We three have, after much discussion come to the conclusion that we have done as much here as we can. We have told our stories openly with as much candour as we can, leaving ourselves completely exposed in public, in the hope that others who have hesitated will come forward and speak as we have. There are some who have, many can be found on our links. Please try them and see what has happened to these other ones.
We believe our stories speak for themselves as to why all three of us have come to believe that Khalistan must be more than a dream. It must become an independent land where we can live with dignity and safety. A land of justice and hope and respect for all people. But to quote from an American song of 1969, 'if we can't do it with a smile on our face, if we can't do it with love in our hearts, then children, we ain't got no right to do it at all. That just means we ain't learned nothing yet. We're supposed to be some kind of different.'
There is much more we could write, all of us have another 22 years during which we have grown, run, fallen, picked ourselves up and kept going. We have laughed and cried, worked and rested, worshipped and prayed. In short, we have lived our lives. But we have decided that those are other stories for other blogs.
We have only to complete what we want to say now.
The pain we have felt from these events has not healed or lessened over time. The common belief that 'time heals all wounds' is a fallacy. The wounds have become a part of us and we have learned to some extent how to live with them. We have learned to grow stronger and more courageous, we hope, in the process. Sometimes we are asked, do you think about this all the time? Of course not, but it is always with us. If you ask our gender, we don't have to stop and think, I'm a woman; it's just there. This is much the same and it is that much a part of each of us.
Nothing could ever justify what we, all of us Sikhs, went through. There can be no justification for evil and injustice nor should there be. Should twenty-two years be enough to start to distance ourselves from this? When young people say,'Get over it!' is there any validity to that? No, we will never get over this, nor should they ask us that of us. And we sincerely pray that they will never have a pain such as this to understand what we have been through.
For the two of us, Suni and Mai, the hardest part is facing the sheer hatred and maliciousness of people we had thought of as our brother-in-heritage Indians. (Vini never had this illusion.) Although we were both mothers in our thirties and thought of ourselves as worldly and sophisticated, in fact, we had been protected and sheltered from the sheer ugliness of our fellow humans. Although we read newspapers and saw television news accounts of such things the American civil rights movement, the various wars and the killing fields of Cambodia, these were things that happened to other people, people who weren't quite real to us. Now that has changed.
When we see a mother holding the dead body of her child in Iraq or a woman's vacant eyes after seeing her family hacked to death in Rwanda, we see and feel no difference between us and them; they are us and we are them. The horrors and injustices of our age continue. If not for one thing, the sheer evil around us would overwhelm us and render us useless.
But we have that one thing. We are Sikhs. We have a way of being in this world that both gives to us and demands of us the strength not to give up hope and not to stop fighting against the wrongs we see and experience. Along with everyone else, we saw on 9/11, with horror, airplanes fly into buildings and the world go mad.
With great apprehension, we saw pictures of the leaders of those who did these things. You saw those pictures and, we're sure had the same sinking feeling we did. You know, the beards and the turbans. Our fears were not baseless, as it turned out. Some of us have been murdered. Many of us, especially our keshdhari men, have had to learn to live with a new prejudice: Americans who hate us for being what we aren't, Muslim. Some little good, however, is coming out of this. People are beginning to learn who we are and a bit of what we believe in.
We know we are not going to solve the problems of the world with our little blog. But please accept this as a small sewa from three women who would like to make the world a little better, and to help Sikh sisters and brothers, especially our Khalsa sisters and brothers, to stand a little taller and be a little more determined to live up to being the people our Gurus taught us to be.
If anyone wants to add anything to this blog, just leave a comment or email us, we will be overjoyed to contact you. Or if you have any further questions or comments for us, we love to hear from you. We all have our private blogs, which we choose to keep private, except Mai, who invites you to visit her at
sometimes 2 http://mai-sometimes.blogspot.com, if you wish.
Let us clutch with our whole being what we are and never forget:
One Universal Creator God,
The Name Is Truth,
Creative Being Personified,
No Fear,
No Hatred,
Image Of Undying,
Beyond Birth,
Self-Existent,
By Guru's Grace
Chant And Meditate.
With much love from Vini, Suni and Mai
