Interview with Kina Kaur Part 1 of 2

00:00:02 SPEAKER_MS

Are you able to hear me?
                

00:00:04 SPEAKER_KK

Yes!
                

00:00:05 SPEAKER_MS

Perfect. This is manmit singh. Today is June 15, 2023. I am interviewing, for the first time, Kina. This interview is taking place in New York in Ithaca in the home-office of my temporary residence in Ithaca, New York. This interview is sponsored by Jakara and is a part of the Storytelling and Settlement through Sikh LGBTQIA+ Oral Histories Project. The purpose of this research is to document the lived experiences of Sikhs in the United States who are from the LGBTQIA+ backgrounds. We want to provide a more complete history of Sikhs through interviews that ask LGBTQIA + Sikhs about their different experiences, how LGBTQIA+ Sikhs understand themselves and their communities, and how LGBTQIA+ Sikhs make home in the U.S. Thank you so much again for being willing to sit down with me and share your story. We are going to get started with a bit more broad with our conversation. When you think about your experience of growing up, tell me a little bit about what comes up for you? To you, are there any common stories, any smells, any relationships that come to mind that help you describe growing up? I’ll also drop the question into the chat as well.
                

00:01:41 SPEAKER_KK

Thank you for having me here today. I’m really excited to be a part of this project in any capacity. The question… Here, let me look it up again. You know, actually the first thing that comes to mind with that question is the volume of my parents speaking on the phone whenever they would call family back in India. So my parents immigrated here in the 80s, like right after they got married, and and my dad was continuing his education in the States. And it was definitely part of the brain drain from Asia in the 80s to the U.S. at that time, because my dad was college educated and and my mom actually fought to get probably what is the equivalent of an associate’s degree in art before she got married. And she was the eldest in her family. So that was quite controversial for her, for the culture. But my dad’s family eventually moved out here, but here, but my mom’s family stayed in Delhi. And so hearing them on the phone growing up, because you would only be able to talk for maybe three minutes, and the connection was always so bad. And so they talked so, so loudly to each other on the phone. But I could hear my Maasi’s [maternal aunts] and my Naani [maternal grandmother] calling back to my mom while she’s just trying to get some type of connection, some type of remnants of home that she had left when married, as the traditions were back then. But yeah, that one is really distinct.
                

00:03:53 SPEAKER_KK

I remember also there was an Indian store, like, “India’s Sweet and Spices.” It was down the street from my parents’ house. And always going there to pick up the bootleg Bollywood films that had been released. And my mom pulling up and being like, “Just go drop off the video and come back and tell them it’s from us.” And being so nervous and running into the store. And of course, it had all these different smells that I was so familiar with, but I couldn’t name. But it smelled like the kitchen at home and those things. And dropping off the video and always being like, “Can we get mangoes?” Always asking for mangoes while getting back in the car. Those are some distinct ones.

Going to the Gurdwaara also. I loved parshaad. I loved parshaad. I— I mean, what child doesn’t. But I used to do this thing with my sibling where I’d be like, “I can do it in one bite.” And so I would do the prayer to my head and everything. And then I’d like [narrator cups hand and raises it to their mouth]— whole thing. Because you’d only get one napkin. And it was like, “I can’t keep making a mess.” So I’d just like eat the whole parshaad in one bite and then wipe my face.
                

00:05:17 SPEAKER_KK

You know, going to the Gurdwaara for me growing up, my parents never really had us learn the language. So for me, I can understand Panjabi and Hindi to like a certain extent, but I can’t distinguish the languages. But like whenever I visit India, I can get by in conversation, but not speaking. I I can understand. And then I respond in English. Also, I get teased if I try to speak the language, so it kind of deters me. But yeah, I remember like being in the Gurdwaara. And because I couldn’t necessarily understand what was being said, I would get distracted pretty easily. And a way to kind of navigate my behavior so I wasn’t distracting others, I would go to the kitchen. So I was always surrounded by aunties and the bhaaees [men, respectfully] that were there that were like working in the kitchen and making the rotees and the poorees and like seeing these incredible women like throwing poorees on the fire and just like sticking their hands in the fire and like flipping them and thinking like that was the coolest thing. And so I would help make, get the aataa [flour] and and like try and roll the rotees. So for me, like the Gurdwaara was often just like food oriented because I was in the kitchen helping make Langar and serving Langar. So that was enough for me and my parents to kind of be in Sikhi while growing up, even if I didn’t necessarily understand what was being said. I was still being of service and practicing Seyvaa and like doing things that I think fall under the major tenets of Sikhism as I relate to it. But I mean, those are memories that I honestly think I, I forgot about until you asked this question.
                

00:07:30 SPEAKER_KK

The relationship that probably sticks out in my mind the most is that of mine with my Maasi. My mom has two sisters, but my mom has one sister that’s like only 18 months younger than her. So she was like very close in age, but with her, I always felt like this unbreakable bond. Like I’ve always felt so connected to her. And so she was in India and I was here and here and I just, I always missed her so much and I would always cry so much. And like, I understand it, like being the child in that dynamic, but now that my sister has children and now my sister’s oldest daughter is five years old and she calls me Maasi. She actually calls me Faasi Maasi because when she was younger, she couldn’t she couldn’t say M’s. So she put an F there, which is just like that word. In America, it’s not a big deal, but in India, like that would be so funny to say, but she calls me that. But the way she like cries now, whenever I leave, because I live far away from my family, well— seven hours, but I live far enough away that away that I don’t get to see my nieces all the time. I just, I see like life continuing and now I’m the Maasi. And it’s just like, I want to be in their head, like the way that my Maasi is in mine. Like I want to be with their hearts the way my Maasi is with me. So I think of all the relationships that I had, it was with her.
                

00:09:10 SPEAKER_KK

And I actually just went to India and I visited my mom’s side just this past December. And my Maasi was like, “Do you remember that paper you wrote about me?” And I was like, “No.” She pulls out this paper from 2002 that I wrote about, apparently like I was assigned an essay to write an essay about like an inspirational woman in my life. And I actually had written it about my Maasi. And so like I sat there and I like read it to her and I was reading it to her and I was reading it and I just started crying because I was, that part of my life is such a blur. And so to know that, oh, that this feeling that I have now that is tethered to my Maasi, it’s been there. Like that’s been a constant in my life.
                

00:10:06 SPEAKER_KK

I feel like these are a bit more of the positive feelings, the ones that like make my heart swell and tether me to others before I was ever tethered to myself or really understanding myself. But yeah, growing up specifically, those are some of the things that I remember the most. Oh, and a silly story. I remember going to a school in kindergarten in California and there’s like, when you’re like really young, that’s when you’re learning the basics of everything. So you’re learning like words and connections and middle names and and all these different things. And I remember like asking my friends, I was like, “Oh, so like, what are your middle names?” And I was blown away when I found out that like people had different middle names or like last names than their siblings. And I was like, you don’t mean that all of the sisters have Kaur and Singh. Like it wasn’t— I was blown away by that. Like I didn’t understand that like in different cultures. And that was probably one of the first times that I was like, “Oh, I’m different.” Because in my household, all of the people who are deemed women have Kaur as their middle or last name. And all of the people deemed men have Singh. So that was like one of the first moments where I was like, “Oh, like I am different.”
                

00:11:49 SPEAKER_KK

And then of course with the holidays— as, as you grow up and realizing that all the holidays that you celebrate with your family, you, you don’t get off from school. Unlike the other kids who get all their holidays with their family while they’re off school. And you know, like my parents always taught me that like that difference was special. It was unique. And that, you know, while you might feel left out from what your like friends are having with their families, remember that like you always have us, like you always have us as a family, you have us as a community. And they always wanted to emphasize that like all these get togethers that we did with other Panjabi people and other South Asian and and Middle Eastern people, like like this is also your community, like you’re a part of it growing up and you have to come, you have to, you can’t opt out, you have to come. All the— oh my god, so many get togethers growing up that I never wanted to go to because I was like, I wanted to go, but like it was always so stressful getting ready for them and honestly like traumatic to a certain degree, like getting ready for certain South Asian parties, just because like my mom’s sense of urgency is one that I now inhabit, absolutely. I now understand it and things like that, but growing up, her sense of urgency for getting ready for parties and presenting a certain way because what will the others say, if you show up not looking put together. That’s stress— to this day, like my heart will increase knowing that we have to get ready for something or that we have to host a party or that something, but I mean, it was always great like meeting other people my age who were like me that we could dance and eat and I don’t have to come up with the English word for everything to define what I’m doing. That was worthwhile, yeah.
                

00:14:23 SPEAKER_KK

And then of course, and as far as like smells, the Indian Sweets and Spices stores, just just like the mango— I was smelling the mango skin, all the spices that now I understand is jeera [cumin] and elaichi [cardamom] and adhrak [ginger] and all these delicious things, especially with chaah [tea], adding adhrak to chaah, I like— game changer, just everything in the world. Oh my god, I just recently like learned how to make it the way my Maasi makes it. So I’ve been just relishing in it and having chaah all the time and like out of the bowl, like just as real as possible, but that one’s a big one.
                

00:15:21 SPEAKER_KK

Oh, and then actually, I discovered at a young age that I’m allergic to agarbatti [incense]. So whenever I would be in temple or— my cousins are half-Jain and so sometimes I would go to mandir [temple] with them and like get exposed to like Hindu experiences and Gujarati food and all those types of things. And they use agarbatti a lot for their prayers. And I’d always be like I can’t sit through this because I would feel sick, like I would get a migraine or I would get like the kid equivalent of that. And as I got older, it developed into just migraines and it’s now been understood that that I have an allergy to it, which of all the things for me to be allergic to, agarbatti, like, dang, it’s the American in me, you know what I’m saying? [laughing] But my parents are super respectful about it. And so when it comes to prayers, they try not to use agarbatti or if they, they let me excuse myself and those type of things. So agarbati is a big smell that reminds me of my upbringing.
                

00:16:40 SPEAKER_KK

Yeah, those are just some, I don’t know. I also have like horrible things like paan. So paan is also one, that’s a definite distinct smell. All the uncles going out during parties and and finding the uncles smoking and chewing on pan and spitting and like all that stuff and them just smelling like scotch. I— oh my god, when I grew up and learned what those smells were, like when I was a kid, they were comforting. It was interesting because some of my like my chaachaa [father’s younger brother] and stuff like always had that smell on him especially at parties smell and I’d be just hanging out and not realizing what’s happening. And then I grew up and I started working in restaurants and bars and stuff. And then I was like, “That smell is scotch. That smell is leftover cigarette on someone’s jacket.” Like, and then pan is a little bit more obscure. So I remember, oh my god, that was such a distinct, distinct scent growing up. And now I’m like, just thinking about it. It’s almost comical how much these things inform my childhood and my existence.
                

00:17:57 SPEAKER_KK

And then my birthday party is, or my birthday is in the summer. So I always had like a backyard barbecue type birthday. So the smell of barbecue is also pretty like distinct with my upbringing. And, you know, my cousins who are half-Panjabi, half-Gujarati, they are completely vegetarian. And so I was very familiar with vegetarianism growing up. Like that wasn’t foreign to me. When I went to school and I like would talk about it, people were like, they almost like used vegetarian as like an otherness. And I was just like, what? Like, I didn’t understand it. It was just something that was real in my life. But my family, like there weren’t dietary restrictions. Like we would eat burgers and we would eat chicken, fish, like lamb, anything. So like, yeah, barbecue burgers were like my birthday, like I would associate growing up with with my birthday, which is arguably very American. For me, I’m like in California and stuff like that. And it’s funny because now I don’t eat meat because I actually get sick when I eat it. But I’ll eat fish. But all other meats, like they don’t tempt me anymore. But growing up now and understanding how diet has been used as like, almost like punitively against people of certain castes. I’m like, oh, it makes sense why even we were judged for eating beef, even though we come from, my family are caste privileged, we would get judged for eating beef. And the vegetarianism practiced by Gujarati Jains like was the norm for them because of the way that diets are used as like a, “You’re immoral” thing for people of certain castes. So my understanding of that has has really evolved. Wow, that was a really long answer to your question.
                

00:20:23 SPEAKER_MS

No, I appreciate that. Thank you so much for sharing such a rich and like a beautiful response too. And I guess I kind of thinking also maybe about gender and sexuality. How did you learn more about these topics?
                

00:20:45 SPEAKER_KK

You know, I think I have been informed passively about gender and sexuality since before I was born. Interestingly enough, when the doctors read my mom’s ultrasound when she was pregnant with me, the doctors said that I was going to come out as a male. They read me as a male. And then when I came out and out and I wasn’t— it wasn’t, “It’s a boy,” or whatever. They designated me as “It’s a girl.” I think just from that beginning, I’m like, “How did they know?” But I— my mom always called me her helper. Like I was her best helper. And from a very young age, it was always, everything was separated by gender. All the men were on one side and all the women were on one side. Even at the Gurdwaara, all the men are on one side and all the women are on one side. And that was like probably one of the first times that that I like noticed it. And I was always kind of curious about it.
                

00:21:58 SPEAKER_KK

And I remember when I was maybe like 10 years old, I told my parents, I was like, “I’m not going to get arranged married.” Like I told them this and and I’m the youngest and I told them this and they were just like, well, like, well, “What are we going to do with you? Like what are we going to do?” And I was like— now looking back, y’all came to America. Like I get this choice. You know what I’m saying? Like I see it that way. But yeah, I was like, I’m not going to get arranged married.
                

00:22:36 SPEAKER_KK

I never like, growing up, I never saw myself getting married. I never had like stereotypical feminine, femininity, feminine expression or or what people assume people who are socialized to be girls and women are supposed to have. Except I was still socialized in that way. So I was— I have a very loud voice and I’m very outspoken and and I’m very opinionated. And my parents got me involved in politics at a very young age. They helped, they helped challenge me. They were like, “What do you think of these things in the world?” Like, you know, and it was always from the perspective of Seyvaa from like, “Look at how much people— look at how much we have and look at how little others have. We need to make sure to help those who don’t have the means to help themselves.” And that’s a tenant that I still value very much in me today.
                

00:23:37 SPEAKER_KK

But it was always like my mom and my bhua [dad’s sister] and my aunties and everybody, they were always making the food, running the parties. They were the ones watching the kids. They were the one doing all the emotional labor. And my dad was working so hard every single day at his business. Like he was gone all day, every day. When I was younger than five, my dad, he worked out of state. So he would be gone from Monday to Saturday. And then he’d come home Saturday night, spend Sunday with us and then fly back on Monday and go to work. And he was trying to figure out if he wanted to fly us all out to Texas to where he was finding work until he eventually decided to start his own business in California. So we stayed in California. But I definitely, because I’m the youngest, I grew up with my parents being the wealthiest that they were. So I didn’t really have to see the living in one apartment. But I did always have hand-me-downs, those type of things. But as far as like gender and sexuality, my brother and I were raised by different parents. Like we just were, he’s the eldest. And just seeing him and understanding him and the way he’s able to get away with so much that I would never be able to get away with, quote, unquote, get away with. My parents did something with me and my siblings. I’m the youngest of three, where my parents were like, “You’ve seen your siblings mess up in these ways. So you should already know better.” So I was held to the standard of, “You’ll be punished more because you knew better” kind of thing, which I feel like is kind of like a reverse. That’s usually what happens with the eldest kid, that they get the harshest punishments and things like that.
                

