Last night before I fell into my coma, K, in an IM conversation, asked me to take a look at the work of Valarie Kaur, a third generation Sikh-American. Ms. Kaur, beginning soon after September 11, 2001, has spent her recent years chronicling the state of these United States, and how the "others" - desi folk (Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus etc) in her investigations - like herself are doing. And the news, under-reported and obfuscated by the main stream media, she has brought back is pretty grim. And the recent grievous stabbing of a Sikh grandfather in California is simply another addition to her story.

Since my arrival here in Atlanta - it will be six years in three days - I have often pondered on the issues of assimilation and differences, more so in view of the recent debates on immigration that are raging here in the USA. Some of the arguments presented are quasi-racist, as expounded in professor-pundits' policy papers* in Foreign Policy or as public ravings of American neo-Nazi/ Ku Klux Klan groups. The narrative they spin is essentially this: the culture and the strength of their United States is based on the (hypothetical) Puritan (i.e., white) Protestant ethos or standards, and since the "others" (based on their degree of stupidity, these commentators qualify who the "others" might be) will never be able to (or will chose not) adopt these standards, they will consequently degrade United States. Hear any echoes of a recent toothbrush-mustached forerunner?

In this context the work that is being done by people like Valarie Kaur is important because it is for the "others" like her (even though her grandfather migrated to the US nearly a century ago, she will be the “other” as long as “United States” is an insufficient answer to that most innocuous of questions “Where are you from?” just because she doesn’t look like her interrogator) to claim a space for themselves, especially in the face of arguments put forth by such "regular" Americans, whatever this strange species may be. I have heard, and read** numerous arguments against hyphenated identities, and the dangers of multiculturalism etc to those mythic “standards” (I am all for standards; not authoritarian ones imposed on me from the high or derived from some holy book but those that are self reflective and communal.

And I think, at the core people sincerely making such arguments haven’t reflected on themselves long enough to realize that their arguments are based quite a theory: their theory of the American, not that multitudinous Whitmanic variety but their version of most absurdly restrictive "regular Sam" kind. I say this based on my own experiences of encounters with a sufficient number of “regular” Americans. From these experiences, I know how ethnic/ regional/ group markers never truely disappear (what was the American poet Robert Lowell’s joke about New England again: Where the Lowells talk only to the Cabots. And the Cabots talk only to God! ). One of these “regular” Americans - he claims to be a descendent of Elder Hamilton on the Mayflower - with whom I interact, constantly touches upon his “Scottish” heritage. I have observed this same thing in others as well, this harping about their German heritage, Polish heritage, Jewish heritage etc even though they may be quite removed from that mythical ethnic/ regional/ religious/ geographic ancestor. So is this thing called American an imaginary beast like the Loch Ness Monster?

Perhaps so. Yet on the same hand, I believe there is something called becoming American; and in this becoming Walt Whitman singing his exuberant songs can be our Virgil:

“Affection shall solve the problems of Freedom yet; Those who love each other shall become invincible.”

*Ref: Samuel P. Huntington's "Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity" **Ref: Allan Bloom’s “Closing of The American Mind”

I remember seeing this movie, and this movie in the course of an afternoon as part of a trio - one of whom was an Italian girl, then out of Serengeti, Africa - I thought? I felt? - I liked. But reticence, and perhaps, a fear of both rejection and loss of that simple friendship we shared, kept me from saying anything. But I did signal with a poem. But it didn't work because I need to, perhaps, wait for that particular situation where words - these words that I love - become totally unecessary.

As a buzurg, i.e., someone who has been around in the infancy of what is now know generically as "blogging" - my first "post" was over at Diaryland, on 2001-10-10 @ 18:37; Blogger then was still an independent startup in beta; I also have a year's worth of Dairyland archives on Blogger but I think it is best not to release such self-conscious, mostly angst-y, yet much more hopeful jottings/droppings upon the world - I was wondering if I should throw my hat into the ring for Zigzackly's contest for the first Indian blogger?

This, however, brings up a fundamental question for Zigzackly: how to decide if something in the dark ages is a "blog"? Does it have to be paginated, and have the dated log format popularized by Blogger? What if someone then, instead of bothering to mimic a dairy, simply kept a webpage based on themes (or what we now know as tags)? Will it qualify as a blog?

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As a skeptic, I am doubtful of fads & revolutions, including this blogging revolution (while I admit on this issue, my views are more tempered and qualified) that seem to periodically show up, mainly because for me the point hinges on quality. And on that measure, most blogs, including this one, are makeshift at best. This is what I was trying to discuss with a very literate friend - he sees little or no value in reading blogs compared to reading a book - a few weeks ago.

I proposed to him that he might see the value of blogs if he viewed them a collective ongoing gossipy conversation. While blogs may or perhaps don't care to discuss ideas at the depth as a book does or can (A statistical aside: what is the average length/word count of a blog post? I suspect it is around 200-500 words, i.e., roughly half a typed page), they are neverthless very useful in the hyper textual sense, i.e., they enable us to discover and form mental maps; mental maps that can be thought of as snapshots of the collective golbal mind. Of course, it did help that we now have some very superlative literary blogs (eg: The Middle Stage) to which I was able to point him to to examine their value for himself. Since he wants morph into a writer, I also told him that yakking imperfectly on a blog is as good as asking a circle of semi-strangers (who usually become friends) to read and critique his work.

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Blog celebrity, and the correspondih envy, is another recent (in most part, main stream media generated) odious phenomenon - I am all for serious hobbyists for whom play remains play. And thanks to programs such as Google's Ad-sense, some of these celebrity bloggers can now make a living off their blogging. Aside: I for one prefer to call is Ad-Nonsense; I semi-loathe blogs that feature this brand of textual clutter floating around, and like Doc. Sarvis in Edward Abbey's "The Monkey Wrench Gang", I feel like taking a blowtorch to them - maybe this would be a worthy Firefox add-in; one that serves up webpages sans Ad-nonsense.

Why you ask? I feel such commercial concerns take away from the feeling of community (even though Wendelly Berry would mock me for using the word community to refer to 'people' so geographically dispersed) that can be engendered by blogs. I don't mind people receiving financial benefits if they produce something that other people find value in but I rather not see them getting these benifits from an faceless corporation. So what kind of reward model do I want to see in place? That, kind reader, is a topic for another rambling post :)