Sat sri akal.

Punjabi: Truth is highest.

Little known Dom-fact: did you know that I am in a book?

It's true. When I was a junior in college, I worked with my professor and mentor, Cynthia K. Mahmood, on piecing together an easily-readable, smallish book of her previously published articles about Sikhs and India so that when she testified in Sikh asylum cases she'd have something handy to give to the judge for some background reading. Anyway, I spent months scanning articles, formatting them, removing previous formats, checking for spelling and grammar errors, and of course, drinking heavily from a hip-flask. In the end, Cindy left the University of Maine's anthropology department for an endowed chair at the Joan Kroc Institute for Peace Studies out here in the corn, at Notre Dame, and I never knew what became of the project that took much of my blood, tears and those wee clots I assumed to be pieces of my liver.

One day I get an email.

"Domonic: Guess what? You're in a book now."

That's all it said. When I Googled her ass, I found it: A Sea of Orange: Writings on the Sikhs and India. With swiftness unbefitting of my size, I bought it and within two days, it came to my home, encased in shrinkwrap. In the preface, she says:

This collection could not have been put together without the help of Domonic Potorti, my student assistant at the University of Maine....

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! My name! In print! In a famous person's book! About Sikhs! Oh wait, that could be bad. Looks like I am not going to be able to go to India anytime soon. You see, Cindy isn't so well-liked in India. First, she gets savaged in Patna for defending the rights of some indigenous Indian hill-people; after defending Sikhs in the US, Canada and the UK for asylum, she was politely asked not to return to the country.

You see, sometimes Sikhs kill people. Lots of people. Sikhs are now engaged in a virtual civil war with the Indian state, and doing fieldwork with some in California and Massachusetts, I got to meet some who'd, uh, totally ended other people. In a way, it was terrifying to be in the presence of murderers, but it's hard to be mad at Sikhs. Some of my fondest memories of my undergraduate career were of working with the Sikhs. Going to a Dunkin' Donuts with men in saffron turbans and swords and asking townies politely to stop staring at my South Asian friends. Driving back from the BART station in the gurdwara-mobile with Punjabi gurbani (hymns) blaring on the radio. Waking up before dawn to watch the Guru Granth Sahib being woken from its slumber (it's the Sikh holy book and is believed to be alive), perfumed, and fanned before being herded into the langar hall for 5 AM curries, roti and steaming, milky chai, with Indian donuts and prashad for dessert, all the while in the presence of dozens, if not hundreds, of pictures of young men with AK-47s who'd gone to the Punjab to fight for faith and nation. In the dim of one night's post-prayer chai-sessions, watching a forty-ish Sikh take off his turban and lovingly rub jasmine oil and comb his waist-length hair.

Sigh. Magic.

Anyway, I am reminded that I am in a book as I sit here, reading it for an unnecessarily huge paper I have to write about jihad in the modern world. Life is so cruel sometimes.

Well, I'd best get back to it.

Degh, tegh, fateh.

Waheguru ji ka Khalsa, Waheguru ji ki fateh.

Good night, Bloomington; good night, Amritsar.

Dom