh political party, the Akali Dal, she provided Bhindranwale with political security and weapons. He was arrested briefly, but released a short time later. The only F.I.R. – a police report akin to a warrant – for him was submitted after his death. Nobody even batted an eye in his direction until Indira Gandhi realized she couldn’t control him.

C) Scenario 3: the one Ajeet and I were leaning towards – Bhindranwale’s role in ’84 has been greatly exaggerated. He was in control for six months at the most. Then the original ideological “freedom fighters” died out, or lost control somehow, and the new batch were more concerned with the power they held to settle old scores or profit from being above the law. Their “income” as so-called freedom fighters came as hired goons or blackmailers. This was a  far cry from Bhindranwale’s ideals and his followers’s genuine fervor and ideology. The common people of Punjab were caught in the crossfire. They were either tortured and terrorized by the police (run by K.P.S. Gill) or tortured and terrorized by terrorists claiming to still be part of Bhindranwale’s ideological Freedom Fighters.

Weeks after that conversation had ended, a question started rattling around in my head, one that I can only attribute to the conversation I had with Ajeet: “Are either of them so pivotal to the story that I’m trying to tell?” And the truth is, they’re not. Neither are people like K.P.S. Gill, lauded as India’s “super-cop,” who systematically used torture and faked “encounters” – kidnapping, in most cases, innocent people killing them via horrific use of torture while in police custody, and then dressing the death up as a brave and heroic battle between police and “extremists” in some remote area of Punjab.

Then there are the congress leaders, Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar, the only two people, it seems, who faced any charges. And of course, neither of them have or ever will face jail time, but the one concession is that they have recently been dropped from the congress party. But this was probably in order to secure Sikh votes.