nblinks

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there was plenty to be sad about, but one thing I remember sticking out in a particularly resonant-metaphoric way was the story or two that came out about Sikh immigrants being attacked because their assailants assumed, given the turbans, that they must be Muslims -- the irony being that in my understanding, one of the original reasons for the Sikh mode of dress was to differentiate them from their Hindu and Muslim neighbors in the Punjab. I think the early Gurus believed that if the Sikhs stuck out, then they'd have to stick together, and the community would be stronger. Hence the strong Sikh martial tradition too. Anyway, today there was a nice resonant-metaphoric counterpoint to all that, in today's NY Times article about Akal Security, a huge and growing guard-supplying firm owned and operated by a New Mexico-based Sikh sect. Lots of meaty church-state, free-practice, open-bid, non-profit type details. Plus, who couldn't love that the sect's founder lives on a ranch in Espanola, NM called the "Hacienda de Guru Ram Das Gurudwara".