00:26:04 SPEAKER_KK

I remember.. God, there’s so much with gender and being Panjabi and the ways that they expect women to act and men to act. I was always a tomboy. That’s what they called me. You know that term, a tomboy? It’s like a girl who acts like a boy, essentially. Because I was in all the sports. I always wanted to play every kind of sport. I was always the first to volunteer. I was always the one asking questions and participating. I was uninhibited. And then as I went to school and I was told, “Be less, be quieter. You need to mind yourself. You’re in trouble. Go to detention.” All these different things. And then it was reinforced. It was at home and then it was reinforced at school as well to make myself smaller. Don’t make others— like “You’re talking over other people.” And now I’m like, okay, I want to balance making space for others and making sure everybody’s voices are heard and things like that. But before it was just like, “Be quiet, be mindful.” In ways that definitely affected me. The way my grandparents, my daadi-daada [maternal grandparents], the way they treated the grandsons as opposed to the granddaughters.
                

00:27:46 SPEAKER_KK

Now the way that I’m speaking of, this is from the perspective of being socialized as a woman, being raised as a woman. I am non-binary. I’m trans. I use they-them pronouns. I understand myself to be gender expansive. I don’t believe myself to be limited by the institution of gender, except for when the institution of gender forces me to act in a limited way, like choosing bathrooms or the hundreds and millions of other ways— like getting paid less, trying to push me into a less challenging role, like different things that tend to be about, attributed to women in the workforce. So yeah, when I’m speaking of these experiences, it’s from the perspective of being a girl, like being socialized in that way.
                

00:28:42 SPEAKER_KK

And I’m still seen that way in my family, even though I have communicated with my mom that I use they-them pronouns. It’s funny because I have friends that use they-them pronouns and my mom uses they-them pronouns for them, but she somehow, it just slips her mind. She’s like, “You’re my youngest daughter. You are a powerful woman,” like all these things. And I’m like, “Just switch it to person. I’m gonna feel so much better if you just say person.” But we’ll get there.
                

00:29:15 SPEAKER_KK

I tend to not hold people whose first language isn’t English to the same standard. Like my parents, I think English was not my parents’ first language. My parents speak like four or five languages each and English was one of them, but it’s not their first. So I don’t hold them to certain pronouns things. And also I don’t feel like pronouns define my gender. I feel like pronouns actually speak to how others view me. It’s not how I view me. It just speaks to your perspective and your perspective, albeit, can be important, it does not nearly matter as much as how I see myself and how I feel. And so if you don’t use they-them pronouns, like— I mean, that’s more on you than it is on me. Like I know who I am. Like I know who I am, but it can be quite activating whenever I go home. But my cousins, like my cousins are so good about it. And my sister is really good about it. And they’re very adamant about it. And my nieces, they have no idea what I am. Like they call me Maasi. The five-year-old can talk. The one-year-old is still like figuring out words. She can’t like speak in sentences and stuff, but the five-year-old can form sentences and have thoughts now and remember things and stuff like that. And she switches pronouns with me all the time. And it brings me so much joy because it’s, I’m just happy that she’s just flowing with it. She will use he, she’ll use she, she’ll use they. She’ll just use all these different pronouns with me. And then whenever we play house, which is her favorite thing to play, I’m always something. I’m— “Can you be the auntie? Can you be the uncle? Can you be the daddy? Can you be the brother? Can you be the this? Can you be my friend?” And it’s people of all genders. And she actually, she also refers to my partner as my wife. So she’s learning that, you know, things are different. And, you know, one time she saw me in a bra and she was like, “You know, my daddy doesn’t wear a bra.” And I was like, I looked at her and I was like, “You know, Ava, some daddies do wear bras.” And she’s like, “Okay.” And then she just like, she just walked away. She doesn’t care. Like she’s just like learning. And that is very affirming for me. Like her asking me a ton of questions and trying to figure what I am out. And she— like I showed her a picture of me with long hair and she’s like, “I don’t remember you looking like that.” And I was like, “Yeah, baby, it was from before you were born.” Like I had really long hair. But that’s like really affirming for me. Right. I’m really grateful to have this opportunity to also be a child, like heal my inner child through being with my nieces.
                

00:32:16 SPEAKER_KK

But, you know, I also recognize that sometimes like my parents will listen to me before they listen to my sister. And I recognize that as like the Panjabi, like power dynamic where like men’s or masculine voices tend to be listened to. Like they will heed what I say before they will heed what my sister says. And even though she’s older than me, she is a cis-woman. And so I— whenever— as I’ve transitioned like internally and externally, like socially as well, I try and make it so that when I’m in a space where my sister is speaking up and speaking out, I’m amplifying her voice. Because I understand that in that power dynamic, even though that I— I’ve been there and I understand what it’s like to be silenced as a woman. And I want to make sure that she’s listened to, you know, and she’s been ignored a lot or gaslit a lot about her feelings her whole life. And so I always am like, “Hey, they’re valid. I’m here. I’m holding space for you,” that kind of thing. And she does the same for me. So, you know, that’s, that’s a way that I recognize how gender dynamics play out in my family. Whereas when it’s my brother, I have very little patience with the way he thinks things should be. And the way he kind of like carries himself. And I have a lot of trauma from my brother growing up.
                

00:34:02 SPEAKER_KK

And it carries out to this day and it’s really hard because he now currently like really needs help, especially with substance use. And I know that alcohol use disorder is like really rampant in the Panjabi community. And, you know, my chacha, my brother. It’s not something I’d wish on anybody. And I recognize my brother needing help. And I see him as a man who needs help. And because of— like, it’s a multiple truths thing. It’s like, I’m a person who if it was like one of my friends who was going through something like this, I would be pulling out every stop. I would be like, “Here’s this resource. Let me know what you need. I’ll bring you food. I’ll help you clean your place. I’ll help you do all these different things.” But when it’s with someone who has like hurt me so deeply and messed with my neural pathways so much, I’m finding myself a bit reserved. So I’m learning about my own boundaries with it. And I’m still reaching out and checking in with him and being like, “Hey, I’m really grateful that you’re finally ready to get some help. This is what I’m able to do. I can check in with you once a week,” kind of thing. And now that we’re adults, it’s very, very different.
                

00:35:31 SPEAKER_KK

I also left home at 17 because I knew I was different from everyone else. And I never felt seen for some reason. And I could never put words to the feelings. And then, you know, when I left home at 17 for school and I didn’t go back, I learned a lot about myself. And that was where I was able to explore my sexuality and then eventually my gender. And, you know, one of the things about my gender is that I didn’t actually, I didn’t realize that when I had left home, the way I was living my lifestyle— I don’t know— me living authentically every day in and out, because it was just me with my chosen family, I didn’t realize that I was challenging gender expectations. When I went back home at the age of 27, when my sister was getting married— it’s shaadi ka ghar [house of the wedding], you have to— you have to pull out all the stops. You are the family hosting the wedding. And my sister married someone who isn’t Indian. So we really had to do the entire labor of the wedding and all the things that that were expected of me as a daughter of the house that was hosting the wedding. I realized, I was like— “This is not me. Like y’all got me fucked up. Like, this is not me. Like I— this doesn’t feel right. Like nothing. I feel— I’m feeling challenged in ways that are making me very, very uncomfortable.” And it wasn’t until after that, that I was like, “I don’t think that I am just one thing. I think I am multiple things that sometimes I think I’m nothing at all.” Like when it comes to gender. And that’s when I started like, I guess kind of labeling it a bit more. I’m like realizing that, “Oh, I do identify with like how non-binary people describe how they feel every day and how trans people talk about themselves and their gender,” and like fluidity and all this type of things. I’m like, “Why— why can’t that also be real?” And it really started me on this journey of self-discovery, of community, of softness for others, acceptance. Because I have to accept me, especially because I have to make this path for myself. There are ancestors. There absolutely are ancestors. I know I have queer ancestors. I know I do. It’s just, and I know I have queer family members, but none of them will be socially queer. None of them will end up like letting themselves love someone of a different gender than cis-normativity, a cis-heteronormativity. And like, but they tell me— I definitely have cousins who are like, “Oh, I did this, or I’m attracted to this person, or I flirted with this person, or this is happening and I’m feeling like wearing clothes like that, and I want to wear a wig and makeup and all this.” And I’m just like, “Yeah, fucking do it. Like, please. I’m the rainbow sheep. Like I’m all alone out here. Like someone in the family, don’t make me the angry queer at every family location that’s bringing up like left-leaning things about how like, power and like power to the people and all this stuff.” And I’m constantly aware of how alone I am when it comes to being with the family I was born into. I’m constantly aware of it. And, you know, there are some moments of joy where things are welcome. Like my mom wished me happy pride this year, which she’s never done before. And my family’s so welcoming of my partner, which I never ever thought would happen. And, you know, there is a lot of beauty, but it’s— it’s very, very lonely. And I just hope that by being me, that like all my niblings, like they know they can come to me. They know that I’m different. And so if they’re ever feeling different, I never want them to feel as alone as I have felt since, since I became self-aware at the age of like nine. I grew up very fast. There’s a lot of trauma in my household. I grew up very, very quickly. I hope they never feel alone how I felt growing up and how I feel now at times. I feel less alone now because I’m able to build community and be with others in certain ways. But, you know, as a kid, it’s really hard to find that. Or it was, I don’t know with technology now, but yeah.
                

00:40:50 SPEAKER_KK

Okay, so I’ll share something that’s a bit like triggering or activating. So please let me know if a pause is needed, but you know, I grew up knowing that India was not a safe place for women. That was one thing that I don’t remember when I became fully aware of that, but modesty was always pushed on me growing up. And when I was like 11 years old and I went to India, no, I was 12, I think. Summer vacation in California is monsoon season in India. So when you go to India during the June to August months, you know, it’s monsoon season. So it’s raining all the time. And that was when I learned that I’m supposed to be wearing bras, even though I didn’t, I hadn’t developed breasts in any way. I hadn’t started my period. I was still very much an adu— like a prepubescent. I was still a child. Like I hadn’t started puberty. And that’s when I learned like, “Oh, I need to wear bras and I need to cover up.” And it’s 113 degrees and humid out there. And I was still in a child mindset to a certain degree. So I was wearing shorts and tank tops. I didn’t care that my clothes were see-through, but I got punished very badly when I was in India and wearing shorts in 115 degree weather. And I was like, “This is some bullshit.” I mean, I’m saying that now as a kid, I wasn’t allowed to swear. So I didn’t. But there was this moment when I went out with my cousin-brothers out there and we were buying fireworks because we were going to set off some fireworks because the independence day was coming up. And it was just me and my cousins. And it was like the first time my mom let me out like alone in India. And I wasn’t even alone. I was with my cousin brothers who were older than me by like five years. And one of them only one year. And it was me and my sister and my cousin brothers. And there was this moment where it was really, really crowded. And while I was in the crowd, my sister and I were grabbed at and our body parts and we were violated. We were molested like in this crowd and people were trying to grab us and pull us away. And, you know, now when I look back on it, I’m like, was I going to be kidnapped? You know, like thinking about it because it was this very public place. And we were these young children. My sister’s three years older than me. So I was 12, she was 15. So she was a bit more, I guess, like physically developed than me, but the way she was getting grabbed and the way that I was getting grabbed— it stays with me to this day. And I’ve done like a lot of trauma therapy now as an adult about it, but I have a lot of anxiety in crowds now, but when my brothers like cousin-brothers, like realized what was happening, they like picked me and my sister up and like just shoved through the crowd and got us out of there. So they protected us. And I was, I’m eternally grateful to them for that because they were also children. Like they were, they were adolescents. They were teenagers. They didn’t know, and they didn’t have sisters. So they like, to this day, they feel so much anger about that time because they feel anger at the world and they feel anger at like themselves because they’re like, “I hate that that’s how I learned that the world is different for you,” you know? Cause they had the privilege of not having to worry about those kinds of things, you know? And so it was in that moment, which I didn’t really remember until years later, that that I was like, “Something’s different. Something’s off. Something’s different about me. This doesn’t feel right. Like there are things that are not making sense to me. Why is the world different for me as a girl than they are for the boys? Like what is happening?” You know, there’s all these like horrible questions. And, you know, like, as I’ve grown up, I’m just like— and that has challenged my notions or like my comfort with my sexuality and my gender and things like that, and also wanting to make the world a safer place for women, you know, and kids and, things like that. But I think it is prudent to bring up as a part of my upbringing because it is not uncommon for South Asian femmes in India, or feminine-presenting people to experience things like sexual assault or molestation and things like that. And that has informed my story. And, you know, as an adult now, like I only read about what happens in India now, you know, and you can’t separate caste dynamics from sexual assault in India because of the way that Dalit women are treated out there, Dalit femmes are treated out there and they are sexually assaulted every single day in India. And their molesters— the people who are enacting these crimes on them, these horrific behaviors on them, these power dynamics— are from privileged castes and they don’t get punished for it. They don’t get, they’ve learned that they can get away with it. And it’s not just a man-woman thing. It’s a caste dynamic thing at play as well. So it’s like you can’t separate gender and caste. And even though I come from caste privilege and I experienced like sexual assault, sexual molestation at a young age in India, growing up, I hold so much space and empathy for Dalit femmes, for any femmes in India, because of what they’ve experienced. And, you know, I have cousins out there who have never experienced anything like that. It’s just, it’s not unfamiliar and it’s a part of a lot of our stories. And I mean, for anybody who’s listening to this, I hope this, I hope you know that I see you and I hope you know your worth and your value and and that you can love yourself more than you can hate them. And that you focus on building relationships with yourself and people that you love and feel safe with and that you feel brave in this world that tried to take something from you because I struggle with that message every day. You know, I struggle with the message all the time, but I have to remind myself that things are different for me now. And yeah, loving yourself matters more than hating them.
                

00:48:34 SPEAKER_KK

But there’s been a lot that’s informed my sexuality and gender. And like, also never seeing any queer person in my life when I was growing up, that was South Asian. That was always really rough. It’s hard to believe that you’re real if you don’t see it in others too, I guess. But like getting to a point where accepting that queer South Asians, queer trans South Asians exist because I exist. That’s been a journey and it’s rough, but to be in community with others and to be like, “I see you and you see me.” I don’t know, it’s really powerful. I know I’m kind of going all over the place. In regards to this, but I’m okay. I’m feeling okay. It’s just sharing something so intimate and personal. I just want like people listening to know that they’re not alone, I guess. And that I see them. I see them even if others don’t. And I hope that when they look in the mirror, that they see love, you know, at least a little bit, at least they can note some love and joy and understand that pain can be transmuted. And that I’m sorry if you ever felt less than, because I know that feeling and it’s not very nice. It’s not something I wish on people.
                

00:50:42 SPEAKER_MS

Thank you so much for your vulnerability and for sharing that and for all your generosity too. And like trusting and like gifting a part of the story, in hopes that it like for other folks too, like, thank you for that. And I guess like, in terms of as we were just talking about gender and sexuality, kind of going off of that, thinking about how you understand your gender and sexuality today, if you had to define some of your life so far in terms of phases, what would they be like? So phases or like chapters? I can, I can drop this in the chat as well.
                

