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writingwithcolor · 4 years ago

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Naming a South Asian Character

“I need a name for a South Asian character”

We’re going to need a little more information than that…

Please see the following maps of South Asia:

Image description: Two maps of South Asia. The top map depicts the South Asian region, including Afghanistan with color-coding of different regions by 8 color-coded language groups. The bottom depicts the official state/ province/ languages and scripts for countries in the South Asian region, excluding Afghanistan. See end of post for detailed image description under the cut.

(Links: Top Map, Bottom Map)

That’s a lot of languages, right?

Names in South Asian cultures are primarily dictated by religion and language. While there’s some overlap between cultures, we can make an educated guess of someone’s ethnicity & religion based on their name. For example:

Simran Dhillon … is a Punjabi Sikh.

Priyanka Ghosh … is a Bengali Hindu

Maya Srinivasan … is a Tamilian Hindu.

Harsh Patel … is a Gujarati Hindu.

Amin Usmani … is a Muslim from a traditionally Urdu speaking community.

Teresa Fernandes … is a Goan Christian.

Behind the Name is a good place to start looking as they state the specific language the name is from. As for religion, there are more factors to consider.

Sikhs

Sikh first names are gender neutral. The 10th Sikh guru designated Singh (meaning lion, for men) and Kaur (meaning heir to the throne, for women) as Sikh surnames. These surnames were designed to be equalizers within Sikh communities. However, many Sikhs keep their Punjabi surnames (many of these surnames are now primarily associated with Sikhs) and use Singh and Kaur as a middle name (eg. Ranjit Kaur Shergill, Amrit Singh Cheema). More devout Sikhs use only Singh and Kaur or use the same format legally but do not share their surnames.

Sikh first names are derived from gurbani (Sikh holy texts), so they are often uniform across cultures. Most Sikhs who aren’t Punjabi use Singh & Kaur or cultural surnames in the same format. The latter is usually seen among Afghan & Delhiite Sikh communities. While most changed their surnames to Singh & Kaur, some families still kept the surnames they had before they converted from Islam and Hinduism (eg. Harpreet Singh Laghmani, Jasleen Kaur Kapoor).

If you’re stuck on a surname for a Sikh character, Singh for men and Kaur for women is the safest way to go regardless of ethnicity.

Good resources for Sikh names can be found here:

https://www.sikhs.org/names.htm

http://www.sikhwomen.com/SikhNames/

Christians

South Asian Christians naming conventions depend largely on who brought Christianity to the region and when. For example, Christianity was largely brought to Goa by Portuguese Catholics so you’ll see Portuguese surnames, while many Christians in the Seven Sister States didn’t change their names. South Asian Christians will also often have Christian first names, either in Portuguese or in English.

Hindus, Jains, castes and gotras

Hinduism is the majority religion in India and the South Asian region overall. A key thing that many newcomers overlook when writing about Hindus is that rather like feudal Europe, a person’s last name can also tell you what their family used to do because of the caste system. Both Hindus and Jains employ gotras (or lineage systems) designed to keep people from the same patrilineal line from marrying each other. Thus, if your Hindu character is a Vaishya (tradesman/ merchant class), but you have chosen a last name for them related to farming, or if your Kshatriya (warrior) character has a last name that means bureaucrat, you’ve made a mistake. Most Hindus and Jains will have last names derived from Sanskrit, or a language with Sanskrit roots.

A note on middle names: in South India, Hindus will often use the father’s first name for the child’s middle name.

For what it is worth, South Asia is hardly the only region to have these particular features. Japanese society until the end of the Edo era was heavily segregated by caste, and to this day, many families with samurai last names occupy relative positions of privilege compared to other castes, even though the Japanese caste system ended with the Meiji Restoration.

A note of caution: Baby name websites tend to be inaccurate for Hindu names, often confusing Farsi and Arabic-derived Urdu names with the more traditional Sanskrit-derived names. Behind the Name is by far the most accurate website, but it doesn’t hurt to check multiple sources. For Hindu and Jain surnames associated with different castes, regions and gotras, Wikipedia is surprisingly thorough.

Muslims

Islam is the majority religion in Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as the second largest religion in India, but the differing ethnicities and arrival periods of Muslims in South Asia over the course of history can have a significant impact on a character’s name. For example, think of when your character’s family will have arrived in South Asia or converted to Islam:

During the Delhi Sultanate, when Hindustani would have been spoken?

Under the Mughals when Persian was more common?

Are they from Bangladesh and thus speak Bengali?

Do they have ancestors from Afghanistan or Swat Valley, and thus have Pashto last names?

Does the family speak Urdu?

All of these will impact what their name might reasonably be. As a general rule, Muslims will have last names that are in Farsi/ Persian, Urdu, Arabic and Bengali. Bangladeshi Muslims may have Hindu names (both first and last) as well.

Buddhists

When discussing Buddhists in South Asia, we are primarily talking about Nepal and Sri Lanka. The majority languages in these countries are Nepali and Sinhala, respectively. Both languages are part of the Indo-Aryan language family, and like many Indo-Aryan languages, show heavy Sanskrit influence.

Others

Don’t forget that India also has a large number of lesser known minority religions, including Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Tibetan Buddhism and a host of indigenous religions.

Judaism: There are a number of historical Jewish enclaves in India, as the result of specific waves of migration. Like South Asian Muslim names, Jewish last names will vary depending on the ethnicity and arrival period for each particular wave of Jewish diaspora.

Zoroastrianism: People who practice Zoroastrianism are likely to have Farsi last names.

Tibetan Buddhism: Tibetan Buddhists will obviously have Tibetan names and are often a part of the Tibetan diaspora who entered India as refugees during the Chinese government’s invasion of Tibet.

In Conclusion

An in-depth coverage of name etymology in South Asia would probably be the size of an encyclopaedia. The above is hardly exhaustive; we haven’t scratched the surface of the ethnic and linguistic variations in any of the South Asian countries displayed on the maps above. We hope, however, that it motivates you to research carefully and appreciate the cultural diversity South Asia has to offer. Just like in any setting where issues of lineage are plainly displayed by a person’s name, names in South Asia tell stories about where a person is from, what language they speak, and what their ancestors might have done, even if this has little bearing on the character themselves. It may seem a little elaborate to try and imagine the ancestors of your character before you even decide who your character is, but the reality is that most South Asians know these things instinctively, and whether or not you do your due diligence will be part of how we judge your work.

Name a thing to fight over, and South Asians have probably fought over it at one point or another, whether it be religion, ethnicity, language, or caste. However, one thing many South Asians have in common is pride in our individual origins. Respecting this love of identity will be invaluable as you plan your story.

At the end of the day, there is no substitute for actually talking to people who share your character’s background. We will always recommend having someone from the community you’re writing about check your naming.

-- Mods SK and Marika

Follow up

A disclaimer for our Desi followers

Detailed image description: 2 maps of South Asia: The top map shows South Asia including the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Different colors show regions associated with 8 language categories. The language families by color are:

Indo-Aryan (Light green)

Iranian (dark green)

Nuristani (Yellow)

Dravidian (Blue)

Austro-Asiatic (Purple)

Tibeto-Burman (Orange)

Red (Turkic)

Unclassified/ Language Isolates (Grey)

Moving north to south, language distribution is roughly as follows:

Turkic at Afghanistan’s northern border

Tibeto-Burman at the northern borders of India, Nepal, and Bhutan.

Iranian for Afghanistan and the western half of Pakistan.

Indo-Aryan for the eastern half of Pakistan, the northern half of India, the southern half of Nepal, and all of Bangladesh.

Dravidian for the southern half of India and the northern portion of Sri Lanka, scattered clusters in central India, and an isolated region in south western Pakistan (Balochistan).

Austro-Asiatic languages are clustered on the eastern side of central India and the Indian states of Meghalaya and Assam to the northeast.

For Maldives island chain to the southwest of India: Dravidian language groups are spoken to the north, while Indo-Aryan groups are spoken to the south.

For the Andaman and Nicobar island chains to the east of India in the Bay of Bengal, unclassified/ language isolates are spoken for the northern half, while Austro-Asiatic languages are spoken in the southern half.

