Voices Carry

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Last week, I took a train from North Podunksburg (where I live and work) to Metropolis (the nearest large conurbation) to attend several days of business meetings there. I was riding with some of my colleagues, and after the conversation had died down and people were looking out the windows, I turned on my mp3 player and zoned out.

You know that moment when you wake from a reverie and you remember where you are, when you realize that you are in one place and not in another? Well, I had a post 9/11 moment, a quick reminder that I wear a turban, “sport” a beard, am graced by almond skin … and that these things mean something different now than they once used to.

I was humming along under my breath, then mouthing the lyrics, then singing along quietly. A Billy Bragg song was on, and these were the words I heard in my ears:

Revenge will bring cold comfort in this darkest hour
As the juke box says ‘It’s All Over Now’
And he stands and he screams
What have I done wrong
I’ve fallen in love with a little time bomb [Link] [Audio: wmv, real]

I had sung, softly and under my breath, but perhaps audible “I’ve fallen in love with a little …” and then I tried hard to swallow the next few words, but I ended up mouthing “… time bomb.” It was my own personal Clash moment, except that the song I was singing had lyrics far worse than “…war is declared and battle come down…”

You see, I don’t give people an excuse. I don’t say “that play bombed” or “she was so bombed the other day” or “that was an explosive allegation” or “he completely hijacked that meeting.” I don’t use such words in public where they might be overheard and misunderstood by others. I don’t speak to my parents in Punjabi on the phone while I’m at an airport. I call or send text messages to my friends “Patriot Act Check-ins” at each leg of my flight schedule to avoid the possibility that I might ever ever be detained incommunicado somewhere by some official who didn’t “like the way I looked.” But that day, seduced by the false feeling of privacy that comes when you’ve got those little white earbuds in and your own music rocking around you … that day, I forgot. And I’m not allowed to forget because, in many ways, the terrorists have won. This is not the country that I was born into, and I can only pray that one day, it will be again.

Look, I’m not crying boo hoo hoo over my inability to sing the lyrics I want. Big deal, right? I mean, it’s inconsiderate to sing along while on a public carriage. No, this is just about the little reminders you get, like the whiff of an exes perfume, of what you’ve lost. And some days I really miss America.

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UPDATE: Play along at home or at work! Click this link and tell me that the song isn’t catchy, even if you don’t like Billy Bragg …

Also, here’s a desi connection to Billy Bragg – he got his big break by using desi food to get air-play:

The album was widely received as a demonstration of a promising new talent. Hearing DJ John Peel mention on-air that he was hungry, Bragg rushed to the BBC with a mushroom biryani, and was rewarded when Peel played a track from Life’s a Riot, albeit at the wrong speed. Peel insisted he would have played the tape even without the biryani and later played it at the correct speed. [Link]

126 thoughts on “Voices Carry”

  1. But here in Vancouver with the really high punjabi population I have noticed here that alot of punjabi just love saying that word jatt

    thats probably the funniest 100th post ever

  2. I am from Vancouver, BC too, but anyways, back to my food query. Besides Indian food(whatever region you may hail from) what is your favourite ethnic food?

  4. PJF,

    But here in Vancouver with the really high punjabi population I have noticed here that alot of punjabi just love saying that word jatt.

    You mean like “dude”, or the way many British desis keep saying the word “innit” ? They keep dropping the word “Jatt” into their sentences as many times as possible ?

    “Jatt…..Jatt Jatt…..Jatt Jatt Jatt Jatt….Jatt Jatt…..”

    wink

  6. Bongbreakers

    So let me get this right. G.I Jatt is desi MC on record label called “untouchables”. Does anything more need to be said.

  7. awesome, ennis! yes, sadly, it often IS the turban and face fuzz. what also odd, is how one can also get knocked for looking too fair. people are funny creautrees with much to learn. as for nyc troubles….we have had troubles. but if you make sure to set the ignorants straight on who the terrorist is for their actions (those making comments or being small minded), and teach them not to be, it will improve.

