Hi, everyone. For the last few years I’ve been pretty much fulltime over at our twitter franchise, one of a few people trying to make sure you get all your savory brownness in an 140 character packet. As a result, I’m afraid I’m a bit rusty at this longer-form blogging.

But the truth is, as my exes can attest, I’ve never been any good at final goodbyes. I even skipped the funeral of a close friend because I couldn’t stand the finality involved in watching him get cremated, even though I knew he was already gone. But I’m afraid there’s no way to skip your own wake, and once you’re there, you might as well try to deliver a eulogy, awkward as it is.

Part of the problem is that Sepia was never just one thing, it was many. There were the blog posts, but that was just the tip of the iceberg, the part you could see. There was also everything that happened out of view, so many stories that I don’t think any one of us knows them all.

Fun fact: VH-1 once considered a “Behind the Blogging” special on Sepia Mutiny, but decided the truth (replete with biting off the heads of live bats) was too bizarre to be believed. That, and MTV-Iggy said “I’ll cut you, VH-1, Sepia is my bitch! Don’t you go near it!”

The other part of the invisible sepia, the spirit rather than the body, of course, was you all. This is what we never could have forseen when we started the blog, just four guys and one girl, all plugged into a group chat session on (gasp) AOL chat, that such a giant community would spring up around the blog, that people would continue the connections they formed in the comments and continue them, both online and offline, elsewhere. This was both our greatest triumph and our undoing.

Like any club, once we became popular, we lost some of the attributes that made us a hip watering hole in the first place. The comment section changed. We spent too much time and energy policing comments, and even so, it was impossible to maintain the vibe that first brought people here. Plus, as Facebook grew stronger, people simply took their conversations elsewhere, into private spaces.

That’s fine though. Eight years is a good run, longer than most sitcoms, the entire possible lifetime of a Presidential administration, and far longer than I thought we had any possibility of surviving.

We certainly had no idea what we were creating at the time, how many people we would touch, how it would affect each of us, and how, in the end, it would gently unravel. It’s hard to believe all the things that we achieved, as well as all the things that happened that I still cannot tell you about.

I could show you a slow montage of our greatest moments, all slung together in the standard narrative of the rise and fall of a rock-and-roll band, but that would be bullshit. Sepia was never about the commercial, the slick, the neatly manufactured. At our best we were messy, fractious, incoherent, and full of life.

My most famous post, Straight eye for the guerilla guy, could have used a good deal more polishing and refinement. Yet that didn’t stop it from being widely pirated and going viral, in the sincerest form of flattery.

So this, post #539, is my messy, poorly written, farewell and love letter to Sepia, both official and invisible, singular and plural, inside and out.

(Most likely, we’ll keep tweeting from @sepiamutiny for a little while longer, sort of the way the body of a chicken keeps running around, long after the head has been cut off. After that, you can catch me at my new twitter handle @ennismutinywale, and the rest of the crew at their twitter handles and personal blogs in turn.)

Two things got missed in this simple story, however. First, the story of community self-defense is much larger than just Sikhs or Southall. All residents of Southall worked together, across religious lines, to guard each others’ places of worship (Gurdwaras, Mosques, Mandirs) and businesses. Nor was Southall the only place where this happened. Bangladeshis mobilized in Whitechapel, Brick Lane, and Bethnal Green; three desi men were killed while defending their neighborhood in Birmingham.

There’s another layer here though, which is about a deep mistrust of the police, dating back over 30-40 years. Southall was a place where white supremacists could murder a desi teenager and not get prosecuted, where cops could engage in brutality, and where, in 1979, peaceful protesters fought back after being viciously bludgeoned by mounted police. One protester was killed by police, but nobody was ever held responsible for it. This video clip tells the story well:

So when the police issue warnings against “vigilantism” to discourage community self-defense groups, it’s likely falling on deaf ears. Members of the community will work with the police, but they’re not about to stand down and trust the police to protect them.

Surinder Singh, 67, died Friday afternoon on the sidewalk along East Stockton Boulevard near Geneva Pointe Drive. Gurmej Atwal, his 78-year-old friend, was shot twice in the chest. His family said he was in critical but stable condition [link]

The police are looking for a tan pickup seen leaving the scene and nearly $30,000 in reward money has been pledged by different community groups. One of the first to step forward with $5,000 was the Sacramento chapter of CAIR; I only hope members of the Sikh community will be willing to do the same in return.

Authorities have admitted that they have no other motive for the crime (they weren’t robbed, they didn’t pick a fight at the club the night before, they weren’t kingpins of organized crime families), so it looks very likely that this was a hate crime. The FBI have been contacted, and hopefully will be investigating.

What boggles my mind is both the kind of coward who would shoot two old men (both heart attack survivors and frail) and the kind of virulent hatred which would motivate them to single out these two men, in broad daylight, in a quiet suburb. What kind of twisted person would think this was a good thing to do?

