American Born Confused Sikh

I almost don't have the right to write about this. Believe it not, even though I'm a brown woman,  an Indian woman, and a Sikh woman, by the Grace of God I've actually never experienced racism. Curiosity yes. People have always been interested in what I am and where I come from. People have mistaken me to be hispanic and Arab and Persian. I've been mistaken to be from the country of Jordan twice! But I've never been treated badly for it. No one has ever called me any mean names. I've gotten stares but probably for different reasons. I've had people come up to me and start speaking Spanish. "Uhmmm un poquito, sorry!" Once a guy yelled out to me and called me habibi. I was thrown off. But then I looked up this word and it means love in Arabic. Awww. How can I get mad at that? LOL  I've always been appreciated as an exotic Indian woman by all races. And I've always taken all of it in with all of it's glory. Free coffees for me?! Sure! S...

"Oh wow, you have beautiful hair! But you know what? You should tie it up so that you don't get any nazar!" "Oh, you're in a relationship/getting engaged/married?! Make sure you don't post anything on social media so that you don't get any nazar!" "Oh, today is your wedding day? Please let me apply some black kohl/kajal/eyeliner to your eyes and behind your ear so that you don't get any nazar!" "Oh, new baby!? Let's put some of that same kohl/kajal/eyeliner to the babies eyes EVERYDAY so that the baby doesn't get nazar!" WTF?!?! Why are we spending our whole lives (literally from the day we are born to now) trying to avoid nazar? Growing up in the Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi/Desi community I have always heard of the word Nazar and all of the things that we should do and not do in order to avoid it. What is nazar you ask? I believe the literal meaning of nazar is glance or attention (Fun fact. It's act...

Bagpipes, kilts, and rolling green hills with sheep on them. Oh, and shortbread. Let's not forget the shortbread. That is what myself and probably what most of my fellow Americans think of when we think of Scotland! Cowboys, horses, meat, and guns. That is probably what most British people think of when they think of Texas! Myself and my husband never dreamt or imagined that these are the places from where our future spouse would come from. In fact, when we both first told our friends and family about each other, both of us were asked the exact same question. A very important and crucial question that was pertinent to our present and future relationship (j/k): "Does he have an accent?!" "Does she have an accent?!" Yes and Yes! Although I never thought of myself as having an accent. I'm an American. My English is standard and everyone else has an accent except me, right?! LOL! Alas. . . . . . I might write a blog later about how my husband and I m...

My last blog was tense, direct, and it offended and hurt a lot of people. And for those people that I offended, I apologize. It was not my intention to hurt or upset you. Like with all of my blogs, it was my intention to make you think. And to me, intentions are everything in this world. My previous blog brought up a topic of much larger magnitude that I believe should be thought about in much greater depth. Do we flirt with other religions and possibly cheat on our own religion? I know what you're thinking. Huh? What is she talking about? Please, allow me to explain! I will start out with holidays. Before I get into the semantics of how we (as Sikhs) celebrate our holidays and how we celebrate other religion's holidays, I want to discuss holidays on a broad spectrum first. Generally speaking, when a holiday comes up for any religion there are two levels of celebration and many different variations. Those two levels in my opinion are: The cultural and the spiritual. 1....

Raksha Bandhan Raksha = Protection Bandhan = Bond/To Tie Hmmmmm. Okay. So today, all of India is going to celebrate this union between brothers and sisters. Girls are going to tie these little strings around their brother's wrist and in return they will get money and "protection" from these guys. The string signifies this union between the female and her brother and even those guys who aren't blood related to the female can now call themselves her "brother". Awwwwwwwww, so sweeeetttttttttt. I'm not buying it. In fact, I call B.S.  Every time I watch or see any sort of news coming out of India, it's all about corruption and rape. Rape towards women, rape toward teenagers, rape towards children,  rape towards women on buses, taxis, rickshaws, rape towards females walking down the street, gang rapes, police officer rapes, village rapes, absolutely disgusting every single fucking day rapes. With all due respect India, your sacred strings aren...