00:51:25 SPEAKER_KK

Oh my goodness. Phases and chapters. How many genders have I been through? So many. That’s like a funny question because I was just visiting home and I saw pictures of me from like prom and high school and I’m like, who is this person? But, yeah, I— so there was, you know, it’s funny. Oh my god. I hate that thinking about all of this. My first kiss was actually with a girl, and it was with— I don’t know what it was. Okay. So I was in elementary school and I kind of like tutored my classmates. My teachers always had to keep me busy essentially. I always finished my work very quickly and then I would be distracting to other students. And so they kind of tasked me with, “Hey, when you finish your work, walk around and ask if anybody else needs help.” And I remember, I have this friend and I will spare sharing her name, but she was, is— she’s Muslim and she and I were friends outside of class, but she didn’t need help, but I was like, “Oh, let’s talk. And I can pretend like I’m helping you.” Right. So, so we were just like hanging out and blah, blah, blah. And we were just like talking and I just leaned forward and kissed her. Like it was almost like a reflex. And like, I remember her just pulling back and her eyes being so big and almost like, in the way I interpreted it, mortified. And then I was mortified and I just ran away and we never talked about it again. And so that thinking back on that, I was eight years old. Like there was nothing. She was so young. She wasn’t even wearing hijab yet. Like it was just this like moment of like— I did it. And if you know me now, I am so the person who like asks for consent before kissing and all this, but me as a kid, I was like, I kissed this girl. I don’t know. It’s just so funny. But I was just like, yeah— I grew up as a little girl that had masculine tendencies. Like I played all the sports. I played with boys. I had a lot of guy friends. So that was definitely like a chapter of my life. Like with childhood, like always [inaudible] things that I would do. And I’d always wear shorts. Sometimes I’d walk around without a shirt on. And then I got punished for that pretty severely. By the time I reached kindergarten, if I was still walking around without a shirt on, I would get punished pretty badly. So I learned very quickly. I’m not allowed to have my chest out. I’m not allowed to be topless. And so that definitely informed gender. Kissing that girl when I was eight years old I’m sure informs my sexuality now, or it’s now, or it’s just like a funny little anecdote because kids are just curious and they’re exploring. I don’t want them to be punished. Like, it’s so funny to think of now. I remember when I went to India when I was seven, I wanted to get my haircut really short, like really, really really short because honestly— like the look kind of, but it was more that it was just so hot. So so hot. So I wanted short hair cause I was so hot and my mom wouldn’t let me, but eventually they let me, but with the humidity, my hair like poofed, it like went completely up. And my parents didn’t know about hair product. I didn’t know about hair product. So they just let it be. So I was like really poofy short hair. And because I was always playing with the guys, I had kids in India, my cousin’s friends and stuff, they always asked me if I was a girl or a boy when I was a kid. And I remember being like offended. And I was like, “I’m a girl. What are you talking about? Of course I’m a girl.” So even at a young age, I knew that there was shame associated with presenting as a gender that was different than your sex assigned at birth and the gender that was assigned to you at birth. So I knew and I still had that shame. Um, and I mean, to this day, I’m still not a man, you know, you can’t be calling me that, like as it goes, um, because being a man, how embarrassing. No, I’m just kidding. So there was those phases. So it was just kind of like a lot of confusion, but I knew what I liked and I really saw myself in my cousin Tiffany because my cousin Tiffany, she she was my chacha’s second daughter. And to this day, I still feel so at home with her. So along with like the family relationships that we talked about at the beginning, Tiffany is definitely one of them. My cousin, she lived with me here in the States, her dad, my chacha, actually married a Christian woman, a white Christian woman from the States. So she’s mixed. So I, you know, looking back on it, on my dad’s side of the family, my parents are the only ones who were same the race, religion, and caste and cisgender heteronormative relationship. My bhua married someone, Jain my chaachaa married someone Christian and white. So a different race altogether. Um, so yeah, I kind of grew up knowing that difference, like atypical-ness, wasn’t necessarily super stigmatized, but there was no same sex. There was no queer representation, um, in the dynamics. But my cousin Tiffany, she was, she played the sports that I played and she was so good. I like idolized her and she was so powerful and she was participating in all these masculine things, but she was still dating guys. And she was still like able to put makeup on. And sometimes she wouldn’t, actually more often than not, she didn’t put makeup on, but she was this quote-unquote
masculine behaviored woman who was dating men”. And she was— she pulled, like she pulled, I’m not gonna lie. And I just like idolized her. Cause she was also like excellent at sports and stuff like that. And she was just like the kindest person. Um, so I was like, “Oh, maybe I’m just like that,” you know?
                

00:58:31 SPEAKER_KK

That was like as I was going into like middle school and things like that. And then, you know, traumatic things happened in India. And, um, I learned a bit more about gender disparities and how people are treated based on gender, how they have to function in this world based on their gender presentations being received. Um, and then I got to high school and I was just so depressed. High school was probably one of the worst times of my life. So as far as a phase goes with gender and sexuality, I— looking back on my friend group at that time, um, very queer, very queer coded. They would tease me about being bisexual. And I’d be like, so defensive. I’d be like, “I am not bisexual. Like, why would you say this?” I was also like not really dating people or like crushing on people or interested in people. And I was on the soccer team, So I was also around all these like, like masculine women, but then a lot of them had boyfriends. Like it’s very confusing. Now that I’m still following some of them on social media, now some of them have come out as queer and I’m like, “This makes sense.” Um, but you know, we weren’t like that in high school. I was part of GSA, the Gay Straight Alliance. So I was straight— I was part of that in high school. Um, like all these things that when you look back, I’m like—. Oh my Gog, my cousins teased me because I wore a headband like every day in middle school. So they’re like, you know, Kina, we knew. And I was like, you could have told me, it would’ve saved me a lot of time, a lot of like stress in my brain.
                

01:00:30 SPEAKER_KK

And like, I know I’m like older than you, but when I was in high school, that’s when Facebook started and that’s when social media really started. And the internet, social media and like interacting with strangers online became a thing. And that’s when I sort of started exploring my sexuality more. And I specifically only did like straight, like I only talked to men or people who identified as men. And it was a lot of like hyper-sexual behavior online to kind of navigate feelings that I was having in my body that scared me. Because my parents never talked to me about sex. They never taught me about what was normal or to be expected in my body. Like I didn’t start puberty until I was a freshman in high school, which is a bit late for some people. I didn’t start my period until after all my friends had started their periods. So high school was like really confusing for me because I didn’t have words for how I was feeling and how I was identifying. And I didn’t have anyone around me who was sharing things with me or their curiosities with me. And I was also dealing with a lot of violence at home, between like my family members. And it was, I felt very isolated at that time. And I also actually physically injured my body in high school. So I wasn’t able to play soccer. So I didn’t have an outlet anymore. And I wasn’t allowed to exercise because my body was hurt. I got into a really bad car accident where a drunk driver hit me and like all these things that affected my body. And then all of a sudden I couldn’t play sports. So I had all this energy, because I had been an athlete my whole life. I was someone who exercised like six to seven times a week, playing multiple sports, like usually soccer or swimming. And to have that taken away, it was really rough at a time where there was an onset of so many hormones and so many things happening in my life while traumatic things were happening. Like my poor nervous system. Like I look back on that time and I’m like, “Oh my god, you were a child.” Like I felt like an adult. Cause I was 16 and I was like, I know how to think, I know how to do things. I can drive. But it’s like, “No, you were a child. You were still like such a baby.” Like you just understand and feel things more, but you don’t know how to regulate. And like I had very dysregulated parents because they have a lot of trauma and I can be aware of my parents’ immigration trauma— removal from home, trauma, poverty, trauma, all all these different things. I can be aware and all the trauma that my mom faced— Oh my god, her life, my heart. And I can still be like, I also feel pain from that. I also had to endure during a lot of it. And once again, it was like, I felt alone. And when I went online and I was talking to random people online, there were never any Indian people. There were never any Panjabi people, there were never South Asian or Middle Eastern people or anyone who looked like me, ever. I never saw myself in anything. So it was like, I have to just notice personality traits and be like, well, I have that personality trait. So at least I can identify or familiarize or empathize in that way or sympathize.
                

01:04:20 SPEAKER_KK

And then, I went to college as far. I picked my college based on distance from home and I picked the furthest away college possible. Um, and my life changed. So then the next chapter after a lot of confusion and isolation and questioning but affirming I’m straight, I’m a woman, like all of these things are just like— because of how much my body would shake and how like uncomfortable and different I would feel when someone would try and like call me out or quote unquote, call me in. And my friends that would tease me that I was bisexual, they were queer themselves. So it wasn’t necessarily like a— well, one of them was out queer. One of them didn’t come out until much later, but like, so it wasn’t necessarily like bullying, you know, it was just kind of like, you’re one of us. And I was always like, “No, I’m not.” So a lot of denial. Also because I was like, I can’t take one more thing that makes me feel abnormal. Cause I’m already feeling so abnormal cause I’m dealing with like sexual trauma that I faced, substance abuse, trauma within my family. And you know, physical, verbal, spiritual abuse at the hands of different family members that I faced. That me and my siblings faced, my parents face, all of us, sometimes with each other, on each other.
                

01:05:48 SPEAKER_KK

And then I went to college, and I actually got my first boyfriend and we were together for two years and he is an amazing guy. Like looking back on it, I’m just like, “I’m so lucky that this guy was my first boyfriend.” He’s South Asian. I hold such affection for him. Right. Like we were long distance, of course, and we were actually like friends in high school. There were like two distinct South Asian Middle Eastern groups. And basically you were either part of the South Asians that I was related to, or you weren’t, because there weren’t that many of us. Right. And so he was part of the side that wasn’t. And he was always this real quiet kind of nerdy guy. He’s a little taller than me. The sweetest person, he’s still like in my life tangentially. I’m actually much closer with his brother. But we were together two years. And I’m so grateful for the time that I had with him, but you know, something just didn’t feel right. I also needed a lot more attention at the age of 19 than I do now, constant attention from a partner than I do now. And we were at a distance and I wasn’t getting enough from it. And eventually I left cause I wasn’t happy. We did actually have sex. So he was like the first person in my life that I had— Oh my god, I skipped such an important thing.
                

01:07:39 SPEAKER_KK

Oh my god. You’re going to learn so much about me, but I’m an open book. So this is what’s going to happen. I find myself to this day still very attracted— I can find men very attractive. Like I can be attracted to them. Now I realize it’s a bit more in a queer way. But back then I just was like, “Pants feelings. Like I’m having pants feelings about this person.” That’s what I call it ’cause I don’t really know what else to call it. But I actually ended up having sex with this guy that I met online. And he was so nice. We don’t talk anymore or anything, but we met up and we hung out for like a few months before I left for college. Cause I was just like, because of what had happened to me when I was younger, I was terrified of sex. Like I was so scared. So scared. I was like, “This is dangerous. I’m going to get hurt.” So this guy that I like randomly met, I felt pretty safe with him. It was cool. I was like, why not? And so we did. And it was so like meh, it was such a boring experience for me. Like I went through it and I was in my head the whole time and I was like, “This doesn’t feel very nice. I want this to stop. Do I want this to stop? Let’s just see if I can get into it.” Like these thoughts were just going through my head. And whatever, it happened. First person I ever had sex with. And it was this random person that I had met online, which I don’t recommend for people, but I feel like is a very common queer experience. I actually wonder what he’s up to. He was super talented. like he was a musician. He is a musician. He was very talented in that way. So there was that like quickie little phase and I only bottomed for this person. So it was very much like cis-heterosexual sexual dynamic. And he was so sweet to me. He knew it was my first time. He was very, very sweet with me. He was very, very nice. So I was really grateful. At any time I needed to pause, he’s like, “You don’t seem like you’re into it. Are you okay?” So I was grateful that this person that I had met online and had been talking to for a few months and then we met in person and then we fooled around.
                

01:10:26 SPEAKER_KK

Yeah. But then with my boyfriend, he wanted to wait till marriage for sex. And I was like, okay, but I’m ready to have sex whenever you’re ready. Like I was like, no pressure, but we can have sex whenever, which I think looking back, I had disconnected the sacredness that I now kind of associate with sex from my being, because I had been through sexual assault as a child. So for me, I was like, it’s just a behavior. It’s just something we can do. It doesn’t matter. But for my boyfriend at the time, he was like, “God—,” he had three priorities in his life, God, family, and friends, and God was first. So he was very much like, “I’m going to wait till marriage.” And I was like, “Okay, wait till marriage. Like, that’s fine. We are teenagers, so we’re not getting married anytime soon.” But eventually like a year later, he was like, “Okay, I think I’m ready.” And so we did, and it was very sweet. Like it was very, very sweet sex. It didn’t really do much for me. But I tried and I tried quite a bit. And then after we broke up, I slept with another guy cause I was like, “Was it just because I was having sex with a virgin that it wasn’t pleasurable for me?” And no, it wasn’t. It was, it wasn’t because it was— it just didn’t work. It just didn’t fit. We didn’t fit. Oh my god. There’s so many puns in this interview. But I’m a very sex positive person and I think awkwardness and discomfort are part of it. Like it just is. And so like, I had sex with this other guy and he was so hot and I was so attracted to him. And then when we had sex, I was like, “Is this over?” Like, “When is this over?” kind of thing. Once again, really sweet guy. He was like, “All right, cool, if, if you don’t want to, we don’t have to.” I stopped us in the middle of sex and then he left. He was like, “Okay, I’m going to go.” I was like, “Yeah, just, go,” like whatever, I didn’t actually care. But it was, it was chill. He was fine. He wasn’t angry or anything. He was just kind of like, “Okay, well, if we’re just going to be like hanging out, I’m going to leave.” I was like, “Okay, umm bye”. So that was probably my straight phase ’cause I was like an adult, able to engage in sex consensually for the first time in my life. And I was exploring, I was trying to figure things out. And I knew that I could experience sexual pleasure and sexual arousal but I wasn’t experiencing it with these people. Right.
                