The bottom map shows South Asia, including the states, provinces and territories for Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, indicating the languages and scripts of major state/ provincial languages. From Northeast to Southwest, starting from the northernmost point, they are as follows (Format: state or province, language(s), country):

Gilgit-Baltistan, Urdu, India and Pakistan (disputed territory)

Jammu and Kashmir/ Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Kashimiri, India and Pakistan (disputed territory)

Ladakh, Kashmiri, India

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pashto, Pakistan

Balochistan, Balochi, Pakistan

Punjab, Punjabi, Pakistan

Sindh, Sindhi, Pakistan

Himachal Pradesh, Hindi, India

Uttarakhand, Hindi, India

Punjab, Punjabi, India

Haryana, Hindi, India

Rajasthan, Hindi, India

Gujrat, Gujrati, India

Nepal (whole country), Nepali, Nepal

Uttar Pradesh, Hindi, India

Madhya Pradesh, Hindi, India

Maharashtra, Marathi, India

Goa, Konkani, India

Bihar, Hindi, India

Jharkhand, Hindi, India

Chhattisgarh, Hindi, India

Telangana, Telugu, India

Karnataka, Kannada, India

Sikkim, Nepali, India

West Bengal, Bengali, India

Odia, Odisha, India

Andhra Pradesh, Telugu, India

Tamil Nadu, Tamil, India

Kerala, Malayalam, India

Sri Lanka (whole country), Sinhala/Tamil, Sri Lanka,

Arunachal Pradesh, English, India

Assam, Assamese, India

Meghalaya, Khasi/Garo, India

Bangladesh (whole country), Bengali, Bangladesh

Nagaland, English, India

Mizopur, Mizo, India

Manipur, Meitei, India

Tripura, Bengali/ Kokborok/English, India

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deathsmallcaps · 3 years ago

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The 30th was Peter Pan!

@boopboopboopbadoop

If you’d like to see the rest of my drawings and notes along with the text, please

Chapter 3: Come Away, Come Away!

For a moment after Mr. and Mrs. Dhillon* left the house the night-lights by the beds of the three children continued to burn clearly. They were awfully nice little night-lights, and one cannot help wishing that they could have kept awake to see Peter; but Wendy’s light blinked and gave such a yawn that the other two yawned also, and before they could close their mouths all the three went out.

*In the original text, it’s Darling. But since my version of Wendy and her family are Sikh, I consulted a Sikh person and was suggested the name Dhillon.

There was another light in the room now, a thousand times brighter than the night-lights, and in the time we have taken to say this, it had been in all the drawers in the nursery, looking for Peter’s shadow, rummaged the wardrobe and turned every pocket inside out. It was not really a light; it made this light by flashing about so quickly, but when it came to rest for a second you saw it was a fairy, no longer than your hand, but still growing. It was a girl called Tinker Bell exquisitely gowned in a skeleton leaf, cut low and square, through which her figure could be seen to the best advantage. She was slightly inclined to embonpoint.

A moment after the fairy’s entrance the window was blown open by the breathing of the little stars, and Peter dropped in. He had carried Tinker Bell part of the way, and his hand was still messy with the fairy dust.

“Tinker Bell,” he called softly, after making sure that the children were asleep, "Tink, where are you?" She was in a jug for the moment, and liking it extremely; she had never been in a jug before.

“Oh, do come out of that jug, and tell me, do you know where they put my shadow?"

The loveliest tinkle as of golden bells answered him. It is the fairy language. You ordinary children can never hear it, but if you were to hear it you would know that you had heard it once before.

Tink said that the shadow was in the big box. She meant the chest of drawers, and Peter jumped at the drawers, scattering their contents to the floor with both hands, as kings toss ha’pence to the crowd. In a moment he had recovered his shadow, and in his delight he forgot that he had shut Tinker Bell up in the drawer.

If he thought at all, but I don’t believe he ever thought, it was that he and his shadow, when brought near each other, would join like drops of water, and when they did not he was appalled. He tried to stick it on with soap from the bathroom, but that also failed. A shudder passed through Peter, and he sat on the floor and cried.

His sobs woke Wendy, and she sat up in bed. She was not alarmed to see a stranger crying on the nursery floor; she was only pleasantly interested.

“Boy,” she said courteously, "why are you crying?"

Peter could be exceeding polite also, having learned the grand manner at fairy ceremonies, and he rose and bowed to her beautifully. She was much pleased, and bowed beautifully to him from the bed.

“What’s your name?" he asked.

“Wendy Kaur* Moira Dhillon,” she replied with some satisfaction. "What is your name?"

*A majority Sikh women have Kaur as their last name, or sometimes their middle name. It means princess, and all Sikh women are encouraged to have it, as a proud marker of their religion. For men, they get Singh, which means Lion.

“Peter Pan. "

She was already sure that he must be Peter, but it did seem a comparatively short name.

“Is that all?"

“Yes,” he said rather sharply. He felt for the first time that it was a shortish name.

“I’m so sorry,” said Wendy Moira Angela.

“It doesn’t matter,” Peter gulped.

She asked where he lived.

“Second to the right,” said Peter, "and then straight on till morning. "

“What a funny address!"

Peter had a sinking. For the first time he felt that perhaps it was a funny address.

“No, it isn’t,” he said.

“I mean,” Wendy said nicely, remembering that she was hostess, "is that what they put on the letters?"

He wished she had not mentioned letters.

“Don’t get any letters,” he said contemptuously.

“But your mother gets letters?"

“Don’t have a mother,” he said. Not only had he no mother, but he had not the slightest desire to have one. He thought them very over-rated persons. Wendy, however, felt at once that she was in the presence of a tragedy.

“O Peter, no wonder you were crying,” she said, and got out of bed and ran to him.

“I wasn’t crying about mothers,” he said rather indignantly. "I was crying because I can’t get my shadow to stick on. Besides, I wasn’t crying. "

“It has come off?"

“Yes. "

Then Wendy saw the shadow on the floor, looking so draggled, and she was frightfully sorry for Peter. "How awful!" she said, but she could not help smiling when she saw that he had been trying to stick it on with soap. How exactly like a boy!

Fortunately she knew at once what to do. "It must be sewn on,” she said, just a little patronisingly.

“What’s sewn?" he asked.

“You’re dreadfully ignorant. "

“No, I’m not. "

But she was exulting in his ignorance. "I shall sew it on for you, my little man,” she said, though he was tall as herself, and she got out her housewife bag and sewed the shadow onto Peter’s foot.

“I daresay it will hurt a little,” she warned him.

“Oh, I shan’t cry,” said Peter, who was already of the opinion that he had never cried in his life. And he clenched his teeth and did not cry, and soon his shadow was behaving properly, though still a little creased.

“Perhaps I should have ironed it,” Wendy said thoughtfully, but Peter, boylike, was indifferent to appearances, and he was now jumping about in the wildest glee. Alas, he had already forgotten that he owed his bliss to Wendy. He thought he had attached the shadow himself. "How clever I am!" he crowed rapturously, "oh, the cleverness of me!"

It is humiliating to have to confess that this conceit of Peter was one of his most fascinating qualities. To put it with brutal frankness, there never was a cockier boy.

But for the moment Wendy was shocked. "You conceit,” she exclaimed, with frightful sarcasm; "of course I did nothing!"

“You did a little,” Peter said carelessly, and continued to dance.

“A little!" she replied with hauteur; "if I am no use I can at least withdraw,” and she sprang in the most dignified way into bed and covered her face with the blankets.

To induce her to look up he pretended to be going away, and when this failed he sat on the end of the bed and tapped her gently with his foot. "Wendy,” he said, "don’t withdraw. I can’t help crowing, Wendy, when I’m pleased with myself. " Still she would not look up, though she was listening eagerly. "Wendy,” he continued, in a voice that no woman has ever yet been able to resist, "Wendy, one girl is more use than twenty boys. "

Now Wendy was every inch a woman, though there were not very many inches, and she peeped out of the bed-clothes.

“Do you really think so, Peter?"

“Yes, I do. "

“I think it’s perfectly sweet of you,” she declared, "and I’ll get up again,” and she sat with him on the side of the bed. She also said she would give him a kiss if he liked, but Peter did not know what she meant, and he held out his hand expectantly.

“Surely you know what a kiss is?" she asked, aghast.

“I shall know when you give it to me,” he replied stiffly, and not to hurt his feeling she gave him a thimble.

“Now,” said he, "shall I give you a kiss?" and she replied with a slight primness, "If you please. " She made herself rather cheap by inclining her face toward him, but he merely dropped an acorn button into her hand, so she slowly returned her face to where it had been before, and said nicely that she would wear his kiss on the chain around her neck. It was lucky that she did put it on that chain, for it was afterwards to save her life.

When people in our set are introduced, it is customary for them to ask each other’s age, and so Wendy, who always liked to do the correct thing, asked Peter how old he was. It was not really a happy question to ask him; it was like an examination paper that asks grammar, when what you want to be asked is Kings of England.

“I don’t know,” he replied uneasily, "but I am quite young. " He really knew nothing about it, he had merely suspicions, but he said at a venture, "Wendy, I ran away the day I was born. "

Wendy was quite surprised, but interested; and she indicated in the charming drawing-room manner, by a touch on her nightgown, that he could sit nearer her.