Every time I hear about a hate crime incident, a little bit of my naive belief in the American dream dies. I was involved in outreach and education long before 9/11, I’ve spent years of my life doing it, but the kind of person who would pull a trigger is also not the kind of person who cares who Sikhs are, or what Sikhs believe, or even whether Sikhs are the same or different from Muslims. We are simply the other, an amorphous mess of browness that spans the world (somehow including President Obama), and we are all threats.

There’s something in particular about this crime which hurts more than others, which makes it more personal. My grandparents came from India when I was a kid, and every day they would go for a walk in a nearby park. I know how these two old men must have shuffled slowly around their suburb, I can imagine the way the car screeched to a halt (something which has happened to me many times), the insults that may have been thrown at them, and the sound of the gunshots. All my grandparents are dead, but these men were somebody’s grandparents, men who came half way around the world, and whose quiet peaceful retirement was interrupted by the bang and flash of a bullet exiting the muzzle of a gun. I just can’t understand it.

Yes, we’ve posted this before, but I’m going to post it every single year on Christmas Eve.

Seriously, how many of y’all believed in Santa? My parents never pretended he existed, and my classmates all knew better. We had no chimney, no fireplace, and I knew there was no White Man keeping track of whether I was naughty or nice. Whole thing made around as much sense as the Easter Bunny. Were you a Santaphile growing up? If you’ve got kids, do you want them to believe?

As the story was reported, the White House pulled out because Obama was told he had to cover his head with a bandana rather than a baseball cap, and White House Staff were afraid this would make it look like Obama was wearing “Muslim garb.” [See NYT, Daily Beast]

The problem is, I find that story absurd. I’m pretty sure it’s wrong, and here’s why:

• Sikh religious authorities have said outright that a baseball cap would be fine:

any covering, even a baseball cap, would be acceptable. “We would welcome President Obama as long as he covers his head while inside Harimandir Sahib (Golden Temple). Caps or hats are not barred by Sikh dharmik maryada (religious code of conduct). After all even Queen Elizabeth wore a western hat when she came to the temple”

• The Queen of England wore a hat when she visited the same site. (Photo is of Anadpur Sahib not Harmandir Sahib, but her garb was the same in both places)

• People wear all sorts of hats to the Golden Temple, including baseball caps, and this has never been a problem. 
• The President would look dopey wearing a baseball cap to a religious site. He could, however, have worn a cowboy hat, something which seems to have been OK with everybody, and which would have looked marginally more dignified.

But here’s my biggest issue with this narrative: a bandana on Obama’s head would have made him look gangster or hipster, but certainly not Muslim.

Why has the story stuck? Well, it has some basis in fact (see this early statement) but more importantly, it fits this narrative of Obama as gutless and feckless, as Tunku Varadarajan puts it: “The president has shown, more than once, that he lacks the courage of his cosmopolitan convictions.” And actually, there I think he has the story half right.

Here’s why I think they did cancel the visit:

1. The security risks were very high:

Mr Obama’s security advisors feel protecting him in the crowded and congested by lanes of the tightly packed walled city around the holiest of Sikh shrines would be a nightmarish undertaking.
“A visit to the Golden Temple necessarily entails a road journey through ground that would be a sniper’s dream come true. There is virtually nowhere within safe reach of the sikh shrine where a helicopter can land,” said a senior defense and security affairs expert. [cite]

2. The political benefits were close to nil. Unlike Stephen Harper, the Canadian PM, who had a large Sikh constituency to please, Sikhs are negligible in terms of their political impact in the USA. It’s just a fact. There’s a reason why not one previous President has ever gone to the Golden Temple on their visit to India yet.

3. The head covering issue is a red herring. The real issue is photos of Obama surrounded by turbaned bearded swarthy men in an exotic landscape of golden domes and weird religious music, at a time when 20% of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and his political staff still have nightmares about his last turban photo. I’m pretty sure they want to keep turbans out of the frame with him between now and the next election, except for photos with Manmohan Singh.

I don’t like that. I understand it, but I don’t like it one bit.

What I don’t understand is that given the security and political risks to such a visit, why it was ever on his schedule in the first place, however tentatively. Had they not looked at a sat map of the location? Had they not realized that there would be turbans nearby?

Here’s my hunch – Obama wanted to go, and put it on his schedule, but it was so low priority that nobody bothered to think much about it until the story came out at which point somebody on his staff freaked out. And it could be that I’m wrong, and somebody in the White House freaked out over a bandana. But if that’s true, they’re smoking the same stuff Juan Williams is smoking, and that’s very sad to hear indeed.

[Below is a photo of Canadian PM Stephen Harper at the Golden Temple, not looking like he's wearing Muslim garb at all]

This Sunday I had the distinct pleasure of seeing Brownstar’s “Faster than the Speed of White” at the NYC Fringe Festival. There are two remaining performances, today from 3:45-4:55 PM and tomorrow from 8:45 to 9:55 and if you’re in NYC you really should go see them.