01:13:24 SPEAKER_KK

And then I went online again and then I went on Tumblr and as I was like kind of bouncing around the Tumblr verse, I kind of stumbled upon bisexuality and then I stumbled upon BDSM and then I stumbled upon transness. And I actually like— I forgot the order of things, but this was like the start of queerness for me. At least like where I was kind of pursuing it as opposed to it being kind of like in the periphery. I was like poking the bubbles, poking the bear. I was like trying to see what was happening. Um, and I actually met my first partner, my first queer partner who now— who is trans actually. At the time that we were dating, we weren’t considered a straight couple. We were considered a lesbian couple, whereas now we’d probably be— now we’d just be a queer couple, but back then we were considered a lesbian couple. And we were together for two years. I met them online on Tumblr and you know, I care about them deeply and I was like, “This is going to be the relationship for my life,” and pulling on the Indian movie storylines, the first person you meet and first person you have sex with and you feel that connection with, it’s going to be together forever. And no, it wasn’t. We broke up and I broke their heart and I am sad about that. Or I feel for that. And then, I entered another queer relationship. Oh wait, no, no, no. There was a gap. I had an online relationship— a BDSM relationship— where I was a sub and they were a dom and they were actually a transwoman. And so that was like— at the time my first like gender expansive queer relationship. And I loved that relationship. That was just like fun. That was just like play. But it wasn’t romantic. This was like online adventures of Kina. This was my early twenties. And then, after that ended, I started dating this other person that I had met online on Tumblr. And we were together for two years, but that was a horribly abusive relationship. That relationship turned really violent, really fast. The person I was with grew up in a household where all kinds of abuse were just rampant and infidelity was rampant. And so they treated me like I was always going to be cheating on them. And it led to a lot of jealousy and insecurity and eventually violence. I went to the hospital probably more times in those two years than I have in the rest of my adult life. I had sprained my elbow. I had a concussion. I had the police called on me and my household. I had a domestic violence case number with this person. Okay. Like looking back on it, they now identify as a man and I can’t help but be like, they’re all the same. Men are just awful. But that’s just me coping with it with humor. But that relationship changed me because going through physical, sexual, spiritual, verbal abuse, I think it changes a person, I think it changes your brain. And this was before I was 25, so my brain was still definitely developing. Just like having the police called on us multiple times and having to talk to the police. Like it was, it was such a horrible time and it was mainly stemming from their jealousy and insecurity because I had a lot of friends and I wanted to go hang out with them and they were like, you’re not allowed to essentially. And that went against me so much. ‘Cause I was like, I’m all alone up here. I worked so hard to create a community up here and now you’re denying me that community. Like it’s one of the main abuser tactics to isolate you and like cut you off from your people, which I see now. I feel like so much of that relationship, I was just watching myself like go through these horrible things and I knew better. And I knew the relationship wasn’t going to last. But every time we tried to break up, it just kept, they had nowhere to go and then they were homeless. And then I was like, well, I don’t want you to be homeless. And then they were broke. And I was like, well, I don’t want you to be hungry. And so I kept taking care of them, but that would feed— that would give them another way to get back into my life. And then I’d block them and then they changed their number and then they’d call me from a blocked number and they knew where I lived. And it was this tumultuous, oscillating dynamic between two people that we just brought out the worst in each other. And the way that I defended myself in that relationship, I became someone who screamed. I became someone who broke stuff. I became someone who used my body to stop arguments. And I was like, this isn’t me. And it was reminding me so much of like violence that I witnessed in my childhood. I was like, I don’t want this for myself. So, I mean, it took two years, but eventually it ended. And I’m really grateful that it did. And like, I’m still healing from that. Like I still go to therapy for that relationship because I notice in my current really healthy, beautiful, loving, nurturing relationship that behaviors will come up that definitely stem from the abuse that I experienced back then, a decade ago, you know. And I get really frustrated with myself and then I have to remind myself like, “Hey, you’re doing your best. And you have a really understanding partner, like just share it. And then you can work on it together kind of thing, or of thing, or just let them know you’re working on it and then they’ll be patient with you and all you need is patience.”
                

01:21:18 SPEAKER_KK

Um, so yeah, that chapter of my life was a lot of abuse and violence and I dropped out of school and I was trying to get back into school at that time. But it was really hard to be in school while being in an abusive relationship. Also because when I would try and work on schoolwork, they would throw a fit and they would pick a fight and then I would never get my work done. Because like if I gave my attention to anything else, they felt insecure essentially. And I tried to end it so many times and I kept letting them back in. And so eventually I started going to therapy again. And the therapist was like, “Dude, you you need to say what you mean and mean what you say. You need to follow through with when you say this is over, you need to stop talking to them.” And I was like, “But I can’t,” you know. It was a lot of toxicity, but eventually I got out of it. And then I was 25, and all of a sudden I was 25 and fully queer at this point, at least sexuality wise, I was fully queer. And honestly gender-wise, but I didn’t necessarily know gender wise. I didn’t I didn’t realize that I was performing gender in a way that people label as trans or non-binary or fluid. I didn’t realize I was performing gender in that way until my family pointed out how much I was violating what they expected me to perform gender as. So it was like, I was this free person and I was just doing things. And then all of a sudden I was told, “Wait, that’s not how it’s supposed to be done.” And I feel like that’s actually a really common thing with gender is like, you don’t realize that you’re violating it until someone’s like, you’re violating it. It’s very, very abstract. Which didn’t come later until I was 27 and I had gone back home for my sister’s wedding and all these clothes that I wanted to wear was not what they would have would have allowed. And they didn’t allow. So then, I was 25 and at 25 was when I actually really started drinking. Um, I actually drank in high school and then I stopped during college and I just smoked a lot. And then at 25 I started drinking, like actually drinking. I used to hate the taste of alcohol. And then I started appreciating it. So that was a bit of a wild time for me. That was the first time I dated someone older than me. Oh wait, no, sorry. My boyfriend was a year older than me, but this is the first time I dated in a queer dynamic where someone was older than me. And that person— great person, lovely soul, super gentle with me, but they had some substance abuse issues and it kind of pulled me into this whirlwind of drinking. And they did other drugs so I participated with drug use with them. And I was like, “I can’t, I can’t be doing this.” And I was fresh off of an abusive relationship. And then eventually that person told me they loved me and I told them, “I don’t feel the same. And I don’t want to placate you in this dynamic so I’m going to walk away now.” And I broke their heart, which I’ve had my heart broken and I’ve broken other people’s hearts and it’s rough. It’s rough. It’s really, really rough. I will say this. I didn’t expect physical abuse from queer relationships. And when I was in one, I was kind of blown away about it.
                

01:25:43 SPEAKER_KK

So from 25 to 27 was probably the last time that I like identified with the cisgender agenda. And when I went home at 27, this whole time I was still trying to graduate undergrad, but I was dealing with so much stuff with my mental health. And then I also started working and it was just really hard. And I started to feel really badly about myself and that affected my performance in school. And school also didn’t make it necessarily navigable for me either. I went from being like this really gifted student that like, everyone was like, “You’re going to finish college in three years.” To dropping out of college and just struggling. Just like feeling terribly about myself. Like my mental health hit really, really low. And then the abuse really fed that self deprecating thoughts. I have fought like hell and I continue to to this day. But yeah, at 27 when I went back home to my parents’ place, and it was my sister’s wedding, that was where I really, really— and at that point in my life I had also befriended enough and immersed myself in the queer community in Northern California. Mind you, it was mainly the white and Latino queer community in Northern California that I was exposed to more things like drag culture. And I was exposed to more trans people who were open about it and, then non-binary people. And I was like, “Oh, there’s like a secret third option,” you know, there’s like this other option. And then like the way they talked and I was like, like, “Wow, I finally have all these words for all these feelings that I’ve had for so much of my life.” A lot of my gender expression is through my hair and my clothes. And so I was like, well, I always want to wear certain things and people say no. But I was like, I love suits and I love [inaudible] and and I want to wear a kurta and I want to, you know, be dressed in a certain way. And it just wasn’t welcomed. And then I started really like, you know, connecting with other non-binary people and other trans people. And I felt so seen by them and they saw me.
                

01:28:53 SPEAKER_KK

And I saw them and you know, now I’m, I’m 32 and I have been in a relationship for almost five years. And, you know, probably in the last two years, it has been like the first time that I’ve really connected with other South Asian queer people. And it’s interestingly, it’s also been where the most that I’ve learned about caste dynamics as well. My parents brought me up very much like in the way that, caste doesn’t exist out here in the States kind of thing. And then, you know, I learned, well, what’s our caste? Cause they never said that. That was not something I was exposed to at all growing up, which is a hundred percent privilege and it’s a hundred percent attached to my ignorance of my own privilege. ‘Cause with privilege comes the ignorance of it. But you know, I had the light bulb awakened when I turned, when I was around the age of 30 and then I started like— now I see it, you know, now I’m like very, very much more aware of it. I’m trying to learn about it. I’m trying to actively, you know, participate in anti-caste— live an anti-caste lifestyle, try to, you know, more abolitionist. Like my queerness is definitely political and it informs me, and exposes me to the existence of others and the perspectives of others. And I always, always want to hear from other people about what they’re going through and what’s happening. And so it can better inform me about, you know, how to conduct myself and to create safe spaces for everybody. So everyone feels brave enough to be themselves. If they’re not hurting people, you know, or or infringing upon other people’s consent, I want them to be, you know, brave enough to be themselves and feel safe. Now I’m really learning about how insidious caste is and how it is all over the world and how, you know, last names designate caste and all these different things that you know, I try to embody within myself and in my practices in the way that I love. Like just trying to let it be a place of growth, and, and hold space for all the pain that we’ve all been, and like try to be gentle. I just want to be gentle and soft but hold firm to my beliefs and my values and carry that forward.
                

01:31:54 SPEAKER_KK

And so the current chapter that I’m in is probably the most free that I’ve ever been with my gender and sexuality because I can perform it any way that feels true to myself. And I have a partner who respects that. And I have friends who honor it and I have, you know, I still have the issues of my gender, you know, with my family and stuff. They’re still trying to catch up on it, but you know, it took my parents seven— wait, no, how many years— like seven years to get to a point where they were comfortable enough to invite a partner of mine into the home. So let’s see, I have hope as I go forward with it with my family and also to be in community with other South Asian queers. And I hope that this interview, this recording can be almost like a calling card as a way. So hopefully we can see each other. And I think it’s the way that queerness has informed me in this way is that like, I am aware of marginalization and hierarchies of power and how that plays out in social dynamics, interpersonal dynamics. I feel like what I have seen with queer Panjabi Sikh people— at least, the ones who are aware of their caste privilege and are aware that it is a privilege— that it’s so much love. It’s so much space. It’s so much awareness of our connection to each other, our connection to the world, our willingness to help and be open and to see each other. Like it’s so beautiful. I’m so grateful for those relationships in my life. And I want more of them and I want to cultivate that in my life. I want to keep feeding that side of me as well because it feels more like home and it feels like belonging in a way that hasn’t really existed for me in my life ever up until this point. And this is probably the most I’ve felt it for which I’m very, very grateful.
                

01:34:49 SPEAKER_MS

Oh no, thank you so much for, for just gifting all of those stories and for all of those experiences to me. I’m just filled with so much like appreciation and gratitude. To just be a witness to your journey. So thank you for allowing me to be a witness, and for being just so generous with your time and with your experience as well. I have a lot of other questions, but I also do want to be mindful of your time and energy as well. So I wanted to do a check-in to see how you’re doing. I know I had said the interview would take like up to two hours, but we are like over two hours now. So I want to be just mindful of how you’re doing and if you would want, I’m happy to— I would love to even organize in terms of another time to continue with the other questions or if you feel up for it, I can ask the next question too, but just wanted to do a check-in to see how you are doing. This also must be a lot in the context of kind of reflecting and sharing and like pouring yourself out in this way. Like not just to me, but like also to other listeners as well. I’m sure this is a lot. So I wanted to kind of see how you’re doing.
                

01:36:09 SPEAKER_KK

I didn’t mean to talk so long and so much, I didn’t know how many questions you asked. I was like, Oh, it’s just a couple of questions. I’ll just share it all. But you probably have it categorized or like organized in a much different way. I am totally okay to keep going for like a little bit longer, but I also want to be mindful of your time. I don’t know how much time you have to hold because I know you set it for two hours. We can absolutely move it to another day if that fits your schedule better. So where are you at? Like I could still talk for a little bit longer.
                

01:36:41 SPEAKER_MS

I’m also good to continue as well. I just wanted to make sure you were also okay.
                

01:36:44 SPEAKER_KK

Okay. Thank you for checking in. I appreciate.
                

01:36:47 SPEAKER_MS

Yeah. No, thank you. Thank you. Kind of transitioning a little bit, but also in relationship to that question about the phases, when thinking about your relationship to Sikhi, how would you say you learned more about Sikhs and Sikhi and how— I know you’ve already started to kind of touch on some of those experiences, but wanted to kind of see if thinking about your relationship to Sikhi and how it’s changed and evolved over the course of your life. If you had to define some of your life in terms of phases, in the context of your relationship to Sikhi, like Sikhi, like what would those phases look like and what would they be?
                

01:37:29 SPEAKER_KK

I would probably say me at my most devout was my first 12 years of life. Like that was when I was going to Gurdwaara every Sunday. That was when my parents tried to sign me up for like Panjabi classes. That was the only time that I ever got out of— or not got out, but the only time I didn’t go to the Gurdwaara was when I had a soccer tournament that like went through on a Sunday. And by devout, I mean when I was consistently attending the Gurdwaara. So it was probably those like first years, I think after going to India when I was 12 and, you know, traumatic things happened, I like so disconnected from myself, that that included Sikhism. I’ve always identified myself as Sikh or Panjab— Sikh Panjabi is how I’ve always identified. And, you know, as I got older, going through high school, because I was just kind of drowning, I would go to the Gurdwaara intermittently. Sometimes I would attend weddings. Learning about Sikhism came a lot from like when I would visit India and, my like Maasis would talk to me about different aspects of the religion, not necessarily like quotes from the Guru Granth Saahib, but like just incorporating the morals, almost like fabulistic, like I loved fables. I loved folk tales. I loved learning about those in my— one of my Maasis’ husbands, he had all of the folk tales. So I loved just sitting and listening to him. He had so many that he taught me. So it kind of phased out a bit more in high school, but also in high school, like if you’re different in the slightest way, people attack. So it was like, I was different because I was South Asian. And I actually went to a decently diverse school, it was predominantly Asian, but it was mainly East Asian kids as opposed to South Asian or Southeast Asian kids. So I was unique still. I remember taking a standardized test and anytime I take a standardized anything to this day, they don’t have Panjabi or Sikh on any of them. And so, yeah, I remember my teacher being like, “What is that? Is that like Pakistani?” And I was just like, “Um, sure.” Like, I didn’t know what to say because I was nine years old. And it’s interesting because, you know, borders are all made up. I do actually have— my family hailed from modern-day Pakistan, but they had to migrate South to Mumbai and Delhi because partition. So I’m like, “Yeah, kind of, but not in the way that you think.” Like how do you put the— you can’t put that on a standardized test. But I never felt like bad about my difference. I remember in high school because it was more about assimilation to be accepted, I remember feeling so anxious about being seen in any desi kaprha [clothing] that I was wearing. Any salwar kameez, especially salwar kameez, cotton salwar kameez was like such a comfortable, traditional thing that I would wear to the Gurdwaara. And then we’d go get food afterwards, you know? And I remember being like almost embarrassed to be seen in that. And now I’m like, absolutely not. Now I will walk in it in my full power in any space. Like I am grateful to be able to be wearing what I want to wear in the presence of whomever. But as a kid, it’s like the, “Oh my god, don’t look at me, like I’m going to die from embarrassment,” type things phase.
                