“It was because I heard father and mother,” he explained in a low voice, "talking about what I was to be when I became a man. " He was extraordinarily agitated now. "I don’t want ever to be a man,” he said with passion. "I want always to be a little boy and to have fun. So I ran away to Kensington Gardens and lived a long long time among the fairies. "

She gave him a look of the most intense admiration, and he thought it was because he had run away, but it was really because he knew fairies. Wendy had lived such a home life that to know fairies struck her as quite delightful. She poured out questions about them, to his surprise, for they were rather a nuisance to him, getting in his way and so on, and indeed he sometimes had to give them a hiding. Still, he liked them on the whole, and he told her about the beginning of fairies.

“You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. "

Tedious talk this, but being a stay-at-home she liked it.

“And so,” he went on good-naturedly, "there ought to be one fairy for every boy and girl. "

“Ought to be? Isn’t there?"

“No. You see children know such a lot now, they soon don’t believe in fairies, and every time a child says,"I don’t believe in fairies,"there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead. "

Really, he thought they had now talked enough about fairies, and it struck him that Tinker Bell was keeping very quiet. "I can’t think where she has gone to,” he said, rising, and he called Tink by name. Wendy’s heart went flutter with a sudden thrill.

“Peter,” she cried, clutching him, "you don’t mean to tell me that there is a fairy in this room!"

“She was here just now,” he said a little impatiently. "You don’t hear her, do you?" and they both listened.

“The only sound I hear,” said Wendy, "is like a tinkle of bells. "

“Well, that’s Tink, that’s the fairy language. I think I hear her too. "

The sound came from the chest of drawers, and Peter made a merry face. No one could ever look quite so merry as Peter, and the loveliest of gurgles was his laugh. He had his first laugh still.

“Wendy,” he whispered gleefully, "I do believe I shut her up in the drawer!"

He let poor Tink out of the drawer, and she flew about the nursery screaming with fury. "You shouldn’t say such things,” Peter retorted. "Of course I’m very sorry, but how could I know you were in the drawer?"

Wendy was not listening to him. "O Peter,” she cried, "if she would only stand still and let me see her!"

“They hardly ever stand still,” he said, but for one moment Wendy saw the romantic figure come to rest on the cuckoo clock. "O the lovely!" she cried, though Tink’s face was still distorted with passion.

“Tink,” said Peter amiably, "this lady says she wishes you were her fairy. "

Tinker Bell answered insolently.

“What does she say, Peter?"

He had to translate. "She is not very polite. She says you are a great ugly girl, and that she is my fairy. "

He tried to argue with Tink. "You know you can’t be my fairy, Tink, because I am a gentleman and you are a lady. "

To this Tink replied in these words, "You silly ass,” and disappeared into the bathroom. "She is quite a common fairy,” Peter explained apologetically, "she is called Tinker Bell because she mends the pots and kettles. "

They were together in the armchair by this time, and Wendy plied him with more questions.

“If you don’t live in Kensington Gardens now—”

“Sometimes I do still. "

“But where do you live mostly now?"

“With the lost boys. "

“Who are they?"

“They are the children who fall out of their perambulators when the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days they are sent far away to the Neverland to defray expenses. I’m captain. "

“What fun it must be!"

“Yes,” said cunning Peter, "but we are rather lonely. You see we have no female companionship. "

“Are none of the others girls?"

“Oh, no; girls, you know, are much too clever to fall out of their prams. "

This flattered Wendy immensely. "I think,” she said, "it is perfectly lovely the way you talk about girls; John there just despises us.

For reply Peter rose and kicked John out of bed, blankets and all; one kick. This seemed to Wendy rather forward for a first meeting, and she told him with spirit that he was not captain in her house. However, John continued to sleep so placidly on the floor that she allowed him to remain there. "And I know you meant to be kind,” she said, relenting, "so you may give me a kiss. "

For the moment she had forgotten his ignorance about kisses. "I thought you would want it back,” he said a little bitterly, and offered to return her the thimble.

“Oh dear,” said the nice Wendy, "I don’t mean a kiss, I mean a thimble. "

“What’s that?"

“It’s like this. " She kissed him.

“Funny!" said Peter gravely. "Now shall I give you a thimble?"

“If you wish to,” said Wendy, keeping her head erect this time. Peter thimbled her, and almost immediately she screeched. "What is it, Wendy?"

“It was exactly as if someone were pulling my hair. "

“That must have been Tink. I never knew her so naughty before. "

And indeed Tink was darting about again, using offensive language.

“She says she will do that to you, Wendy, every time I give you a thimble. "

“But why?"

“Why, Tink?"

Again Tink replied, "You silly ass. " Peter could not understand why, but Wendy understood, and she was just slightly disappointed when he admitted that he came to the nursery window not to see her but to listen to stories.

“You see, I don’t know any stories. None of the lost boys knows any stories. "

“How perfectly awful,” Wendy said.

“Do you know,” Peter asked "why swallows build in the eaves of houses? It is to listen to the stories. O Wendy, your mother was telling you such a lovely story. "

“Which story was it?"

“About the prince who couldn’t find the lady who wore the glass slipper. "

“Peter,” said Wendy excitedly, "that was Cinderella, and he found her, and they lived happily ever after. "

Peter was so glad that he rose from the floor, where they had been sitting, and hurried to the window.

“Where are you going?" she cried with misgiving. "To tell the other boys. "

“Don’t go Peter,” she entreated, "I know such lots of stories. "

Those were her precise words, so there can be no denying that it was she who first tempted him.

He came back, and there was a greedy look in his eyes now which ought to have alarmed her, but did not.

“Oh, the stories I could tell to the boys!" she cried, and then Peter gripped her and began to draw her toward the window.

“Let me go!" she ordered him.

“Wendy, do come with me and tell the other boys. "

Of course she was very pleased to be asked, but she said, "Oh dear, I can’t. Think of mummy! Besides, I can’t fly. "

“I’ll teach you. "

“Oh, how lovely to fly. "

“I’ll teach you how to jump on the wind’s back, and then away we go. "

“Oo!" she exclaimed rapturously.

“Wendy, Wendy, when you are sleeping in your silly bed you might be flying about with me saying funny things to the stars. "

“Oo!"

“And, Wendy, there are mermaids. "

“Mermaids! With tails?"

“Such long tails. "

“Oh,” cried Wendy, "to see a mermaid!"

He had become frightfully cunning. "Wendy,” he said, "how we should all respect you. "

She was wriggling her body in distress. It was quite as if she were trying to remain on the nursery floor.

But he had no pity for her.

“Wendy,” he said, the sly one, "you could tuck us in at night. "

“Oo!"

“None of us has ever been tucked in at night. "

“Oo,” and her arms went out to him.

“And you could darn our clothes, and make pockets for us. None of us has any pockets.

How could she resist. "Of course it’s awfully fascinating!" she cried. "Peter, would you teach John and Michael to fly too?"

“If you like,” he said indifferently, and she ran to John and Michael and shook them. "Wake up,” she cried, "Peter Pan has come and he is to teach us to fly. "

John rubbed his eyes. "Then I shall get up,” he said. Of course he was on the floor already. "Hallo,” he said, "I am up!"

Michael was up by this time also, looking as sharp as a knife with six blades and a saw, but Peter suddenly signed silence. Their faces assumed the awful craftiness of children listening for sounds from the grown-up world. All was as still as salt. Then everything was right. No, stop! Everything was wrong. Nana, who had been barking distressfully all the evening, was quiet now. It was her silence they had heard.

“Out with the light! Hide! Quick!" cried John, taking command for the only time throughout the whole adventure. And thus when Liza entered, holding Nana, the nursery seemed quite its old self, very dark, and you would have sworn you heard its three wicked inmates breathing angelically as they slept. They were really doing it artfully from behind the window curtains.

Liza was in a bad temper, for she was mixing the Christmas puddings in the kitchen, and had been drawn from them, with a raisin still on her cheek, by Nana’s absurd suspicions. She thought the best way of getting a little quiet was to take Nana to the nursery for a moment, but in custody of course.

“There, you suspicious brute,” she said, not sorry that Nana was in disgrace. "They are perfectly safe, aren’t they? Every one of the little angels sound asleep in bed. Listen to their gentle breathing. "

Here Michael, encouraged by his success, breathed so loudly that they were nearly detected. Nana knew that kind of breathing, and she tried to drag herself out of Liza’s clutches.

But Liza was dense. "No more of it, Nana,” she said sternly, pulling her out of the room. "I warn you if you bark again I shall go straight for master and missus and bring them home from the party, and then, oh, won’t master whip you, just. "

She tied the unhappy dog up again, but do you think Nana ceased to bark? Bring master and missus home from the party! Why, that was just what she wanted. Do you think she cared whether she was whipped so long as her charges were safe? Unfortunately Liza returned to her puddings, and Nana, seeing that no help would come from her, strained and strained at the chain until at last she broke it. In another moment she had burst into the dining-room of 27 and flung up her paws to heaven, her most expressive way of making a communication. Mr. and Mrs. Dhillon knew at once that something terrible was happening in their nursery, and without a good-bye to their hostess they rushed into the street.