  8. The lame argument peddled by some here that America is so great because of immigration is silly at best. Saudi Arabia has millions of immigrants while relatively very few Saudis emigrate from Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia might be the most repressive regime in the World, still people from more liberal, free and democratic countries like India and Phillipines flock to Saudi Arabia while very few Saudis (if any) go to India or the Phillipines.

    I love America. I believe America is a great nation and there are hundreds of reasons to love America. Net inflow of people, however, is not dispositive evidence of America’s greatness.

    For all the jackasses who are asking Ennis not to extrapolate too broadly from his own experiences, I dont think you have any idea of the shit people who wear turbans go through. Wear a turban for a week and then see what happens.

  11. Awww Ennis! This is as tragic as the fact that a woman can’t get drunk at a party without having to think about rape because the first thing she is reminded of as soon as she enters the social scene is that she has a vagina. The aesthetics of domination are sad–how the body holds symbols that evoke fear/anger/hate/possessiveness, making them symbols degradation by feminization (as it is understood) and/or bestialization.

  12. Maybe it’s just because I’ve had a long week, but I do not see how this merits the “woe is me” attitude. I do not hesitate to speak Bengali on a cellphone or in public with family – I’ve never had any one give me grief for it or even toss me a curious glance.

    KXB: Are you saying that just because you speak Bengali in public and no one ever gave you dirty looks, we should discount and brush aside real incidences of racism and racial profiling? I don’t agree with you at all, that ennis’ story conveys a “woe is me” attitude. Frankly, I think your comment is extremely insensitive. I don’t think that by pointing out injustices and/or moving to action to rectify them is a “pity me” attitude.

    As a (Desi) American, I have to say that I whole-heartedly concur with brownfrown’s argument as to why America, and not, say, Canada, was attacked (assuming that they were attacks and that the culprits were who the US government says they were).

    I feel with my Desi brothers who wear a pugdi. I’m a female, and I myself have gone through some nasty stuff. I was living in Italy at the time of the British bombings, and it was not so easy walking around with a black backpack in light of the fact that at the time, the British authorities were speculating that the bombers had been abetted by Moroccan women. The days following the British bombings, many Bangladeshi young men were targeted by the police (Bologna has a sizable population of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis). One incident in particular was with four Bangladeshi high school students standing at the bus stop. Bolognese police arrived, and threw down the Bangledeshi students onto their backs– and the students, completely scared out of their wits, kept repeating that they hadn’t done anything. When the police were done, a group of Bolognesi- get this- actually applauded. Mind you, Italy in general has a lot less racial violence than the States (not to say that racism doesn’t exist in Italy), so it brought goosebumps to think that that kind of sentiment could take root there, too. Airport experience: when I got to Passport Control upon my return back into the States, the lady (who eerily looked exactly like Condi Rice) started to interrogate me about where I had been while abroad, and with whom I had been, etc.The manner in which she was interrogating me– hostile, kind of barking at me, demanding answers– started to make me panic and feel nervous because she was somehow making me feel as if I had done something wrong. I noticed that the white American passengers were allowed to smoothly pass through, no questions asked.

  13. (assuming that they were attacks and that the culprits were who the US government says they were). Let me clarify here before offending anybody’s sensibilities,and that sentence doesn’t precisely express what I mean: assuming that the US government’s explanations as to who the attacks had been carried out by is the truth.

  14. I always thought 9/11 was a conspiracy by Bush/Cheney/Haliburton now I am sure.

  15. Also, I believe enlightened President of Iran when he says that Holocaust is fiction.

  16. You know what, Gaurav? You are extremely lame. I’ve noticed your posts in other forums, and 98% of them are composed of 1) Simplistic, insulting and offensive one-liners and 2) links. Why the F*@k are you equating my comments with denying the Holocaust ever took place?

    Your posts amply demonstrate your lack of both creativity and intelligence to engage in any kind of conversation. It’s too easy to sit behind the computer and virtually mud sling at people’s comments, painting them over with your own crude thoughts.