01:42:16 SPEAKER_KK

So I kind of like lost— like I was still involved, but I wanted to be cool, you know? And it wasn’t cool to be different around like high school age. And then, you know, when I went to college, I pretty much like disconnected from from Sikhism. I didn’t really understand the language. I had faced so much suppression because of being socialized as a woman and like not feeling special, and feeling like being Indian, being Panjabi meant being in service of men. And, you know, these were the stories I was living my life as. So I was like, “Why would I continue that? why would I perpetuate that?” Because misogyny made me very angry. And I witnessed that so much at every single party that I went to— South Asian party because of how the women were treated as opposed to the men and how I was treated as opposed to my brother and my cousins and stuff like that. And how all the men just get to sit and talk and chat and whatever the fuck they talk about. And then all the women are just running around like crazy, making all the food, serving, cleaning, constantly. It wasn’t for me. It felt very, very against what felt good to me.
                

01:44:05 SPEAKER_KK

The only times that I was ever really in it was when I would visit home, or I would listen to the music or I’d eat the food. I’d feel those connections again. And I wore my karha. I still actually kept my karha. I’ve always had my karha. I keep it with me at all times. It’s changed through the years and stuff, but that is one that I tend to keep on even to this day. There was— actually, you know, it’s so funny when it’s really hot out, wearing— I have eczema— bracelets or anything on my wrists or skin tend to cause eczema reactions. So that’s probably like the only time that I don’t wear my karha as often. Because like the sweat and just like the aggravation of it on my skin. And then it became like a thing where I only really listened to— in my twenties— I only really listened to like bhajans [devotional music] or prayers— or even going to the Gurdwaara happened when I was with my family and they were going or they were playing it at home. Like they had recordings of it and they were playing it at home. Now my dad— because he can’t make it to the Gurdwaara every Sunday— he actually is part of this, ever since the pandemic, they’ve started doing it online, so he just tunes in and listens to it on his phone at home. So now like listening to prayers when I visit home tends to be how I’m like attached to it, I guess, or actively attached to it. But you know, like after having my caste privilege bubble popped in my late twenties, I’ve become much more interested in learning about it and being more of an active participant in what what Sikhism is. And learning about learning how Sikhi, the origin of it was actually like abolitionist initiative, it was something to be like, “We’re all human, why would we heed something like caste? We need to extend our love to everyone.” Learning that that was what it was. And drop the last name, and that’s where Kaur came from. That’s where Singh came from. I was like, I don’t know, it felt like a calling to me. And I was like, “That’s amazing. I didn’t know that that was what Sikhism was. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that that was what Sikhi preaches.” and all that kind of stuff. So I’ve become more interested in learning about it. And then I learned about the way that people practicing Sikhi have brought Brahminical casteist hierarchy to Sikhism. And I’m like, “Fucking hell, dude.” Like can’t the people who want us to just be like equitable and humans with each other, why can’t we win? Like it’s very interesting being a part of something that’s not a populist movement. And then being on the side that is still for abolish the caste system mentality and goals. I’m learning so much and I’m like, this is what my ancestors tried for. This is what they wanted. This is what carries out through my history. And, you know, with British imperialism and, and Brahminical casteism, so much has been wiped from my history. I don’t know anyone in my family past my daada-daadi, and that is by design. And so now I find myself–I’ve always been very thirsty for knowledge. I’ve always loved reading. I’ve always loved learning. So now I find myself actually participating in it more, but from the angle, I guess, of political participation and trying to participate in it and carrying forth this abolitionist mentality now.
                

01:48:47 SPEAKER_KK

So this phase of my life in Sikhi is probably closer to the Gurus’ lessons and morals than when I was a kid just kind of following along with my parents. I feel more active in it now. And, you know, I do know that in Sikhi— my dad says this quote to me all the time, because my dad loves quotes, but he said, “Women in Sikhi are strong for they give birth to Kings,” or something like that. And I’m like, “He’s got the spirit.” The message is a bit off to me. You know, it’s like, women have more to offer than just producing men, but you know, at least, I can’t really think of another religion that kind of holds women to a certain— I feel like Sikhi is more feminist than other religions. And so I’m grateful for that because my dad is a self-proclaimed feminist. He does believe in the power of women. He does believe that women are powerful. He’s never been one to purport that kind of idea that women do this and do this and men do this. He never pushed that on me, which I feel like is very unique. I have very unique experience with that. It was more my brother that was like, “Men are superior and men can do this and women can’t do shit.” And all this horrible misogynistic bullshit. But my dad was like, “No, in Sikhism, in Sikhi, like women are great. Women are powerful. Women have power. We can’t do anything without them,” kind of stuff. And so understanding that more now, it kind of makes sense that my values are what my values are and I recognize it more. And I always introduced myself with Sikhi as part of my identity. I always have, I think I was reconciling more with my queerness for a lot of my twenties that now I’m trying to look at myself as a whole person. And Sikhi absolutely informs how I carry myself in this world and my connection to it. But I have lost my way as well, as it goes. And I don’t necessarily know how to embody that spirituality in community with others, because I still feel on the outside a bit due to my queerness. And I just, you know, this is something unique to someone like me. But I believe it’s possible. I believe that my queerness has, you know, my Sikhi identity, I believe that we can get to an abolished caste future. I believe in that kind of future for us where we’re all welcome and we’re treated by the content of who we are— not just who we are, not just by our caste or our sexuality or genders, because all of this exists pre-colonial, pre-coloniality. And here we are in the trenches, just trying to hold on to each other, you know?
                

01:52:41 SPEAKER_MS

No, thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that too. There’s so many questions that are coming out from that, that I want to touch on, such as whether it’s like questions about coming out, what that means, what your experience has been with that, or even in thinking further about like your relationship to Sikhi and the Sikh community, like how that’s been, what does it even mean to be a Sikh and have those kinds of questions. As well as kinds of questions thinking about what it means to be part of like the LGBTQIA + community, because even that, as you were kind of naming, is something that you’ve grappled with for quite a while. So that has also been like in itself a journey that, of course, is ongoing. So with all of this said, how do you feel about scheduling based on your capacity and based on your time, a second round of interview for kind of these second set of questions. Just to be respectful of your energy as well. And then, from my end, being on the East coast, I haven’t eaten yet too.
                

01:53:54 SPEAKER_KK

Oh my god, you have to go eat.
                

01:53:58 SPEAKER_MS

Yes. But that way, in terms of like the conversation itself though, I would love to continue it because there’s just, I feel like from your end, there’s a lot of things that like need to be told and I’m really, really thankful you’re taking the time to share them with me and to get them archived. So I really want to make sure that the space like continues to maintain its richness while like respecting and honoring preserving your capacity and preserving your energy too.
                

01:54:31 SPEAKER_KK

Oh no, I really do appreciate that. I also have, it might be a trauma response, I don’t know, I have issues with taking up space. So I feel like I’m just taking up like so much of your time. And I’ve been talking so much about just the first three questions. I really want to be mindful.
                

01:54:56 SPEAKER_MS

Oh no. I a hundred percent hear you and I think it also may be more so because given that it’s an oral history interview where my role is to— I’m just like, interview like, I don’t even provide like, “Oh, Oh, this makes me think about” and, there’s very little validation, and even very little response I’m giving. And I just move on to the question. And I really do apologize for how that is. That’s kind of one of the, I guess, limitations of an oral history because the oral history is just focused— it’s supposed to be about you and less of a conversation and more of an attempt to archive your life story. But please please don’t think that at all. This is the very purpose of this in terms of you have so much to offer and like the stories that you have, the journey that you’ve been on. As you have also named, it’s hard to find validation for who you are and find even a reason for you to like be able to articulate your existence when you don’t see your existence reflected anywhere. All of that to say, your story, you telling it, it’s so important because other folks, we’ll be able to see and we’ll find resonance and something that they can hold on to to validate their own existence. So I hope that you don’t walk away feeling as if you took up too much space because I appreciate that. Like for each of these questions, you’ve been giving such a thorough and such a rich response and I’m already taking away and I’m excited for other folks, when they do also witness, how much they’ll also be in conversation with as well.
                

01:57:28 SPEAKER_KK

Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate you saying that. [proceed to scheduling Interview Part 2].
                

Interview with Kina Kaur Part 2 of 2

00:00:02 SPEAKER_MS

Welcome. This is manmit singh. Today is July 18th, 2023. I am interviewing for the second time, Kina. This interview is taking place in Toronto in my temporary residence here. And this interview is sponsored by Jakara and is a part of the Storytelling and Unsettlement through Sikh LGBTQIA+ Oral Histories Project. Thank you so much again, Kina, for being willing to sit down for a second round of interviews. It was so great getting to know you during the first interview session that we had. And thank you again for creating space to continue that conversation. So the first question that I have— picking up from where we left off is, in your experience, how straightforward or linear is the process of being out? Is it something that everyone would have to do at some point in their life?
                

00:01:08 SPEAKER_KK

Wow, that is a great question. Thank you so much for creating this space that I’ve only ever embodied. And so to share it with others is probably one of the greatest privileges of my life. So I’m really grateful to see and to be seen. As far as the question, would you mind putting it in the chat again?
                

00:01:36 SPEAKER_MS

100%, I will drop it into the chat. So in your experience, how straightforward or linear is the experience of being out or coming out? Is it something that everyone you think would have to do at some point in their life?
                

00:01:54 SPEAKER_KK

I appreciate the straightforward comment because it feels like a pun, but it is not straightforward. It’s probably one of the most abstract things in my life, in lives, I feel. Being out and coming out I feel are a bit different. I’ve kind of learned— or my evolution around the term coming out has evolved to letting in, because coming out sounds like I’m revealing something that I’ve kept secretive and it has this power imbalance that gives too much power to the other party. Whereas letting in is something that is self empowerment, it is something that I choose to disclose. It’s something that I’m letting you in on my life because I feel like I will let you get to know me in a certain way. When I was younger though, and I first quote-unquote came out, It was terrifying. I had put off coming out. And when I say coming out, I mean like telling my parents, actually telling my siblings, anyone in my family, anyone who had known me before sexuality was really a thing that I could express from childhood to adulthood. Growing up, I was always a tomboy. That’s what everyone labeled me as. And, you know, I feel like the identities that I embody and reveal to others are completely personal, but they’re also circumstantial. So if I’m with a partner, I will say I’m trans, non-binary, gender fluid, gender queer, Panjabi, and I express my sexuality as non-monosexual. But if I’m talking to someone I have kind of a rocky relationship with or someone that I don’t really know, but we’re kind of sharing stuff, I’ll just be like, “Oh, I’m a lesbian.” And it happens all the time. I have to reveal this stuff all the time. And I think I try and offset it by dressing a certain way and having my hair a certain way and speaking out for queer issues and basically any left leaning issues to let people know where I stand and what will not be allowed in my presence. I will not allow slander about certain— I won’t allow slander, really, especially for marginalized, disenfranchised, oppressed communities in my presence. And I feel like that aligns a lot with queerness and that part of being-outness of myself that I also surround myself with. Yeah, it is not linear at all because people will assume so many things about my gender and I’ve come to learn that that really shows where they’re coming from and their perception of things. And what other people think of me is not my problem. It’s not for me to heed or really care about. I have to mind it and I have to respect it for my own safety because some people will still come at me with a deference when they find out that–non-binary, trans, anytime I open up about pronouns, revealing my pronouns to someone, which are they, them, automatically creates this “huh” in their eyes if they are not queer themselves. And it’s really frustrating. And then I prefer if they just didn’t ask questions about it and they just went with it. And then when I feel comfortable talking about it, then questions can ensue. But just sharing my pronouns is something that— it can feel like such a battle with new people and it can, I don’t know, it can be a threat to myself as well. Like I understand the context of me being queer in certain spaces isn’t necessarily allowed.
                

00:06:33 SPEAKER_KK

And yeah, it’s— what’s another—? Another way though that I appreciate it is that it’s not linear, is that whenever I do reveal my gender expansiveness to other people or my queerness to other people, they question gender. And that is something that I appreciate being able to have that conversation. They don’t need to have it with me. They don’t need to come with me with some ignorance or bigotry. But if they just question it and it causes them to look inside themselves, and some people have never taken the time to actually look inside and be like, “Who am I? What do I value? What do I embody?” And if it gives that opportunity, I’m really, really grateful for it. And if they come at me with respect and they’re like, “Hey, what does that mean?” I’ll be like, “Okay, cool, let’s figure this— we can figure this out together.” I won’t use myself as an example. We can talk about it in larger spaces as communities or systems. But yeah, I feel like I’m constantly letting people in or challenging people’s personal biases just by existing. And that can be met with a lot of love and power and liberation and it can also be met with a lot of violence and judgment and excommunication. So it’s a constant vigilance that I have to— or not have to— but I understand is part of my path to live this way in these societies, in these identities that I embody.
                

00:08:37 SPEAKER_MS

Thank you so much. And also I do apologize. Housekeeping had just knocked on the door. So I was just like, “Please, I’m okay.”
                

00:08:44 SPEAKER_KK

Yeah, no. Oh, there’s a second question. Is this something that everyone would have to do at some point in their life? I do believe that there is a metaphorical closet for everyone. Like, it can just be a secret that you are terrified that– it could also be joy. It could also be joyful to have this secret and be like, when do I get to share this? But it can be something just big that you’re letting the people in your life know about. Like, for example, my mom, she had the horrible experience of having to reveal to us when she had cancer. And so she like called a family meeting and my family isn’t necessarily one that is together in that way. We question those type of things because it’s rare when all five of us are together for a lot of different reasons. So when my mom is like, “hey, I want all of us around,” we’re like, “There’s something up, there’s something wrong.” That’s where our minds all go to. And she sat us down and she told all of us. She actually couldn’t even say the words. We kind of sussed it out. And so for me, witnessing that, I was like–that was her coming out about something deeply personal about herself. She was also shifting an identity. She was now going to go on disability. She was now, you know, a person that had another identity upon her to reveal to us. And I feel like that happens a lot. Like it could be telling your spouse that you got fired. You know, it could be revealing that you have cancer. It could be letting a spouse know that you’re trans, you know, that you’ve revealed this about yourself. So I feel like at some point, we all come out about something about ourselves to each other, but I would like to shift it to letting in, because coming out— that gives too much power to the other party. It’s not— and I’m not sacrificing my power for anybody else. Like, I can let you in about this, kind of thing. So yeah.
                

00:11:16 SPEAKER_MS

Yeah, no, thank you so much for parsing out and just sharing. It seems like you’ve just sat so deeply also with the different facets of coming out and parsing those out, not just for your own self, but also for others and what it means to let other folks in and what that offers in their own lives, whether it’s prompting them to self-reflect and self-interrogate. So I thank you so much for sharing that for folks. And kind of shifting from that actually a little bit too. I would love to hear a little bit more about how you think of yourself, especially since that’s something that you’ve kind of started to touch on as well. So to you, I would really love to hear about what your relationship with the Sikh community, the Sangat and the larger Sikh Qaum has been, and I can drop that in the chat as well.
                