But it was now ten minutes since three scoundrels had been breathing behind the curtains, and Peter Pan can do a great deal in ten minutes.

We now return to the nursery.

“It’s all right,” John announced, emerging from his hiding-place. "I say, Peter, can you really fly?"

Instead of troubling to answer him Peter flew around the room, taking the mantelpiece on the way.dgb

“How topping!" said John and Michael.

“How sweet!" cried Wendy.

“Yes, I’m sweet, oh, I am sweet!" said Peter, forgetting his manners again.

It looked delightfully easy, and they tried it first from the floor and then from the beds, but they always went down instead of up.

“I say, how do you do it?" asked John, rubbing his knee. He was quite a practical boy.

“You just think lovely wonderful thoughts,” Peter explained, "and they lift you up in the air.

He showed them again.

“You’re so nippy at it,” John said, "couldn’t you do it very slowly once?"

Peter did it both slowly and quickly. "I’ve got it now, Wendy!" cried John, but soon he found he had not. Not one of them could fly an inch, though even Michael was in words of two syllables, and Peter did not know A from Z.

Of course Peter had been trifling with them, for no one can fly unless the fairy dust has been blown on him. Fortunately, as we have mentioned, one of his hands was messy with it, and he blew some on each of them, with the most superb results.

“Now just wiggle your shoulders this way,” he said, "and let go. "

They were all on their beds, and gallant Michael let go first. He did not quite mean to let go, but he did it, and immediately he was borne across the room.

“I flewed!" he screamed while still in mid-air.

John let go and met Wendy near the bathroom.

“Oh, lovely!"

“Oh, ripping!"

“Look at me!"

They were not nearly so elegant as Peter, they could not help kicking a little, but their heads were bobbing against the ceiling, and there is almost nothing so delicious as that. Peter gave Wendy a hand at first, but had to desist, Tink was so indignant.

Up and down they went, and round and round. Heavenly was Wendy’s word.

“I say,” cried John, "why shouldn’t we all go out?"

Of course it was to this that Peter had been luring them.

Michael was ready: he wanted to see how long it took him to do a billion miles. But Wendy hesitated.

“Mermaids!" said Peter again.

“Oo!"

“And there are pirates. "

“Pirates,” cried John, seizing his Sunday hat, "let us go at once. "

It was just at this moment that Mr. and Mrs. Dhillon hurried with Nana out of 27. They ran into the middle of the street to look up at the nursery window; and, yes, it was still shut, but the room was ablaze with light, and most heart-gripping sight of all, they could see in shadow on the curtain three little figures in night attire circling round and round, not on the floor but in the air.

Not three figures, four!

In a tremble they opened the street door. Mr. Dhillon would have rushed upstairs, but Mrs. Dhillon signed him to go softly. She even tried to make her heart go softly.

Will they reach the nursery in time? If so, how delightful for them, and we shall all breathe a sigh of relief, but there will be no story. On the other hand, if they are not in time, I solemnly promise that it will all come right in the end.

They would have reached the nursery in time had it not been that the little stars were watching them. Once again the stars blew the window open, and that smallest star of all called out:

“Cave, Peter!"

Then Peter knew that there was not a moment to lose. "Come,” he cried imperiously, and soared out at once into the night, followed by John and Michael and Wendy.

Mr. and Mrs. Dhillon and Nana rushed into the nursery too late. The birds were flown.

Art notes

Peter Pan has always held a special place in my heart. I of course started out on the 1953 Peter Pan on VHS, and that always made me want to fly. I thought Wendy was so pretty! But what really made my heart soar was Peter Pan 2: Return to Neverland, which was about Wendy’s daughter Jane, WWII and the importance of being both kind and young when you can. I wanted to be Jane when I was four. During the end credits, I would run around my house, arms out like wings, trying to achieve liftoff while ‘Do you Believe in Magic’ played. The movie wasn’t really based on any sequel material - J.M. Barrie died before WWII started and at the end of his novelisation of his play, Peter Pan and Wendy, he merely mentioned Wendy having a daughter named Jane and a granddaughter named Margaret who visited with Peter Pan the same way she had.

By the way, did you know that Wendy was actually invented by J.M. Barrie, after a little girl called him her ‘fwiendy-wendy’?

But since then, I have been enamored with the story. I have watched several different movies about it, Finding Neverland, the Disney fairies movies, Hook (with Robin Williams), Pan (2015), Peter Pan (2003), Once Upon a Time TV series, and The Boy Who Could Fly (it’s loosely inspired by Peter Pan but I still count it). I have also read the novelisation, Peter Pan in Scarlet (the officially sanctioned sequel to the book, written after Return to Neverland was made, with a very different story), the Peter Pan and the Starcatchers series*, and Capt. Hook: The Adventures of a Notorious Youth (which I didn’t know until an hour ago was actually connected to the Hook movie! Crazy!). And I was also Peter Pan for Halloween once, when I had short hair. There’s also this fun webcomic I’m reading called The Wendybird, which focuses more on Wendy and her sisters (the brothers were reimagined.)

* I had the privilege to see the play based on the first book performed at the (as of yet) last Inrernarional Thespian Festival in 2019. It was a lot of fun and the actors, set designers, all of them, did a superb job.

All that is to say, I was looking forward to making this story. Some parts of it haven’t aged well, such as its portrayal of Indigenous people (which was an issue in the 1953 movie as well), and the gender roles. But I didn’t change MOST of it, and picked a decent introductory chapter, so you’ll know most of what’s going on. The only thing I changed was the names and the ethnic group to which Wendy and her family belonged.

In the original story, Wendy is white. But in this one, she’s Sikh! Sikhi is a religion largely based in India and the Punjabi diaspora. They believe in one god, and in being champions for those who need help. When a young Sikh person is ready to commit to the religion, they do their *Amrit Sanskar, and gain important holy items such as the kirpan (a small sword) and the kara (an iron bracelet) to show devotion and willingness to help the community. Wendy is almost the age many young Sikh people do the rite, but my version, she’s not quite ready to be that mature quite yet. Hence, running away to Neverland!

*Also sometimes spelled as Amrit Sanchaar

People often forget that there were People of Color and different religions in England well before the 21rst century, so I thought this would be a neat reminder! At the time the play was written, India had been a colony of Great Britain for hundreds of years, and so there was a sizeable Indian population of many religions (but usually Hindu and Sikh) within the cities.

I’m not a big fan of changing the original text when it comes to adapting actual books, but I felt this was alright. I consulted with a Sikh person (@bhujangan on tumblr), and she helped me pick a similar sounding Punjabi last name and helped me with some of my questions about clothing and such. Many Sikh men have the last name Singh (lion) and women the last name Kaur (princess) as suggested by the Guru Granth Sahib (the holy book), but not all of them do. Sometimes they use those names as middle names, like Wendy does here. Her name was originally Wendy Moira Angela Darling, by the way.

In the Sikh religion, hair is precious and mustn't be dirtied or cut, or seen outside. Having your hair out while inside and with people you trust is fine. So many boys put theirs up in a bun, and then up in a turban when they complete the Amrit Sanskaar. Girls and women traditionally put their hair in a dupatta, but in the wake of 9/11 and the indiscriminate attacks on anyone who looked vaguely Middle Eastern, many women have started putting their hair up in turbans to stand in solidarity with the men. It would’ve been fun to draw that, but as this story was written and set in 1904, Sikh ladies didn’t wear turbans.

However, when Wendy is getting convinced by Peter to come with him, she’s already wearing her dupatta. So maybe she was already kind of planning to go with him, lol ;). Everyone in the Dhillon family is also wearing shalwar kameez, which is basically a set of clothes that looks like pajamas, but depending on the material and design, can be day clothes or night clothes. Wendy and her bros are wearing pajamas-esque versions, but her Mom is wearing a more detailed version meant for going out to parties, etc.

Now that is all explained, on to the art part!

I did the title picture last, which is my usual course of action at this point. I just really wanted to give the book an old timey feel - my copy of Peter Pan and Wendy has a picture of a lovely green statue of Peter on the front, and it really gives off such an antique vibe. So I decided to make the ‘P’ a sort of drop cap. I initially wanted to make it look more like a Celtic knot, but then I realized I didn’t want to spend that much time doing it. And then I remembered that a lot of illustrations from that time used lines as shading or emphasis, and that drop caps often had little creatures inside the square around the letter. And so, Tinkerbell and emphasis lines were added!

For the rest of the story, Tink looks like a little explosion of light. But here, you can truly see her! Partly inspired by her first appearance in the Peter and the Starcatchers series, and a hummingbird, Tink has bird wings, tailfeathers and some swirly, puffy hair. Last minute, I decided to make her a trans lady fairy, which is a fun concept! Maybe she likes hanging out with Peter so much because he respects her pronouns, lol. Peter is a big stinker but I doubt he’d be mean to her. As such, I also put her in a crop top and a skirt, in honor of an old friend of mine.