Brownstar is a theatrical performance duo, comprised of NORTHSTAR (Pushkar Sharma) and SOUTHSTAR (Sathya Sridharan). Their style is a hybrid of improv sketch comedy, like the Second City troupe, old school spoken word, and Hip Hop. This is not your parents South Asian theater by a long shot. [See our earlier post about them here for more about their background, origin story, and influences]

FTTSOW is a compilation of their earlier shorter sketch comedies into a single 70 minute show, the story of Captain Northstar and Ensign Southstar’s voyage on the Brownstar Galactica to the alcove of answers. As you would expect from the Fringe Festival, this isn’t a traditional play, it’s more like a concept album, a mashup and weaving together of several different sketches that share a set of common themes: South Asian American Identity and what it means to be a desi artist in America. The hybridity of their performance genre reflects the hybridity of their subject, like browns in America, their style reflects a variety of different influences.

Although these are weighty themes, the show is comic rather than somber. When you see the ode to the squat toilet or the mashup of Midnights Children with Kal Pen’s biography, you’ll see that Brownstar don’t take themselves seriously. Their work is thought provoking and consistently surprising and definitely worth a look for yourself.

TICKETS: Available online from NYC Fringe

This is from a Canadian-American TV show called The Backyardigans:

The show is an animated musical-adventure series aimed at children between the ages of 2 and 5.[4] In each episode, the show’s five friends–Pablo, Tyrone, Uniqua, Tasha, and Austin–rely on their vivid imaginations to transform their backyard into completely different worlds, in which they go through many sorts of stories and adventures…The episodes focus on music and dancing as much as they do on the stories, with each one featuring a different music genre [Link]

The Bhangra episode had three other songs (Socks, Wonderful Socks, That’s My Job, That’s My Job, and Gotta Get the Pencil) but this is the best one.

It doesn’t really make much sense to me, but then I don’t think that shows intended to amuse kids under five should really make sense to adults. Either you like it or you don’t, but trying to understand it … begs the point.

The director of the film characterizes it as a “romance,” and … “[r]eports have suggested that the script includes a scene where Hitler and Miss Braun are in bed–although this has not been confirmed. [link]

The movie’s title comes from letters sent by M.K. Gandhi to Hitler, which addressed him as “Dear Friend” [link]. As we’ve noted previously, Mein Kampf has long been popular in India, most lately as a management book in the same mold as “Who moved my cheese” so nobody in India will object to the idea of Hitler as friend to the nation.

Kher has been cast for his supposed resemblance to Hitler, and Dhupia for the scintillating wisdom and insight she brings to bear, such as this product of her extensive research:

“How do you marry the most hated man in the world? I think it’s by taking each day at a time,” [link]

Luckily, we already know how Hitler feels about Bollywood:

Lastly, all the news stories agree that there are no plans for any dance sequences in this film, which is a shame because (a) I suspect that the dancing is the only thing that would make this film watchable for me and (b) I’d love to see the love dances from this movie performed at a wedding. (Mutineers, you are warned!) Since there’s no word yet about whether there will be any songs (without the dance) I remain hopeful.

I adore how he’s open about this feelings for “f#!king ragheads.” This guy is a Southern Conservative straight out central casting, he’s racist, bigoted, xenophobic and stupid although not uninformed. He actually knows who Sikhs are and where India is, that just doesn’t stop him from saying “We’re at war over there,” demonstrating he’s not a bigot because he’s ignorant, he’s ignorant because he’s a bigot. This can’t be cured by education. All ragheads are the same to him, and before the non-Sikh readers get too smug, he probably hates you as well.

But all of this is just the sundae. The cherry on top, my absolute favorite part is this:

Knotts says he believed Haley has been set up by a network of Sikhs and was programmed to run for governor of South Carolina by outside influences in foreign countries. [link]

ZOMG! She’s the Manchurian Candidate, the sleeper Sikh!

What I can’t figure out is what he’s so afraid she’s do once she’s activated. After all, the original Manchurian Candidate tried to whack the POTUS, and something tells me you wouldn’t be unhappy about that at all.

What will she do that would make you unhappy? Will her father attend her inauguration in a turban? Will she take down the confederate flag and replace it with the Indian one? Will she start teaching evolution in schools? Will she refuse to be sworn in with her hand over the bible and hold an ardaas instead?

Or maybe … she’ll invite DJ Rekha to the Governor’s mansion to play … Bhangra! Whoops, sorry Senator, the Raghead-in-Chief has already done that in the White House, the nations’ political bhangra-virginity has already been lost:

“I want to thank DJ Rekha who’s been spinning a little East Room Bhangra for everybody mixing a hip-hop beat with the sounds of her heritage; making a uniquely American sound that may not have been heard in the White House before,” Obama said amidst laughter and applause. [link]

Although, maybe you do have a point. That first Bhangra in an executive residence was soo good, that we want to do it again and again, promiscuously, with different executive residences, in all fifty states around the country! Next stop, Louisiana, where Piyush is going to Bhangra the BP blues away!

Sorry Senator, you lost the civil war and you’re going to lose the culture war too. In fact, your raghead comment just caused the former county GOP chair to declare her 2012 challenge to you [link]. But thank you for playing, and thanks for all the laughs!

Here’s Bobby, clearly much darker than Kenneth the Page:

Here’s Nikki in a girl scout troop:

Nikki pretty much fits in, while Bobby stands out.