00:12:24 SPEAKER_KK

What is my relationship? When I find others that also identify as Sikh or like part of the community of Sikhi, I feel joy, I do. Because I’m just like, oh there you are. Like our families, our familial histories intersect. And, you know, I grew up not knowing anybody past my daadaa-daadi, naanaa-naani’s [paternal and maternal grandparents] family line. I don’t know my ancestry. And that has a huge aspect, I mean, that is tied to partition and genocide and, you know, just colonization and imperialization that has just, which has torn apart our community so much. So when I see someone out here in the States, a part of that community, I’m like, there’s something here. Like we have something together, you know? But when I was a kid, it used to be community, it used to be predominantly for me, my relationship with Seyva was understanding— with Sikhism, was understanding Seyva and participating within that ritual of being able to make food and provide Langar. That was kind of my understanding of Sikhi. And it was the one that I was the most familiar with and the one that made the most sense to me from what I value. Also because Hindi and Panjabi were not taught to me explicitly so I can understand it, but speaking it is really difficult, so when you have that disconnect with the language, it’s usually like, at least for me, behavior participation to kind of feel a part of the culture. So for me, it’s cooking the food, and it’s providing service to those who don’t have the means to help themselves. And so I feel calm and peaceful when I hear, you know, prayers and Sangat and sitting there and I can listen to it and be reminded of like, look within, take deep breaths. It’s very meditative. And so I’m extremely grateful for the introspection that Sikhism and being a part of the community has taught me, because it has also helped me reflect on where I stand in society and where others stand in society, and our positionality in terms of how can we be there for each other? How can we fill in these gaps? If I’m giving 20%, can you give 20% and we find other people to give 40%? Or the rest of the math on that— another 20%.
                

00:15:29 SPEAKER_KK

But growing older though, I have learned that the ideal abolitionist, powerful warrior narratives that I was taught as a kid is not how it’s practically applied. So as an anti-caste religion that tried to absolve those Brahminical power dynamics and understanding that it— it is such a powerful hierarchical system that it has seeped into something that was originally to abolish it, I’m skeptical and I’m a bit more vigilant, especially coming from a place of privilege. I want to ensure that it is an inclusive space for Dalit, Bahujan, Adivasi, Valmiki folk. But also coming from a place of privilege, I don’t wanna be like, “Well, what’s your caste?” You know, like I don’t wanna be asking these questions. I want it to be, and not in a colorblind racist way, I want to respect where we are all coming from. I want to approach it equitably. And so I’m a bit more vigilant now. So now when I meet someone who identifies as Sikh, Panjabi, following Sikhi, those type of things, I’m like, “Okay, that’s great and I love it and I want to hear more about it, but are you about like hash-tag Jatt-Life?” Because if that’s the case, I want to talk to you about that because I would like you to engage in the introspection that our Gurus did, the ones that were like, we are all equal. Like we need to not have caste denote the value of a human being. Like we’re humans, we need to love. And you know, my parents raised me with the, “All people are equal” type thing, you know, but that’s a much easier lesson to teach when you are of a privileged identity. And it wasn’t until, you know, I reached my 30s that I began unlearning all these things. Yeah, so at first it was just like, “Oh my God, we’re in community together.” Like I have someone else that I can relate to. I’m not just surrounded by white people and Hindu people and Gujarati people and all these different identities. Like this is a very specific subsect of community that is one of the largest religions in the world. And yet in California, I am starting to find it’s all so much privilege in so many different ways. And I want to work in community to dissolve some of those historical differences so that we can get back to, or move forward with us being equal or equitable in the future. So I’m a bit more vigilant about it now. Before it was a bit naive and had the rose colored glasses on. But now— and then, you know, it’s funny because when I visit family in India or in Panjab, I don’t feel— I feel too American to be included. And then when I’m out here, I feel almost too queer to feel fully recognized in Sikhi. And so it’s this balance where I really want to feel that kind of intimacy and connection with other people of my likeness and feel that joy, that ancestral joy that can course through all of us. But it’s hard. It’s like I’m too American for Panjab and I’m too Panjabi to be American and I’m too queer to be part of Sikhi fully. So it’s, it has led to, like I said, a lot of introspection and understanding myself and knowing my value so that when I get challenged externally, I can be like, “No..I mean, while that has merit for you, I know me, and I embody this in the way that I live in my intersection. And whether it’s enough or not is not up to you to define, it’s up to me on a personal note.” And that’s why finding other people who live at these intersections is just something that I treasure and value so much because I don’t have to explain that to people of my likeness in that way, for which I am eternally grateful.
                

00:20:44 SPEAKER_MS

Thank you so much for sharing that and I really hear you on how— I guess if someone disclosing, for example, that they are a Sikh, like now, it’s like, “What does that even mean?” And it’s just been so complicated. There’s just so many layers because of how different folks practice that and uphold that and weaponize that even in different ways which kind of guides us actually to the next question of how would you define a Sikh and what are your thoughts on people being able to self-identify as a Sikh? What does it mean to be a Sikh? And I can drop that into the chat.
                

00:21:22 SPEAKER_KK

How would I define a Sikh? Wow. I feel like originally being Sikh or following Sikhi was just religious. Like I understood it as a religion. As I’ve grown up and listened to and participated fully in that religion, going to Gurdwaara, going to the Gurdwaara camps, going to anything— because my parents, they came from Delhi and Mumbai, and originally my family hails from north of the India-Pakistan border. They tried so hard to find community out here because they were all alone and they didn’t have technology to connect with their family back home the way that we do now, which I think makes a big difference. So for them it was like, get my kids involved in Gurdwaara, in Sikhism, find that because we’ll find each other. And as I’ve grown up I feel like it’s also a culture that practices or tries to embody the philosophies of the teachings of the Gurus. So I believe that if you are aware of those tenets and lessons and you are like— I self identify as Sikh, I do, but I don’t necessarily go to Gurdwaara anymore, you know, but I do try and practice and embody the lessons taught by the Gurus and I wear my karha. And currently to me, being a part of Sikhi is working on caste abolition in California. I mean it has expanded to like Seattle and, you know, all those things that I’ve been trying to participate in. So for me, that’s what being a Sikh is for my age, for me at this point in my life. For some people, I think self-identification is really important because we all have our own ways of expressing it. Like some people will grow out their Kesh, some people will go to Gurdwaara every week, some people will do Seyva, some people will teach Panjabi courses, you know. People have their own way, some people go into teaching because they’re like, this is the most noble thing I can do. Some people just go into nonprofit work and those types of things. So I think because we are so far from the origins of Sikhism— or not so far, but we are far enough that the modern world doesn’t look like how it did when Sikhism came into origin, that there are ways to follow Sikhi that you can identify as that and it’d be true. It’d be authentic and be an identity of yourself, without it looking like how everybody else wants to define it. So I see it as cultural, also as religious, and I see it as spiritual too, but in terms of behavioral practice, there’s so many ways that one can be Sikh, can practice Sikhi.
                

00:25:30 SPEAKER_MS

Thank you so much for that very beautiful response. And I’m also kind of just sitting with what you named about the work to be Guru-like or follow in their steps, even politically, in terms of the work of, for example, caste abolition. Such a commitment, being one that is also the foundation of Sikhi. So how different even in the ways that Sikhi ends up showing up in our very politics in how we practice our politics. But kind of shifting to a tangent question, what does it mean to be part of the LGBTQIA+ community, and do you think that it’s a single community or a set of communities?
                

00:26:13 SPEAKER_KK

Interesting. I feel like the LGBTQIA+ community– to identify as one of the alphabet letters in terms of queerness—. Is it one community or multiple set of communities? I think that identifying as, when I say queer, what I am referring to is an umbrella term of that includes the LGBTQIA+ communities. So when I say that, as I’m speaking, that’s what I’m referring to. I think that that is the thread that holds multiple communities together. I believe that it is probably the most diverse community of people. But I do believe that it is a set of communities. I believe that because we all live at different intersections of our identities, that subset of community is still under the long thread of— if you identify as queer within it. I believe that the queer and trans Sikhi community is a community that falls in both queer and Sikhi. And it is different than someone who is in the queer and Black community and the queer and Latine community. But we all— like the Venn diagram of it all is the thread of queerness. So it’s kind of hard to say, is it a single community or a set of communities? I kind of see it as like this giant web where we get to celebrate our differences and stand in those differences, but we can honor where we are all located while still being in community with one another, because we have very similar battles. We have very similar joys. We have our own culture as queer people, but it is very, very important to understand the intersection of religion, race, caste position, disability or ability, class, just so many different locations. But I do believe that there is a common thread between all of them if you are part of the queer community, you identify that way. To be a part of it— I actually feel liberated when I talk about my queerness. I feel like before I was living in such a limited existence and now because I have this curiosity, I have this questioning in myself. Like I question the status quo of things. Like queerness describes those who exist outside of what society mandates. Like it’s a fitting term. Like it defies all restrictions of love, of self that the world has placed on ourselves. And it’s so beautiful and it’s so powerful. And yes, it comes with a lot of sadness and a lot of heartbreak, but that’s because of the systems that the world has tried to impose on us, that colonization has tried to kill out of our communities. And yet here we are, it’s resilience, you know, to be a part of it. And, you know, I know that queer used to be a pejorative term and it still is for a lot of people, but I also think that there’s a lot of power in reclaiming things that used to be slurs if you’re a part of that community and ascribing it to yourself, if you feel so inclined. But what I love about queerness is that there is a lot of choice in terms of how you express yourself. And it’s expression that is aligned with your values, with your love. And it comes from a place of love, hopefully, with my best intentions. So I guess that’s how I would embody it, like a beautiful web where we get to celebrate and honor our differences, but still be in community with the another and see each other and celebrate what we see and experience.
                

00:31:26 SPEAKER_MS

Thank you so much for that very beautiful analogy as well, that kind of makes space for both the sharedness, but also the difference as well and holding space for that— which kind of actually resonated a lot with what earlier when you were even thinking about, or sharing about Sikhi and understandings of Sikhi and the Sikh community and the differences that also exist in the heterogeneous community that is a Sikh community. So I would love to hear about what influences your relationship to Sikhi slash like being a Sikh. And do you think there are factors that influence your relationship to Sikhi and being a Sikh? How would you describe your experiences with maintaining a relationship with Sikhi as somebody who is queer, trans. So kind of thinking about, I guess, how you’ve been able to sit with both the queerness and the Sikhi together and how that process has been for you.
                

00:32:35 SPEAKER_KK

I feel like I have such a different— not different—- I have such a privileged perspective on this, in certain ways, because I grew up in California. So for me, my queerness, it has come with a lot. It has come with a lot. And within my family, it’s been quite a journey in terms of it, we’ve finally gotten to a point where I’m able to bring my partner around and our relationship is respected. Sometimes we’re still referred to as friends by family and stuff, but I know they know and they’re doing their best. So I’m really, really grateful for that. And my heart hurts so much for queer people that are— and this is coming from a sympathetic perspective and maybe empathetic but not pity in any way— I just know that in South Asia, in India, in Panjab, in Pakistan, like homosexuality, queerness, transness is still very much— I know it was decriminalized in India in 2018, but the social sanctions and judgments and pain and lack of love that so many of my queer family out there is experiences, my heart aches for that. So I feel like my answer to this is very much informed by my ability to know that, I live in the Bay Area. Like I can be with my partner. We can live together here, just us, without fear of, at least for now, knock on wood, but without fear of the police showing up at my door and taking me away, being fired from work, those type of things. That’s not something that I face. So yeah, I just kind of want to put that out there as like, that is definitely informing the way that I experience this, which, because my experience of queerness and Sikhi is very different from someone who grew up in Panjab or in India or Pakistan or Bengal or Bangladesh, just all those places. Would you mind putting the rest of the question or like the question in the chat? It helps me to break it down.
                

00:35:26 SPEAKER_MS

No worries at all. I ended up modifying it as I was speaking. So feel free to adapt it in the way that feels best for you. In thinking really about how queerness has shaped your relationship to Sikhi and how Sikhi has shaped your relationship to queerness and how the process has been of holding them both together.
                

00:36:00 SPEAKER_KK

So I think that growing up and just knowing I was different from most of the people around me, first and foremost, I understood my difference as race and my race is very much tied to practicing Sikhi. It’s very much tied to being a Sikh. Like telling people what I was, no one had any idea. I had to over-explain and I was a child. So I was just like, “It’s like in India. It’s over there. That’s my people. Like we go to Gurdwaara” and eventually being like, “it’s temple. We go on Sunday.” Hearing my friends complain about going to church for an hour, and I was like, “Oh, well, Gurdwaara, I’m there for like six hours, like from the start of it. Like that is what we do on Sundays. That’s what me and my community do on Sundays.” So I understood difference in that way. And then as I grew older and I started feeling differently that now I, retrospectively, I understand to be Hansel and Gretel-ing queerness. Like there’s little breadcrumbs in my life of— that’s a flag, That’s something there that, if you felt safe, you would have explored. But you didn’t feel safe, so you didn’t explore it until well into your adulthood.
                

00:37:46 SPEAKER_KK

And then, you know, when I was 11 was when 9/11 happened. That was when the towers went down in New York. And it was after that that I became, I was only 11, right? So I’m very much young, like a child. That was when I learned so much about the real dangers that people in my community face because of the racism and bigotry that my family experienced in response to that. Like being publicly people saying slurs and just calling me dirty, I was called a monkey, like just all these different things that I faced once people found out that I was part of the community that wore turbans because for some reason, any community that wears a head wrap was now ascribed to Islamophobic terrorism rhetoric. Which is just so ignorant in so many ways and it makes me so uncomfortable and it’s so absurd to me because I’m just like, if you just took a minute to just think and learn a little, your fear might become love. It wouldn’t be anger, it wouldn’t be sadness, it would be understanding and compassion, but we don’t live in that world and it’s heartbreaking. And I grew up really focusing on how being a part of Sikhism and being a part of queerness means that my life is going to be difficult. My life is going to be made harder. It was very rare for people to point out the joys of it, the love of it, the beauty in it. And so it’s been really hard for me to see those things, but I do a lot of work to try and hold space for that more than the fear that can come from it. So the world and the societies that— and the institutions that determine how I perform in this world, things that are out of my control, definitely influence my relationship to Sikhi. It factors into my relationship to Sikhi because for a lot of it, it became fear. I was very fearful of practicing it in certain ways because I was mocked for it, you know? And then when I would try and fully participate in Sikhi or in the Panjabi communities, it seemed all like competition. It was all like, “Well, my kids are going to Harvard and Yale and they’re only 15.” And, “My kids make six figures”. “My kid is a doctor”. “My kid is a lawyer”. “Why can’t you be more like these well-behaved kids that are also part of your community?” And it’s like, “I don’t know. I’m doing my best with what has been given to me.” So for me, it was also— it also became jealousy. It became competition. It became this, “Oh, well I better perform the way that my parents say that I can perform in front of these other people in my community so that insecurity and jealousy doesn’t reign.” In fact, we want to be the— I don’t know— the winners, the best, you know, held to these impossible expectations in a world that has denoted that difference means unequal. And so because you’re unequal, you have opportunities taken away or you don’t have opportunities given rather. And now that I have finally finished school and I am, you know, I’m working a minimum wage job right now and I’ve gone through so much pain trying to meet the expectations put on me from this very high-performing, high-earning community, I’m really just about making it my own and being like, I can be of a different class than others, even if they went to Wharton and I don’t know, whatever other bougie school that probably has eugenicist history tied to it. But it’s now in my own life, like after growing up with so much fear and jealousy and questioning, I really see it as now we see each other. Like what influences my relationship to Sikhi now is mainly community and also just integrity and vulnerability, being able to be vulnerable with people. And you know, describing my experience as maintaining a relationship with Sikh and queer communities, I’ve probably done that more since the pandemic than I ever had prior. Because before the pandemic, it was predominantly just queer people that I connected with. Queer people of all different backgrounds, but never Sikhi, never Panjabi, never Indian, never South Asian. Like it was so hard to find those people. And I never really sought that out because I was like, “that doesn’t exist”, which is such an ironic, horrible thing because I live it and I embody it. So it’s like, of course that intersection exists because I am here and I am real. And so just to be in— now it’s curiosity. Now it’s like, I want to seek these people out. I want to go forward in my life and see what we can build together. What can we do with the land around us? What can we do for the farmers back in Panjab? Like what can we do, especially with the floods? How can we allocate funds to do the most good for as many people as possible and then hopefully dance along the way and be in community with each other. It really has evolved. I understand now that it’s not all fear, you know, it’s not all jealousy. It can be so much more in that. And I see that in my interpersonal relationships with people who fall at this intersection because I feel so seen, I feel so heard in a way that I have been told that I have made people feel before and provided spaces for them. And it’s so beautiful to be able to take a deep breath and rest and know that I’m not being scrutinized. I can just be. And I will probably spend the rest of my life trying to— or trying to just be, and to be in community with others for me is the surest way and fastest way for me to feel that kind of peace. It is when I am at, when my soul is at its quietest, when it’s at its most peaceful. And that is what I want for myself. That is inner child work. That is 12 year old me looking for someone to be like, “Hey, I see you, you’re okay. We’re gonna get through this together. Like you’re not alone in this”. And I’m experiencing that more now in my adulthood, now that I’ve been seeking it out. And the internet helps a lot with that, finding that community and figuring out where do you lie on certain experiences of your life? How do you participate in it? What actions do you take? So I think that’s my relationship with Sikhi and queerness and the intersection of it has really evolved. It went from really, really big— it went from small and just like my personal experience of it to really, really big in terms of how the world made me feel about it and my classmates and stuff. And then now it’s getting back to small, but informed and intentional.
                