The picture where Peter is sneaking into the window? I drew that first, and it tested my patience! Perspective is worth it, but it sure is difficult. This is also the smallest I drew Peter - somehow he keeps growing as the pictures go on! Ugh lol. He has freckles, somewhat curly hair and wears a suit made of leaves. I based it mostly on the 2003 Peter Pan outfit - that movie has such enrapturing design I just had to pay homage to it. He also has his pan pipe, sword strap and fairy dust visible. However, I made sure he kept his cap and feather - it’s so iconic. I made sure Nana the dog was a St. Bernard in this version as well - I love big, fluffy dogs.

The third picture, with Wendy sewing on Peter’s shadow? That was so difficult! Concerning the pose, I was largely inspired by Paula Rego’s ‘Wendy Sewing on Peter’s Shadow’ (1935) picture (see below. I wish I had that kind of patience and mastery of shadow! No pun intended this time. I really admire this print.

I went kind of crazy with the bed designs - I think I was tired and being silly. But for some reason I kept on thinking about (a really fun old) Disney movie called ‘Bedknobs and Broomsticks’, so Peter ended up floating around and unscrewing a bedknob from one of the beds. Hence my slight obsession with their design, lol. I also based Wendy’s face on a former classmate I really admired.

My advice to you - drawing flying subjects interacting with earthbound subjects is awkward! I think I did a decent job with Peter kicking John out of bed, but it’s not my favorite. His expression definitely looks crazy though. Also, those sheets were crazy, lol.

I already kind of talked about this fifth picture, but Peter ended up looking absolutely huge compared to Wendy in the image where he’s trying to get her to leave. But I’m proud of the work I put into drawing the room’s set up. Just like in the Disney movie, they’re in the attic room, and that means *wonky walls. And I think Wendy’s Dupatta looks alright.

* I forgot to represent the wonky walls on the outside of the house. Le sigh :(

The sixth picture was the most fun to draw. The poor teddy bear looks a little terrified, but Michael is having unrestrained fun! And I think he’s the only one of the Dhillons who managed to have a very youthful face, lol - I draw too many teens and young adults.

The last picture was meant to be upsetting - I was in a bad mood due to midterms coming up. But Since my face and the image I’m drawing often mirror each other, I guess it worked out! But I felt bad for Mrs. Dhillon, literally just barely missing catching her kids. The Dad has her gripped on the back because she was tipping over :O.

This was a long Art explanation, but I’m proud of this one and I hope you enjoyed my Peter Pan!

#win a commission #wac #commissions open #art commissions #peter pan #peter pan and wendy #tinkerbell #trans tinkerbell #transfem tinkerbell #jm barrie #j.m. barrie #British Sikh #English Sikh #Sikh kids #I don’t want to tag this straight #Sikh people #I dressed up as Peter Pan one Halloween #I had a good time

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interfaithconnect · 7 years ago

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I'm a white nonbinary person interested in possibly following the Sikh panth. I'm worried about my place, what I should expect going to a Gurdwara for the first time, how to exist as nonbinary and stand up for myself if people decide to gender me incorrectly while not alienating myself as being different. What kind of community is out there for me? Also, can you recommend any good readings/scriptures/books that are easy to read for someone with concentration issues?

ਸਤਿ ��੍ਰੀ ਅਕਾਲ!

This question has a lot of parts so this response is going to be long.

Firstly, your race is a non-issue. We’ve answered a previous question about non-Punjabis converting to Sikhi here, where we basically described that Sikhi is an open faith available to everyone. In a Gurdwara, you may find that people stare or gossip to one another about you at first, but I promise you that this is not judgmental. Sikh converts are rare outside of Punjabi culture, so people are always curious about non-Punjabi newcomers. People are likely to assume at first that you are just visiting the Gurdwara, but will be excited to hear that you are converting and will want to ask you questions about it. It might feel scary at first to have people looking at you and whispering to each other, but they are simply curious about why you’re there and will welcome you into the Sangat wholeheartedly.

As for being a non-binary Sikh, this is new territory for the Panth, and it’s a topic I don’t have many good answers on. The Panth is still new to transgender issues, and they are rarely discussed openly. I myself am a transgender Kaur, so transgender issues within Sikhi are important to me, but you’ll find that in general, Sikhs have as many different views and levels of awareness on transgender issues as any other group of people. You may find a few specific issues surrounding you being a non-binary Sikh, such as:

Most Sikhs take the name ਸਿੰਘ (Singh) (for men) or (ਕੌਰ) Kaur (for women) as a middle or last name. This is not mandatory, however. Some non-binary Sikhs I have known have taken the name ਖਾਲਸਾ (Khalsa) instead, though this name is most usually associated with the 3HO sect. Others have chosen not to use a Sikh middle or last name at all. Some non-binary Sikhs have chosen to keep Singh or Kaur, for various personal reasons. You do not have to add any Sikh title to your name if you do not wish, or you can take the name Khalsa if you wish; however, other Sikhs may refer to you as a Singh or a Kaur.

Seating in a Gurdwara is divided between men on one side and women on the other. This is a practice I strongly disagree with, but nearly all Gurdware follow it.

As for how to stand up for yourself, I don’t know if my advice would be any different in a Sikh context than in any other context. I’m not a good source of advice on this topic, since I’m not non-binary and when I am misgendered, I don’t usually push back against it unless I know the person. I can, however, say from a theological perspective that Sikhi does not believe that Waheguru possesses any one gender, but rather that Waheguru is the sum of all creation and more; it is accurate to describe Waheguru as at once male, female, and neither. Since a part of Waheguru exists in each being, the same qualities can be easily extended to human beings. Some lines of Bani which describe Waheguru as both and neither male and female include the following:

SGGS p. 483: Your holy scriptures say that Allah is True, and that he is neither male nor female. But you gain nothing by reading and studying, O mad-man, if you do not gain the understanding in your heart.

SGGS, p. 685: The Yogi, the Primal Lord, sits within the celestial sphere of deepest Samaadhi. He is not male, and He is not female; how can anyone describe Him?

SGGS, p. 879: The female is in the male, and the male is in the female. Understand this, O God-realized being! The meditation is in the music, and knowledge is in meditation. Become Gurmukh, and speak the Unspoken Speech.

SGGS, p. 1403: He Himself abides in each and every heart. He Himself is male, and He Himself is female; He Himself is the chessman, and He Himself is the board.

And finally, for concentration, you will find that concentration is very, very important to Sikh rehat. I have ADHD, so this is something I know can be a difficult aspect of Sikhi for people with attention and concentration issues. You won’t find any Sikh texts which don’t require concentration and meditation; that is the very most central element of Sikh practice. You don’t really “read” Sikh texts; you listen to them sung or you sing them out loud, and read along. They are all meant to be accompanied by music. The exceptions are maybe the Sakhis, since these are not meant to be meditated upon, but these are not scripture. Instead of looking for texts which are easy to read, it may be more useful to look for ways to help with concentrating, and that’s not something I’m qualified to advise you on; you may find it more useful to ask someone who specializes in attention and concentration issues for help with this. I know that’s not what you were hoping to hear, but it really is true that the most important part of Sikh prayer is meditation and contemplation.

I can recommend some of the shortest shabads to read and listen to, but if you become observant you will need to be able to concentrate on longer ones as well like Japji Sahib and Jaap Sahib, which can be about 20 or 30 minutes long, respectively. The longest shabads like Sukhmani Sahib can run for an hour or more. A typical Gurdwara service can run around 3 hours, so you’ll need to be able to at least sit through that length of time, even if you’re not always paying full attention. Some of the shortest shabad recitations I can find are:

Tav Prasad Savaiye (3 minutes)

Kirtan Sohila (4 minutes)

Chaupai Sahib (5 minutes)

These recordings are all done very very fast, and I prefer the slower, more musical ones, personally, but the faster recitations might help if you struggle to concentrate on slower ones. The channel these videos come from, RajKaregaKhalsanet, has a lot of very fast kirtan; they’re not my favorites and they’re not very musical, but they might be helpful if you struggle with longer recitations.

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕਾ ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫ਼ਤਿਹ

- Mod Lily

#ask #mod Lily #Sikhi #Sikhism #Anonymous

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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Kaurs, Singhs and Kings

Dickey Singh via Sikh Coalition

How a ‘Sikh Heritage Night’ at a Sacramento Kings game sparked a movement against bigotry

Inderjit Singh Kallirai’s white whale was a performance of bhangra on ice. Four years ago, he was in talks with the San Jose Sharks to stage just such a performance between periods of a game. Having set up similar events in NBA arenas, he knew that bhangra, with its high-energy beats and whirling dance, could electrify the crowd.