  17. Another thing:

    I, like many others, including the relatives of the victims of Sept. 11, still would like to know exactly what and who was behind this atrocity. How is that tantamount to denying the Holocaust? We know who acted act out the Holocaust, and we know it took place. I did not say that September 11th never took place. Dipsh*t.

  18. Oh for the love of God – Gaurav, please stop chasing people from thread to thread with insults disguised as irrelevant comments. Cheap Ass Desi, please stop responding to him until every one of these threads is closed. If you two really want to have it out, take it off the air. If you’re performing for the rest of us, save your fingers.

  19. Awww Ennis! This is as tragic as the fact that a woman can’t get drunk at a party without having to think about rape because the first thing she is reminded of as soon as she enters the social scene is that she has a vagina.

    Shruti, I know you’re speaking in hyperbole, but … no, fear of rape is a lot worse than self-censorship in public places. I trained as a rape crisis counsellor when I was in college b/c the issue is so important.

  20. MV– No, I’m not performing for all of you. But your suggestion is well taken. You are right, best method is to simply ignore his illogical and inflammatory comments.

  21. The days following the British bombings, many Bangladeshi young men were targeted by the police (Bologna has a sizable population of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis). One incident in particular was with four Bangladeshi high school students standing at the bus stop. Bolognese police arrived, and threw down the Bangledeshi students onto their backs– and the students, completely scared out of their wits, kept repeating that they hadn’t done anything. When the police were done, a group of Bolognesi- get this- actually applauded.

    Fascism began in Bologna. It still has traces left:

    Bologna, August 2, 1980. It was a hot Saturday morning, the first weekend of Italy’s traditional holiday month, and thousands of vacationers jostled their way to and from the trains in Bologna’s central railroad station. In the midst of that noisy crowd someone … put down a heavy suitcase, and quickly left the station. The suitcase contained over forty pounds of explosives… At exactly 10:25 AM it exploded, ripping through the crowd, tearing apart the reinforced concrete walls, and bringing the roof crashing down on hundreds of bodies and parts of bodies. In the bloody aftermath, rescue squads worked for over twelve hours to pull the dead and maimed from the rubble. As they labored, a young neofascist entered a telephone booth across town and dialed Bologna’s leading newspaper. “This is the Armed Revolutionary Nuclei,” he said. “We claim responsibility for the explosion in the railway station.” The final toll: eighty-five dead—the eldest an eighty-six-year-old man, the youngest a three-year-old child—and more than two hundred wounded. [Link]

  22. Ennis:

    Yes,your excerpt refers to the Bologna train station bombings. But just because the group that planted those bombs was fascist doesn’t mean that Bolognesi are Fascists. In fact, Bologna has been known for “La Rossa” because it is a historically Communist city. Many of the Bolognese civic administrations have been staunchly Communist. Not to deny that Fascists may not exist, though. And not to denounce the possibility that Bolognesi administrations cannot be anything but Communitst. The mayor prior to Coferatti (the current mayor) was actually not so lefty (but he wasn’t Fascist, at least not that I know of).

  23. Shruti, I know you’re speaking in hyperbole, but … no, fear of rape is a lot worse than self-censorship in public places. I trained as a rape crisis counsellor when I was in college b/c the issue is so important.

    Yes, I was speaking in hyperbole. I knew you’d point that out 🙂 I’m trained as a rape crisis counsellor as well. Rape is pretty much the worst crime in my book, so fear of rape is, as you said, far worse than censorship (although you’re at risk of getting a little more than just censored, no?)

  24. i think the point about the body being a site of symbols that evoke fear/anger/hate/possessiveness, as you put it, is interesting

  25. Yeah, I was looking at classes in some British universities and one thing that kept coming up was “Geography of [X]”. That was a foreign concept to me, but the more I thought about it, the more I fell in love with it. Giving discourses or imagined communities a physical geography really helps to make connections to reality. Geography of the South Asian American community, geography of capitalism, geography of the body… Geography of the body reminds me of Fanon’s term “hyperawareness of corpus schema,” in his reflection of an incident on a bus (or train?) where a little white kid looked at him and said out loud to his mother that he was “scared” of the “black man”.