00:47:30 SPEAKER_MS

Thank you so much. Yeah, I was just kind of sitting with how, like that part of returning back to, after being out and then part of that process of like finding grounding again. So thank you for sharing that. And kind of alongside that actually, the second question, the next question I have is, what type of resources or support have you had to support that journey? And to help you navigate your experience? Do you think that being Sikh, for example, influence your decisions. For instance, those resources could include professional resources like seeking therapy or even spiritual resources like engaging in Gurbaani. And I’ll drop that in the chat as well.
                

00:48:14 SPEAKER_KK

Sure. What kind of resources? Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. So I actually didn’t feel safe to explore anything outside of the norm until the internet. So when I was a kid, there wasn’t the— I mean, there was the internet, but it was like dial up. I was born in the time of floppy disks and pre-internet computers and that kind of thing. And so before Facebook and all that kind of stuff. So I— what resources did I use or support did I use? When I was younger, I first really started becoming aware of— the way I felt was not what I would want kids to feel, what I think kids need to be feeling or even want to be feeling. And when I became aware of that kind of thing, I was like, I need help. And I told my parents when I was like 15 or 16— that’s when I started therapy. And I was the only one in my family. I still— well, actually, actually—. Now in my 30s, some other people that I grew up with are finally going to it and I am eternally grateful for that. I know, I feel like I’ve said that I was eternally grateful so many times during this. But I was the only one who went to therapy And it was because I felt that terribly. Like I was like, “I need something to help me and I’m not getting it from the people around me.” And I was raised in a bubble that was like, “No matter what you need, we are here for you”. And then all of a sudden you tell them what you need them for, and they’re like, “That’s wrong and that’s bad. Don’t think those things, don’t be those things. Change yourself to make me more comfortable”. That has been like the mantra of the lessons being taught to me, but that was because that was what was taught to them. And I can understand it, but still know that it’s not okay. And I can still be upset about that. And I am, it hurts, you know, just being taught to make yourself adjust to yourself to make others comfortable. And it’s like, “No, you just need to get used to being uncomfortable because I’m going to be me”. But I do think that being Sikh influenced my decisions to go to therapy because in the Sikhi community, at least the one I grew up in, it was very much like the, you don’t need to tell your secrets to someone else, we don’t need it, we can endure, you just have a day off, just push through it, just push through it. And I think it’s such an intergenerational trauma of avoidance that I’m now not doing. But my parents, chaachaas, chaachees, bhooas [uncles and aunts], all had to endure because they had to survive. So it was this trauma-responsive avoidance. “I can’t deal with that pain. I have to keep going. I have a family. We got to keep doing this.” And now I’m in a position where those factors aren’t my factors. And so where is all this pain and hurt coming from? It’s from me not trying to avoid anymore. So trying to heal that— like the cycle breaker aspect of my existence. And it’s hard. It’s really hard. I have always been the disobedient, loudmouthed kid. And I have faced social sanctions my whole life because of it. And yet I continue to do it. So it’s, I mean, I’m mindful of my own safety and things like that, but I am the person who brings up those things. And it’s because, you know, I realized now that it’s because I’m wanting more for myself. And I’m not accepting less. And they all had to accept less, and they’re just confused. And so it’s friction. It’s friction. And so we’re trying to work through it together. One thing that I am grateful for towards Sikhi is that meditation has always been, since I can remember, a part of my life. It has always been something that has been practiced. It’s been something that was taught to me, trying to slow things down, take deep breaths. They say it’s because of God, right? And godliness within us and connecting, you know? And for me, it’s been a bit more about spirituality and energy and trying to quiet the chaos and find that calm that I want for myself and my people, my communities to have, so I can really focus on the things that are important to me. And I want it to come from a place of peace. I don’t want it to come from urgency or fear. And so it’s very interesting to be a part of community that’s so about meditation and introspection and listening to paath [prayers] and being like— And I’m just like, well, what do you think’s happening when you’re listening to paath? You’re meditating, you’re listening, and it’s very repetitive. So it’s a mantra for you to just Waheguru, Waheguru, Waheguru in your head, and it’s helping you center yourself and become calm. And also I believe it’s synergistic. So it’s also about connecting to all the spirits in the room and all the energy in the room and trying to collectively connect. At least that’s my perception of it. But the way I have felt for a lot of my life, I’ve known, that’s not enough for me. I do need more. So I tend to seek professional resources like therapy. But I also know that therapy centers whiteness and it centers the goal of ability to perform in this capitalistic world that I get so frustrated with. And I understand that a lot of the things that I have, that have been pathologized in terms of my experiences or whatever diagnoses that I have received in my life are appropriate responses to the way I exist in this world. So it’s not enough just to have the white, the therapy that Western medicine prescribes. The spirituality of meditation and prayer and those types of things also have incalculable effects on me. And it’s kind of finding a balance between both because I do believe that it’s almost as if Western medicine, like that type of therapy has given me language to describe my experiences so that if I say, “Oh, this is what I am, this is what I have, this is how I experience things”, people are like, “Oh, me too”. And then we can be in community with each other, right? And then meditation and paath and godliness that I witness in Sikhi is like feeling. It’s like energy. It’s being able to just feel my way through the world. And I have a lot of air in my chart, so I need both. I need both, or I appreciate both. And I have found ways to remind myself, “Hey, if this isn’t working for a while, let’s go ahead and go another way”. Like it’s provided me with a lot of options that I’m grateful. And I’m kind of always a person who’s willing to try. And so if Western medicine is like, “try this out”, I’ll be like, “Okay”. And if meditation is like, “Try this out, try a little bit of yoga, try like these types of things”, I will. Like, because so much of the disquiet in my mind can be a bit channeled, organized, quieted by things like getting into my body. So like exercise, yoga even, sitting in a certain way and meditating, you know, those type of things. It encompasses a lot of what makes me feel whole. Yeah.
                

00:58:48 SPEAKER_MS

Yeah. No, no. Thank you so much for sharing that and for sharing the resources that you found refuge in. And the next set of questions, actually, I think you’ve kind of already touched a lot on, but I can still kind of pose the question to see if there’s anything that you would want to add. But this is particularly thinking about geography and settlement and where you’ve grown up, which if you were to think about the area that you live in now or have grown up in, to you, how did the place that you lived in affect how you think of yourself? Could you share how living in one place or many places has influenced your relationship to Sikhi and your relationship to your own queerness?
                

00:59:35 SPEAKER_KK

Oh yeah, that’s a good one. That’s a good question. And yeah, I think I had said being in California, it’s very different from growing up in Panjab, especially in regards to queerness. California is, if I travel internationally, I tell people I’m from California. I do not say the United States. And it’s because California, although it has produced Reagan and Nixon, it actually has understanding of being more liberal, being more left leaning, even though there’s so much conservatism in California. For the most part, we’re known as like Harvey Milk and San Francisco and Castro and the gayest place, like all these different things. And so, you know, even if I can’t— or even if in certain places like Central California, I would absolutely not hold my partner’s hand in public, there are places like the Bay Area and Los Angeles and parts of San Jose that are metropolitan enough that I know being queer loudly is not necessarily going to be met with the police or— oh my god as I’m saying this, I’m just thinking about so many of the anti-trans and anti-drag laws right now. And I’m like, wait, can I actually say that right now? But that is part of the process of being queer. I’m just being like, well, where’s the state at now in terms in regards to how they define my humanity and worthiness. Because I know I have a lot of value and worthiness, but how would they meet me? Which is just kind of part of the process of scoping out, going to new areas, trying to figure out where to live, where you can live safely, and also how much gender informs that. Like when I say queerness I’m actually already looping in gender when I talk about that because I identify as trans and non-binary, but also being socialized as a woman. And honestly, I feel I understand what it means to be a woman in this world. I was raised that way. I am still often socialized and treated that way. And so that informs where I can travel and where I can go and how I can live just as much as queerness does. But in terms of where I live, I grew up in LA County in the suburbs off of downtown Los Angeles. And I went to a school that was predominantly Asian. It was quite diverse. And I’m really, really grateful for that. It wasn’t until I went to college that I realized how white academia is, which is kind of astounding now that I think about it. Because I remember going to college and being like, “Oh my gosh, there are so many white students here”. I expected far more Asian, and I mean, like, the continent of Asia, when I say we had— there were all different kinds of Asian denominations and SWANA identities at the school that I went to, the district that I grew up in. And so, you know, even then I grew up knowing that Christianity was the norm and Catholicism was the norm and anything else was different and kind of weird and there weren’t really spaces for it within the schooling systems. There were Christian clubs and things like that, but you have to really look for South Asian ones. I remember at my high school, there were basically two groups of South Asians. There was the ones I was related to and the ones I wasn’t related to. And they often— we often spent time together but even then, I didn’t. And I didn’t really understand why until now that I’m grown up, quite a few of the friends that I had in high school are now identified as queer. So that kind of fed it without me understanding why I was— I don’t want to say sequestered, but just different. I don’t know, it was just atypical, I guess. I didn’t necessarily feel like I fully belonged with the South Asian kids. And then how I think about myself, my identity was very much tied to academic performance growing up, which I think is really common for a lot of South Asian kids. So I was the high achieving, great grades, well-rounded kid growing up. And anytime I was doing badly, like it meant I was bad in my head. And it had a lot of my self-worth and my schools were very competitive. I remember my high school, there were so many kids that got into Ivy Leagues, I think, like 70 something percent of the kids that got into a college got into like a UC or a Cal State. So they were going— and then the rest went to like community college. So it was a very competitive and I appreciated some of the competition because most of my classmates and stuff that I would work with and things like that, it kept us a bit motivated. Like it was like, “Oh you’re gonna do your homework, I’ll do my homework” kind of thing. And so I did appreciate that. And it affected how I saw myself because I was like, well, I’m a person who takes all the honors in AP classes. You know, I’m a person who plays sports. I’m a person–you know? But as far as extracurriculars and those types of behaviors, I didn’t necessarily. Or clubs, I didn’t necessarily participate in that or explore that because so much of it was just like, I was taught school, school, school, education, education, education. That’s all that matters. Do it, do it, do it.
                

01:07:11 SPEAKER_KK

And then I went to college in Northern Cal, so I grew up in Southern California, and then I went to college in Northern California. I moved away when I was 17 to start school and I spent my entire adult life in Northern California now. I didn’t go back. I had to really get— we’re better when we love each other at a distance. And you know, now that I’m— and my cousins, loves of my life, like my best friends. If I could have brought them with me, I would have brought them with me. But for the most part, I lose myself so much when I visit home because I become the person that they need as opposed to being— and honestly, that is who I am with them. So actually I am myself with them, but that’s the me that’s with them, as opposed to the me that I am when I’m alone and fully seen by my communities when I’m up here, when I’m in Northern California. And I’ve moved to three different places in Northern California. Now that I’ve graduated college, I am looking for work in Central California and I see more South Asian people now than I’ve ever seen before when I walk out in the world. And I see them and I’m like, “Ah, look, there’s an auntie”, like, “Oh, there’s an uncle”. “Look at those kids,” like so cute. But they don’t necessarily see me. And that makes me really sad. Like a lot of the times they like can’t— they look at me and I get a lot of stares. People stare at me. And then eventually someone will be like, “Are you Indian?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I’m Panjabi—,” I say yes, when I actually identify as Panjabi. But I say, “Yes, I’m Panjabi.” And they’re like, “Oh, okay.” And it makes me sad, to a certain degree. But at the same time, it is what it is. I look a certain way that they’re not used to, that the history books have talked about, I guess. And, but now that I’m here, I really wanna explore like all the different Gurdwaaras that are around me. I’m a bit hesitant because I know a lot of them are engaging in Modi-forward politic. And so that makes me hesitant to want to go there. So if I could find some that aren’t necessarily aligning with Modi and that kind of politic and casteism and stuff like that, I feel more safe and secure to go to the other ones, but even then, which side do I sit on when I go in? It’s always gonna be wrong because there are sides. The whole thing about having sides to sit on based on gender means that I will never be sitting on the right side. And it will always be judged. And I never want to make anyone feel unsafe, you know, and a lot of people confuse discomfort with a lack of safety. And sometimes discomfort is a lack of safety. I’m not trying to say it isn’t, but me sitting on a certain side in the Gurdwaara, how is that unsafe for anybody except me? You know? And so, I don’t know, it’s a lot of inner monologue. It’s a lot of inner thinking. It’s a lot of trying to figure out, well, where am I safest? And if I play the good little child, I wear a salwaar-kameez [cultural two-piece outfit] and I sit on the girl’s side and I stay very quiet and I mind myself— you know. And then I sometimes go in the kitchen and then I do Langar. Like, I always appreciate serving Langar, but sometimes they don’t need that. So it’s a lot of confusion and hesitation. And I would appreciate, now that I’m here, I just want to be free. I just want to be able to exist in all of me out there. But I know that that’s not necessarily accessible, which is a great sadness. It really is. And I feel it, I do. But for me, when I find the ones that I feel myself with, that keeps me going. Because I know there are some people who don’t even have that— you know— and I do and I hold on to that and I try and practice that I try to feed my energies towards that. And that has been often in my life coming from a place more from within the queer community than it has from the Sikh Panjabi Asian community. However, when I am with in community with both and they are aware of casteism and they tend to practice anti-casteism, when I’m with that community, I can just be myself. And it’s just— it blows my mind that people just get to go out and do that and be that and exist that— in all the spaces that they inhabit. And for people like me and probably other people within this project, this oral histories project, it’s lonely. It’s hard. And then to have to plan it, to create those spaces and find each other. And then to find out that it’s casteist, it’s maddening. It’s maddening— or it’s transphobic, you know what I’m saying? Or it’s racist or it’s anti-Black. Like how? We need to work on our anti-Blackness. Like we absolutely— the world needs to work on its anti-Blackness, but you know, in South Asian communities, absolutely. Because Black Sikhs exists, Black people exist, they matter— you know. And people who are, who face the consequences of casteism the most, their lives matter. Like, I don’t know. I just— I want my people and not just my people, I want people to feel safe and secure and okay. And we need to work on our biases and we need to shed them. And it just blows my mind that even within all these subsects of identity that I can embody, that even within that, when I’m in community with others, I find out that their politic is actually racist or transphobic or like just harmful in another way and it’s upsetting. But you know I’m gonna keep going because people are what matters, and I find people who believe that all lives have value and will— you know— work for it and fight for it are beautiful. And that gives me so much hope. And I want to keep going with them. And people surprise you. I do still have that hope. Like people can still surprise you in ways that inspire. And I want to keep finding them and I want to know them and I want them to know me and I want that kind of connection as far as this plane of existence will allow.
                