The issue was this: How do you dance on ice? One idea was to lay mats over it, but the Sharks worried that might damage the playing surface. Then the kids, the troupe of dancers Kallirai had found, rebelled. “They turned around and said to me, ‘Uncle, you can’t do bhangra on ice’,” says Kallirai, now a 61-year-old retired state employee in Sacramento, says. “‘Bare feet and ice don’t mix.’”

There was a long back-and-forth, and the dance didn’t pan out. But it did break the ice, in another sense. In March 2017, the Sharks became the first NHL team to host Sikh Heritage Night. A few hundred community members, many of whom had never watched hockey live before, came for a game against the Vancouver Canucks. Their kids received special “Sikh Heritage” t-shirts and got to take photos at center ice.

There wasn’t any bhangra, but the community got to showcase its culture in other ways. Outside the arena, performers twirled swords in a traditional martial arts demonstration. Inside, on the concourse, community members manned a booth where fans could get their heads wrapped in that most visible of Sikh garments, a turban. Demand was high, especially for the teal ones. Every last turban was gone after one period of play.

These days, the organizers bring more turbans. Sikh Heritage Night has become an annual tradition in downtown San Jose, driven by the local gurdwara, or temple. For this often-misunderstood community, long accustomed to keeping a low profile in a country where they’ve often been targets of intimidation and violence, the event is a chance to stand at the center of one of the city’s iconic venues.

And other cities are following suit. Over the last five years, Sikh heritage events have become increasingly common at pro sports stadiums around the United States. They started in California, where half of America’s Sikh population lives, and have since popped up as far away as San Antonio, Detroit, and Philadelphia. They’ve been held at NBA, NFL, and NHL arenas. Many are spearheaded by Sikh “uncles” and “aunties” — that’s how South Asian-American kids refer to the grownups in their communities — who love sports. “Uncle Indi” Kallirai, who claims to be infected with a “desire not to be idle,” has organized about a half-dozen of them himself, and had a hand in many more.

At a time when many minority groups feel isolated, events like these are an unthreatening way to reach thousands of people. Teams appreciate them too; at a minimum, they are a great way to fill seats and inspire new fans. For Sikh-Americans, though, these events carry a greater charge.

Four days after the Sept. 11 attacks, a gunman in Mesa, Arizona, drove to a gas station and shot dead its turban-wearing owner Balbir Singh Sodhi. This attack turned out to be among the first of hundreds of hate incidents targeting Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, and Middle Easterners among others that have occurred since 9/11. More recently, Sikhs have been targeted as part of the broader climate of racism and anti-immigrant bigotry in America. Anti-Sikh hate crimes surged almost 17 percent in 2017, according to FBI data. The Sikh Coalition, a civil rights group, says even that figure reflects systemic underreporting by law enforcement and individuals.

Sikh advocacy groups have responded to the violence with aggressive outreach, concentrated toward public institutions like Congress, school districts, and courts. Still, 60 percent of Americans admit to knowing zero about Sikhs, according to a 2015 survey sponsored by the National Sikh Campaign. Sikhs are frequently confused for Muslims and Hindus, a double inaccuracy. Sikhism is not just a different religion; it forbids discrimination against people of any faith.

In California where the Sharks play, half of Sikh children say they’ve experienced bullying, according to the Sikh Coalition. In 2018, two Sikh men were viciously beaten in Northern California less than a week apart.

”Sports is one activity that’s based more on sporting rivalry than anything about culture, race, or anything.” - Inderjit Singh Kallirai, Sikh heritage event organizer

This climate can push Sikh-Americans to retreat to their communities, where they know they are safe. “Because of numbers, because of our own personal lifestyles, we don’t want to be too much in the face of anybody,” Kallirai says.

But as Kallirai tells it, a point comes when enough is enough. For him, that was in August 2012, when a gunman in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, went to a Sikh gurdwara and murdered six people before killing himself.

Kallirai grew up in England and has lived in America for 30 years. He has never felt any great affinity for sports, much less American sports. But to him, the Oak Creek tragedy showed that for all of Sikhs’ advocacy in America, it wasn’t reaching ordinary people.

He wanted a new frontier of outreach, one that could reach the masses.

”Even Nelson Mandela brought it up. That sports is one activity that’s based more on sporting rivalry than anything about culture, race, or anything,” Kallirai says. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a Manchester United fan, and you’re brown, green, whatever. The only person you don’t like is a Liverpool fan.”

Kallirai’s efforts began in his own backyard, with the NBA’s Sacramento Kings and its legions of adoring Sikh fans. Sikhs’ history in California’s Central Valley goes back more than a century, when they were among the immigrant laborers who built the Transcontinental Railroad. Some stayed in California and got into farming, a career choice reflective of their roots in agrarian Punjab, the region where Sikhism was born and that today sits on both sides of the India-Pakistan border. America’s first gurdwara went up in Stockton in 1912, 50 miles from where the Kings play today.

Sikh-Americans now work in a much broader range of fields, from gas stations and convenience stores, to trucking, engineering, medicine, and tech. Still, many Sikhs sense a distance from the neighbors and customers they see every day. They know they are marked, by clothing as well as race.

”Community can be difficult. You’re different,” says Jimmy Gill, a 37-year-old engineer who grew up outside Pittsburgh. “We have a lot of these light-touch relationships. Not very many deep relationships with people in the community.” On weekends, his family often drove to the Sikh temple more than an hour south.

Kallirai had been mulling putting together a Sikh-oriented sports event of some sort when an excellent opportunity came along. In 2013, Indian entrepreneur Vivek Ranadivé became owner of the Kings. Ranadivé wasn’t Sikh, but Kallirai knew how to pique his interest.

There was the obvious, of course. Sacramento, one of the most diverse cities in the U.S., is home to scores of South Asian, and Sikh, Kings fans. Less obvious, but known to Desi uncles, was that Ranadivé had grown up in an era when many of India’s star athletes, particularly in field hockey, were Sikhs from Punjab. He would have known that Sikh men take the last name Singh, and women the last name Kaur, to signify, among other things, the equality of all people.

The owner didn’t need much convincing. Ranadivé quipped, according to Kallirai, that as a kid, he heard calls like “Singh passes to Singh and Singh scores!” on the radio.

The Kings’ first-ever Sikh Heritage Night took place on Sunday, April 13, 2014, the same day as the Sikh holiday of Vaisakhi, which celebrates the spring harvest and the implementation of many of the core religious practices Sikhs observe today. “We reached out to the community and said, ‘We’re gonna do this,’” Kallirai says. “‘You’ve gotta go to the gurdwara to celebrate Vaisakhi, go do it. It’s over at one. Three o’clock, come over, four o’clock our thing starts.’”

Kallirai and two other “uncles” — Ravi Kahlon, a soft-spoken former bhangra teacher, and Guri Kang, a gregarious small businessman — spearheaded the event, playfully nicknamed “Kaurs, Singhs, and Kings.” The cultural tie-in worked even better than expected. Sikh fans drove in from all over Northern California.

Kallirai is proud of the event. The Kings even gave him and his partners a plaque for “Best Heritage Night.” But for him, the day’s greatest success was showing thousands of people that Sikh-Americans aren’t cloistered foreigners, but active participants in their community. At some level, he thinks, that message was received.

”When we had the bhangra performance at halftime, the audience all stood up and gave a standing ovation for the performance,” he says. “The excitement of the kids to be performing in an NBA arena, I don’t think anybody’s gonna take that away from those kids. Those kids were the first to do this in an NBA arena!”

The three uncles knew they were onto something. After the event, they found themselves on the phone with Sikhs around the country — cousins, friends, perfect strangers. Their question: How do we do this, too? Kallirai and his partners were happy to advise. Kang had an extensive personal network, Kahlon was the dance expert, and Kallirai was the hype man and promoter. They came up with a name befitting their ambition: K3 International. Why not? First Sacramento, then the world.

Dickey Singh via Sikh Coalition

South Asian uncles come in every variety, from boisterous and charming to reserved and stern. Kallirai leans eccentric. He’s enthusiastic when talking about racial equality, but tight-lipped about his personal life. (The extent of it: He has three sons; the middle one is a Marine.) He gushes with the energy of a quasi retiree — even in retirement, he’s working part-time in a real estate office at a Sacramento strip mall — and sometimes edges into salesmanship. He holds ideals of racial equality that would resonate with many liberal Californians, but also thinks gender identities have become too fluid and that cops should get more benefit of the doubt in police-related shootings.

Like many Americans, he holds views that are complicated and sometimes contradictory. But one thing always comes through: a passion for fighting religious and racial discrimination. He traces that passion back to growing up in Derby, England in the 1960s and 1970s, a time of deep hostility toward South Asian immigrants. He was nine years old in 1967, the year the far-right National Front party formed. He remembers the firebrand “Rivers of Blood” speech of 1968, when anti-immigrant politician Enoch Powell warned of demographic replacement by migrants. He remembers hearing about South Asian people — or anyone who could remotely pass for South Asian — getting beat up by skinhead gangs.

Sports brewed the same dangerous atmosphere. “We were pretty much accustomed to the thuggery or violence that would happen after soccer games,” he says. “Even after I came [to the U.S.] I read a local news report that some of these individuals were bank managers, accountants and many other things, by day and during the week. But when it came to Saturday soccer they were coordinating and planning these vandalistic activities. It was something you could not imagine of these people and the walks of life they come from.”

But when South Asians retracted from society, he felt, things just got worse. So he encouraged people to do the opposite. As a young teacher at a Derby-area junior college, he pushed South Asian students to organize outreach and charity events. In 1986, inspired by Live Aid, his students put on a show with South Asian bands from all around England and donated the proceeds to earthquake relief in Mexico.

Kallirai moved to America in 1989 and became a citizen 10 years later. Throughout, he kept up his charity work outside of his day job. He visited local senior centers. He sat on the World Bhangra Council. He helped raise money for local sheriffs and mayors.

After the 2012 attacks, he found himself talking to Kahlon and Kang about why it felt like nothing was working. How were Sikhs still not reaching the people who feared them, even more than a decade after 9/11? Then the insight hit them. How do you reach people? You go where the people are.

”Our concept was hey, why don’t we go where some of these people — we can call them hillbillies, rednecks, whatever they are — narrow-minded, we can label them many ways. But one thing they do, they are actually part of football, basketball, sports. The best way to be in these places is to be part of them,” he says. “We’re actually sitting and having direct contact with these people.”

Following the Kings event, K3 organized events with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2015, then the Detroit Pistons and Phoenix Suns in 2016.

Teams were receptive, in part, because K3 had figured out all the little things. “In all these events, they’re timed to the T,” Kallirai says. “You can’t go in and put on a 10-minute bhangra show.”

“You don’t have to do anything different. You have to be you, but you have to be out there.” - Sachdeep Singh Arora, Sikh heritage event organizer

In fact, NBA teams told Kallirai the performance had to be kept under three-and-a-half minutes. Simple enough. But there was another issue: Which way should the kids face?

”When you’re dancing on the stage it’s easy, you just face one side,” Kahlon, a former bhangra teacher, says. On a pro hardcourt? “North, South, East, West,” he says. “We took so many days, the whole choreography, so people can dance like that.”

Once the choreography was hammered down, it could be replicated.

Similar events popped up elsewhere, sometimes with K3’s help but not always. 2014: Los Angeles Clippers. 2015: San Antonio Spurs. 2016: Philadelphia 76ers. “Word gets around,” says Rucha Kaur, a community development director with the Sikh Coalition. “Folks talk to each other — teams talk to each other.”

Gurpaul Singh, who organized Sikh heritage events with the San Antonio Spurs, guesses that approximately 1,000 Sikhs live in the greater city area. He says the community wanted to broaden its reach beyond local parades and cultural festivals. “We wanted to take it to the next level in creating awareness. We wanted to reach a larger audience,” says Singh, CEO of a San Antonio consulting firm.

Heritage events are also a chance to add texture and depth to the public’s notions of Sikhs. Many of the events showcase Punjabi culture, whether it’s dance, music, or martial arts. One event had a Sikh UFC heavyweight fighter as its special guest. Many feature local Sikh kids performing the national anthem, or holding an American flag. An event put on by Sikh-American veterans had two representatives in combat fatigues. Gurpaul Singh’s school-aged son, Jeeve, sang the anthem once. “Our values are similar to the American values,” he says. “Religious freedom, equality, social justice.”

These displays of American patriotism by Sikhs aren’t without critics within the community. One performer, who asked not to be named, said that an “almost extra display” of patriotism has become the norm in post-9/11 Sikh-American advocacy, even though Sikhs have already lived in America for over a century. In academic quarters, some go further, questioning whether Sikhs should buy into American values if those values include imperialism, genocide of Native Americans and structural racism toward African-Americans.

But these arguments don’t get far with most of the Sikh-night organizers. They argue that sports, unlike politics, is a universal language. And it’s one that Sikhs love as much as their fellow Americans.

This love runs deep, all the way back to Punjab. One village, Sansarpur, has produced at least a dozen Olympians. Athletes of Punjabi heritage have distinguished themselves in cricket and pro basketball, in addition to field hockey. As for non-athletes, many Punjabis who move to America have no trouble transferring their love of Indian sports to Western ones like baseball, basketball, and ice hockey. Reflecting that, both the NBA and NHL have Punjabi-language broadcasts.

That love of sports has been passed down to people like Sachdeep Singh Arora, who grew up in New Jersey.

Dickey Singh via Sikh Coalition

”Basketball around here is like a gospel. You go to anybody’s house during the Finals, there’s a party or reception. Everybody — the men at least — is crowded around the TV watching the game,” says Arora, a civil engineer who still lives in the Princeton area. “You go to any Sikh kid in this state and they love basketball. They want to be the next Michael Jordan.”

Arora used to be one of those kids, but now he admits he’s an uncle. “I mean, I guess I would identify as an uncle. I got four gray hairs this year.”

Arora also grew up looking for ways to promote interfaith understanding in his diverse Jersey community. He ended up volunteering with an interfaith charity, ONE Project, that had connections to the Philadelphia 76ers.

As a diehard 76ers fan, Arora had seen members of his faith recognized before. He says an early form of Sikh night occurred in 2015, when a Sikh colleague of his bought a bundle of Sixers tickets and gave them away to local communities. Then Arora saw events being held in San Antonio and L.A. that had a totally different scale of outreach, with dancing, anthem performances, info booths, the works. “I said, you know what, we can make this one bigger,” he says.

He talked to the 76ers, and at the end of 2016, the team held its first official Sikh Heritage Night. The event has become an annual fixture. Last year, it featured traditional drumming and bhangra. The color guard included a Sikh Boy Scout and a Sikh U.S. Navy servicewoman.

Like others, the event got attention in the region. Arora was recruited to help set up the first-ever Sikh heritage event for the New Jersey Devils, held earlier this year.

Arora is well aware of the discrimination directed at people who look like him. He experienced some of it after 9/11. But he says his faith is not about victimhood. It’s about everlasting optimism in the face of injustice.

Maybe that’s why his favorite part of the Sikh heritage events is when people sit down with a Sikh and get their heads wrapped with a turban like his. “Obviously tying turbans on random fans could go either way,” he says. But “it’s a very intimate experience, because you get a four-to-five-minute window to have a one-on-one conversation with somebody.”

”I think that what happens in our communities is, [Sikhs] get objectified, they get racism against them. The issue is that they cower. They hide. People are going to make comments so let’s just go cower in the corner and not come out,” he says. “The thing that I’m trying to promote differently is we have to be out there. You don’t have to do anything different. You have to be you, but you have to be out there.”

Among the many Sikh heritage events that have been held over the last five years, some have become annual, some biennial. Organizers say more teams, and more leagues, are inquiring. In a few cases, they’ve ended for lack of anyone to take charge.

Indi Kallirai, for his part, has stepped back from doing these events. He never figured out Bhangra on Ice, and his talks with NHL teams died. He says he and the Kings were all set to host an event in 2017, but it fell through at the last minute, and K3 hasn’t organized one since. (Others stepped in, and the event continues. The Kings did not reply to a request for comment for this story.) Work, personal matters, and fatigue took his focus off K3. There was a website, but they took it down three years ago.

”If somebody else wants to do it, we’ll help them, but we’ll take a step back. That’s pretty much where it ended,” he says. Sometimes, he and his buddies talk about getting involved again.

The headlines often remind them of how much work remains. In August, a 62-year-old Sikh man in Tracy, Calif., was stabbed to death while taking an evening walk in the park. Police arrested the 21-year-old white male suspect at his Tracy home, and he has pled not guilty.

Maybe that’s why Kallirai, the man who can’t fully retire, can’t fully let go. He’s never found anything that reaches people, that touches people, quite like sports.

”You’re not going to change somebody just by doing bhangra in front of them. But when it’s in front of a large audience and there’s a minor piece of education ...” he trails off.

”There are individuals who’ve been turned around, even in Oak Creek,” he says. “If you converted one to come back onto the humanitarian side, it’s been a success.”

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yeskraim · 5 years ago

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Recipe for solidarity: How Indian protesters are being fed

New Delhi, India – A group of Sikh farmers from the northern state of Punjab arrived at New Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh, picked a spot under a pedestrian bridge, and began to unpack its wares – a gas stove, huge utensils, and provisions – and fired up a community kitchen, or “langar”.

Shaheen Bagh is the epicentre of ongoing protests, led by Muslim women, against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), an amendment to Indian citizenship law 1955 that is seen as anti-Muslim.

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The Sikhs, helped by the protesting women who rolled “chapati” (bread) for them while continuing their sit-in, prepared breakfast and lunch for more than a 1,000 people, including children, protesting against the CAA, which was passed last month.

The new law aims to grant Indian citizenship to “persecuted” minorities from Muslim-majority Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan while blocking naturalisation for Muslims.

Muslims see their exclusion from the law that makes religion the basis of citizenship as yet another attempt by the Narendra Modi government to “marginalise” them.

Coupled with a proposed nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC), the community fears the moves are intended to strip millions of Indian Muslims of their citizenship. Poeple from other disadvantaged caste and gender identities, as well as women, are vulnerable before NRC.

Since December 11 when the law was passed, millions of citizens across India have rallied against the CAA despite prohibitory orders and a brutal police crackdown, in which at least 28 people have been killed.

‘An act of kindness’

Marching alongside the protesters, with no pomp or waving banners, is an army of people providing them with food and beverages.

Demonstrators carry placards and hold candles during a silent protest against the new citizenship law at Jama Masjid in old Delhi [File: Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters]

At New Delhi’s India Gate – the iconic World War I memorial – on a windy December evening, the mercury dropped to a chilly 13 degrees Celsius. But that did not deter 44-year-old Mohammad Fuaad from leaning on a yellow police barricade and calling out to passers-by, holding out a rectangular packet.

“Biryani le leejiye, Sir, veg biryani (Please have biryani, Sir, it’s vegetarian biryani),” he called out, assuring people that the rice had been cooked with potatoes instead of meat, to avoid any trouble at a time when meat and the eating of it has become deeply polarised in light of rising Hindu nationalism under the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Fuaad was not trying to sell his biryani, he was offering it for free. In a space barricaded before the British-era monument, thousands of protesters were reading the preamble to the Indian constitution on a loop.

Sikh community people are preparing kheer for the Shaheen Bagh protesters. Unity in diversity.#महानऔरते_शहीनबागकी pic.twitter.com/coJx1NI4CL

— Shahnawaz (@Shahnaw12973537) January 16, 2020

“You know, a dark law has been brought in to threaten India’s unity and integrity, and students from across the universities are standing up against it,” said Kamran Khan, Fuaad’s colleague from Khidmat Foundation, a social welfare collective.

“We have come here to support them in this mission,” Khan, who lived in the older part of the Indian capital, told Al Jazeera.

At approximately 8pm, when police asked the protesters to wrap up, Khidmat’s 80 kilogrammes (176 pounds) of biryani were almost finished. Its fiery aroma lingered and met that of a winter comfort few metres away: “Chai langar” or tea offering by members of Khalsa Aid, a Sikh charity organisation.

“At a protest like this where people are there regardless [of their identities], I saw this as an act of kindness,” said 26-year-old Manpreet Kaur, who works as a travel agent.

Community bonds

Amarpreet Singh, Khalsa Aid’s managing director in the Asia Pacific region, told Al Jazeera it was the brutal police violence at two predominantly Muslim institutions – New Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia university (JMI) and Uttar Pradesh state’s Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) – that caused them to step in.

In near-simultaneous attacks on the evening of December 15, police stormed the two campuses 130km (80 miles) apart, firing tear gas and live ammunition, attacking students with batons, and vandalising property. More than 100 students were wounded in the attacks, one losing an eye and another a limb. Students at both universities had been protesting against CAA.

Demonstrators shout slogans as they attend a protest rally against CAA in southern Indian city of Kochi [Sivaram V/Reuters]

Ishita Dey, food anthropologist and assistant professor of sociology at New Delhi’s South Asian University, told Al Jazeera that food is one of the oldest forms showing solidarity across communities.

“From natural disasters to conflict situations, the first thing you distribute is food,” she said.

In India, Dey said there is “resistance to partaking of food” between different communities because of the “rules of inter-dining, specifically prohibitions around exchange of water and cooked food”.

But the anti-CAA protesters are subverting such ideas, thereby challenging the divisive rhetoric of Prime Minister Modi.

‘Protest is a tiring thing’

Ghazala Meer is a 26-year-old woman from the Ladakh region (it was carved out of Indian-administered Kashmir in August) participating in protests across New Delhi.

“To go to a protest is a very tiring thing, it’s not something you would do for fun. You identify with a certain set of ideas and go stand for them,” she told Al Jazeera.

Meer said the availability of food at such protests brings a sense of comfort and togetherness. “It isn’t just for a certain group of people, but for everybody,” said Meer.

Activist Umar Khalid, who is frequently seen demonstrating, said it is not unusual for people to offer food to protesters, but the scale of support in the ongoing protests is unprecedented.

“Because the attack is on the very citizenship of every citizen of this country, everyone wants to contribute,” he told Al Jazeera.

At Shaheen Bagh, hundreds of female protesters are shaking up India’s traditional domestic makeup as they brave New Delhi’s coldest winter in a century, standing at the front of resistance while men support from the sidelines, cooking and caring for them.

A dozen men in their early 20s are watching over a huge pot bubbling with “secular chai (tea)”. A banner hangs over their spot: ‘Secular Chai – Made in India’.

Ajaz Ahmad, 23, said their branding of the tea is a protest against Modi, who had based his 2014 election campaign on the claim that he worked as a tea-seller in his childhood.

“Chaiwaley, teri chai unsecular hai (Tea-seller, your tea is unsecular),” Ahmad said.

Hesitant to claim credit

However, many of those offering food and beverages are hesitant to claim credit.

Khidmat’s Kamran Khan said about his support: “It would be like getting a finger sliced and being counted as a martyr,” suggesting that his was a modest contribution to the movement.

On December 19 at New Delhi’s iconic protest site, Jantar Mantar, 28-year-old artist Daamini K was offered bottled water and bananas by a man in his 30s.

“I asked who is it by and he said, ‘it is by all of us’,” she told Al Jazeera.

The same day, Mumbai-based writer-photographer Anagh Mukherjee was offered water by a middle-aged man when he was marching with tens of thousands of people.

“I was really moved by the gesture because they were doing it to keep everyone charged,” Mukherjee said.

In West Bengal state’s North 24 Parganas district, anti-CAA protesters made food their mode of protest by blocking off a section of the highway and cooking biryani on an industrial scale.

Not all gestures are that large, 36-year old researcher Anusha Pandey (name changed upon her request) carried biscuits with her to a protest, anticipating detention by police in Gujarat’s Ahmedabad city. She did end up being detained, along with 200 others.

“I ate and distributed them [biscuits] among the fellow detainees – just two, three packets, nothing very large scale,” Pandey said.

The recipe for protest food

Protest food involves money; the logistics of preparing, sourcing and transporting food; and its distribution. Individuals, collectives, and strangers banding together are the spine of this protest infrastructure.

For nearly a month now, Mohamad Anas, a former student at Jamia Millia Islamia, has not gone to work at his disability rights advocacy organisation. He spends nearly 4,000 rupees daily to supply 30 litres (8 gallons) of tea at the protest outside one of the university’s gates.

Anas has a locomotor disability and utilises his specialised four-wheeled scooter to hold the large steel containers in which he fetches tea from sellers in nearby Sukhdev Vihar. His friends help too.

“I do whatever my financial condition allows to ensure that students here can protest peacefully and with ease,” Anas told Al Jazeera. He also offers tea to more than 150 police and paramilitary personnel stationed there.

Abdul Rahman, a 42-year-old baker, is funding his food drive through Nawa-e-Haque, a social welfare organisation he is part of. Neighbours contribute in kind for the protest food he prepares at his bakery.

“I come here [to the Jamia protest] around 4pm every day since I saw the kids injured and hungry at the hospitals on the night of December 15,” said Rahman, his voice cracking and tears streaming down his face. He gestured to say he could not speak any more.

His colleague’s 17-year-old son Saadiq Ghazi takes over. Ghazi has taken time off his grade 12 exam preparations to help with the protests.

“Between my father’s five friends and their sons, we’re a team of 10-15 people on any day,” he said.

Others like Bushra Khan run crowdfunding efforts. A shoebox acts as a donation box, with a jagged slot cut into the cardboard; it sits on the table she serves tea and snacks from at the Jamia gate.

Back at Shaheen Bagh, where a round-the-clock protest by women has become emblematic of the anti-CAA and NRC movement, area residents have come together.

When 45-year-old Hussain Khan, who reserves his food support for specific groups – women, children, the elderly, artists, and journalists – realises that his biscuit carton has lightened, he waves to 18-year-old Amaan Saifi to go buy another carton.

“We’re both from Shaheen Bagh but I didn’t know him before these protests,” Saifi told Al Jazeera.

At India Gate, as Fuaad packs off his empty biryani containers, he reveals his reason for charity and solidarity with the protesting students.

“When they are in positions of power in future, I believe they will be more involved with humanitarian causes.”

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