01:15:49 SPEAKER_MS

Thank you so much for those very, very beautiful and heartfelt words. And those visions too, that you’re also sharing those dreams. And that actually is a very great transition into the last set of questions that I have which are focused on desire, intimacy, and dreaming. So I think this maybe is a great time to touch a little bit more to hear more about what hopes and dreams drive you. So I would love to hear what— tell me what you think desire is. To you, how is this different from intimacy or even dreaming?
                

01:16:37 SPEAKER_KK

Interesting. Okay. I also realized that in the last question, I don’t know if I answered it specifically.
                

01:16:43 SPEAKER_MS

Oh, that’s okay. Each of these questions are more also just springboards for you to take wherever your heart, wherever feels right. So even if any of those questions, you never actually directly answer those by the textbook, just the fact that they allowed for self-reflection is what matters.
                

01:17:02 SPEAKER_KK

Sure. Yeah. Okay, for sure….These are so philosophical.
                

01:17:18 SPEAKER_MS

I can also add more context if that would be helpful. I guess the question about what is desire, the reason we’re asking is just because people often understand themselves in relation to thinking about what desires they do have. So these can be the types of relationships people build or wish to build or who they’re close with and the types of futures they see for themselves. So much of who we are, how we understand ourselves is driven by what we desire. So that’s why I wanted to sit with the place of desire in your life.
                

01:17:50 SPEAKER_KK

Yeah. I feel like that I do appreciate the context. Thank you. I feel like desire is personal. I feel like desire comes from within me, going out. It’s what I desire— coming from me. Whereas intimacy, I see intimacy as, well, there’s intimacy with yourself, of course, but I’m gonna refer more to— I feel like intimacy is something that is shared and it is a connection. I think intimacy is another word for connection. And what I mean by that is— seeing and be seen. And then dreaming, my goodness, dreaming. These are also like Pisces leaning. Yeah, I do see how my like last answer kind of ties into this and in an effort to not be too redundant [pause]. I think desire can tie into intimacy, as in it can be a way in which you can connect with others. Like if my desires align with someone else’s desires and we’re able to share them and connect, then that would be intimacy between me and this other person or other people. It could even be— you can experience intimacy with a room full of people if you’re giving like a TED Talk, right? Like if you’re able to share and you’re able to see the people in the room that you’re talking to and they’re able to see your point and understand it and believe it. I believe that that can be quite intimate. And then, of course, there’s intimacy with yourself, which I believe is like connection with yourself. And for me, that means understanding your values and acting in alignment with that. That can be quite a deep intimacy with yourself, to know yourself in that way. For me, that understanding intimacy with the self comes from Buddhism predominantly, in terms of the self and the other and actually shedding your desires, right? And not wanting anything and just being content with what you already have and what you already are. And I think I have also spoken to how, when I get to that place of quiet, when I get to that place of calm, when I get to that place where I am just satisfied, sated, I am so grateful and I feel really alive and I want to be that and I want to experience that with my other people. That is a dream of mine, I would say. So it ties into, I feel like dreams could be like goals without a plan. So if you, whatever you kind of wish, wishes almost can be dreams. And I don’t need a plan for that. I can just want it and hopefully maybe orient my life towards it. And if I can be intimate with others and connect with others along that path, so we can get to that place and lift as we climb, that would be everything. I think that would feed my desire. Like, it’s almost like tiers for this question, how they feed each other. Yeah, I feel like, that one might be the one.
                

01:22:09 SPEAKER_MS

Thank you so much for thinking so deeply about and parsing out the distinctions and also how they’re so interconnected as well for you. And kind of following up on that question, I would love to hear about what are your hopes? and I guess in Panjabi, umeedan, we call them. What are your hopes and umeedaan for yourself? And what are your hopes and umeedaan for the different communities that you identify with? I can drop these in the chat as well, but any dreams, any hopes, any umeedan both for yourself as well as for various communities that you would like to share?
                

01:22:49 SPEAKER_KK

You know, it’s interesting because I am a person whose background is in law, society, sociology, human rights, and English literature. So I am quite aware of the way that, at least in the US predominantly, in terms of those histories, I am painfully aware of how atrocious and violent these cis, hetero, white, patriarchal institutions have enacted genocidal violence and erasure and epistemic erasure, and just these horrible things against all different types of communities. And here I am in all the shades that I stand in and I still have hopes and aspirations for the different communities that I identify with— and also that any community really, any person that is a part of a community that knows what it’s like to be on the fringe of anything. What I want, probably more than anything, is for us to feel safe. I think for me, I try and embody that with everything that I do with whomever I meet, is to let people know you are safe. You’re safe with me. You are safe with the people that we are with, if that’s understood at the time, but at the very least that you are safe with me. And not only that, I hope and aspire for us to feel safe, but not only that, but brave. So if you’re— it’s like the— I had a friend who wrote on feminist spaces and she spoke of how when spaces are safe, people are brave enough to be themselves. And so if who you are in all of yourself is someone who does not infringe on the rights of others, does not harm or enact violence on others based on your opinions, I want you to feel brave enough to be yourself. I aspire, I hope that if you feel safe and at peace, you can be yourself in all that you are. Because there’s so much beauty in the diversity of our experiences. You can learn so much from people that you know nothing about. Everyone has their own genius. Everyone has their own contributions to the society, and to write people off just based on what some abstract identity that is tied to whatever power structure that society has deemed upon you, is bullshit. Like we need to get down to the nitty gritty and we need to talk to each other and we need to respect each other’s differences and hear each other and believe each other. And I think I said it already, like lift as we climb. After I heard Angela Davis say that, I was like, “That’s it. That’s my tenet. That’s what I want to practice in my life.” And that’s what I hope. Yeah. So if I had to narrow it down to one main thing that I want my different communities to experience and other different communities to experience is safety. No fear. Like Nina Simone said, right? No fear. That would be… that’s when we’re free. That’s when we can focus on the things that matter, like love and compassion and community. I feel like after the pandemic, or even since 2015, when the Black Lives Matter movement really started, that there’s been this orientation towards burning it all down. Because participating in these systems of oppression will only turn you into a cog of the machine as opposed to you changing the system. And while I believe that that does have merit, and I do understand we just need to rebuild it. We just need to burn it all down. I try and listen to scholars, activists, teachers, grassroots organizations, people on the ground doing the work who are like, we can’t necessarily— or burning it all down, yes, ACAB, those types of things— but at the same time, we need to orient ourselves towards building. So I kind of want to be on the side of building community strengths and ties. So if we’re able to feel safe with each other, in community with each other, I believe that there is more strength and resilience between coming together than tearing apart. So that’s kind of also a hope and aspiration that I have, that we’re able to come together, respect our differences, honor our similarities and work together. ‘Cause there’s so many more of us than there are of the 1% of the people who are hoarding everything. There’s so much more of us. If we could just focus on that, I would be so grateful. And I understand that it is a bit naive. But when you look at the history of revolutions, when you look at the history of protests and what they’ve accomplished and unionizing and labor movements and things like that, it gives me hope. And I feel like we are there. We are at a point of reckoning with the ways in which hierarchical powers have been one way for way too long. And so I would like a reallocation of power, aka redistribution of wealth, and more diversity being shown and appreciated and celebrated in our communities because that is so much more of what life is about than trying to get us to all fit into this charm circle of the hegemony behind whiteness and nuclear family and heterosexuality and cisgender and all these things. It’s the spice of life and I want us to build together and feed that resilience and feed that love with one another. And it starts with us feeling safe with each other and also safe to make mistakes. Like, I have made so many mistakes in my life. I have learned so much from them and that’s okay. That’s part of how I’ve gotten to this space. A lot of forgiveness and I’m trying to be compassionate with myself for it, you know? And every time I spend time in community with others, I heal. I do, I absolutely heal a little bit. And so that’s why we need more of that, in my opinion.
                

01:31:49 SPEAKER_MS

Thank you for sharing those very beautiful visions. And I wanted to, I was just also sitting with how a lot of the visions that you shared were for us, right? For the we, for us, and I would love to hear if you would, if you feel comfortable or if anything comes up, what are some like hopes, visions, dreams, umeedan that you have for yourself as well? Of course, a lot of our own visions are absolutely interconnected with community, other folks, our families, as we’re building them, our communities that we’re also building, and navigating different, both painful, heartbreaking, as well as different aspects of the relationship with, but anyways, also wanted to kind of create space on a second round, if you did want to share any hopes, dreams, umeedan, for yourself.
                

01:32:49 SPEAKER_KK

Wow, I don’t think I realized that I did that. So thank you for pointing that out, because I also tend to have that orientation of my thinking. Oh, my gosh, this is a much harder question just for myself. I think the safety thing still rings true. I want and hope for myself to feel safe in the spaces that I occupy and empowered. I see myself as a child of the universe. I always want to learn. I want to continue learning. I want to learn from others. I know so little of this world and I am a student. I am first and foremost always learning and so I hope to love and protect myself and I hope to continue learning as much as I can in this world. And I want to learn new skills. I want to learn Panjabi. I want to travel and learn from people all over the world. I want to eat amazing food. I hope to learn to appreciate art in ways that I haven’t before. I want to see so much art in this world and experience it. I want my nearest and dearest to know that they are so loved and cherished. I want to look after the Earth. I wanna find a way to reduce my carbon footprint and I wanna do what I can to promote Black, Dalit, Indigenous liberation. I wanna do my part in those, and what that means is, I don’t even know— like finding communities or programs that are already doing the work and just providing support for it. We don’t need more of them. I mean, we do need more of those, but if we can kind of uplift the ones that already exist and give them some more spending power, that would be great. Yeah, I wanna learn how to garden. I wanna learn how to play a few instruments, or a few more instruments. I wanna mix music. I want to… So many of my goals are not capitalistically oriented, so I don’t necessarily have a job in mind. But if I— if I did, I would want jobs that taught me a lot of skills. Like if I could work— like building houses and learn how to build houses, that would be great. Or I remember my partner mentioned that she wanted to be a person who works at a museum just because she gets to walk around the museum all she wants even though she’s just a docent— or I forget what the term is. And I was like, that’s amazing because you can just go do that job at different parts of the world and work at different museums. I find that I’m the most creative, I think, when I’m mixing music or making food. So if I could take a lot of cooking classes and learn how to make food from cuisines from all over the world. Yeah, those are some hopes and aspirations for myself. In an ideal world, I think I would love to like go get my master’s or my PhD in queer feminist literature. I’ve even looked into programs of Masters of Science to find new therapies out there for people that work better than SSRIs. And the way that Western medicine has kind of purported this is the way to fix your brain and it’s fucked–it’s messed up because it says “fix your brain” and it’s– I don’t know why you’re pathologizing yourself in that way. So that’s also something. I’m fascinated by human behavior. So even if I could learn from where I am about human behavior in a way that allows me to provide that kind of knowledge and maybe practices to people who don’t necessarily have the means to learn those things, that would be beautiful because I am fascinated by human behavior and the brain. And so if I could— I don’t know— maybe like therapy in some way and then provide cheap, or not as expensive, therapy for people so that they can also heal and feel safe with themselves. That’s something that I would want for myself. I see so much potential and so much time that I can do these things in. When I was younger though, I was so wrapped up in capitalism and the pressures that come from being Panjabi or like Panjabi culture, which is very much tied up in Western capitalism— which is as fast as possible, get through it as fast as possible, the sense of urgency. And now that I’m in my thirties and doing things at this pace, I’m just like— there’s so much time. If I want to do it, I can. I just have to find the time and the energy to do it. So there are a lot of different things that I want to do, but it’s not— almost all of them are in the hopes of being able to make life a little bit easier for the next generation. Trying to work on the planet so that the planet isn’t inhabitable for the younger generations and making it a safer place if I can. I know that I’m just one person, but I like to think that one person can do a lot, especially in community with others.
                

01:40:49 SPEAKER_MS

Thank you so much for sharing those very intimate dreams and for also taking the time to even sit with and reflect on and share those dreams as well. ‘Cause I also— as somebody who similarly forgets to think about those dreams for myself, I really do appreciate you sharing the amount of love and the care that is in each of those dreams that you shared and Waheguru wills, I hope that they all come true. And so from my end, that does conclude the questions that I had, but I did want to create space to see if there’s anything that I have not asked or if there’s anything that you did want to share or mention or add on to before we do end the recording.
                

01:41:47 SPEAKER_KK

Honestly, these questions have been eye opening, I feel it’s kind of and very vulnerable. I don’t know what other questions I could possibly answer or highlight or emphasize. I think so much of the way that I have expressed how I want to make others feel is very much how I want to feel. And I think it really speaks to how much I have not felt that in my life, which is profoundly, profoundly sad and disheartening. And I wouldn’t be surprised if other people who live at these intersections, at this praxis, also have similar sentiments and feelings. And I just want all of us to get some of the love that we’ve put out in this world and have it come back to us. And I mean it’s beautiful if it can come from us, but also if it could be witnessed outside of yourself and for you to receive it, not just from yourself. That would be incredible. And my heart softens at the thought of it. And I just want the kids to be okay. I mean, I was not okay as a kid. There were so many terrible things that have happened to me in my life. And some of it is directly connected to the identities, the personal identities that I have. And I just hope that other kids don’t have to be survivors in the way that I have become. And yeah, I just hope all the love that I have put out in the world comes back. And that’s not why I do it, not in the slightest. I never think transactionally in that way. I think just at the end of such a vulnerable conversation that we have had— or not conversation, but me talking a lot, a lot, a lot, that I’m just reflecting a bit and that I want the kids to be okay, if I can end on different things.
                

01:45:04 SPEAKER_MS

No, thank you. That is just so sacred. That very desire to use that term from earlier, to reach out in many ways, our own younger selves as well, ourselves that are here or are to come as well, in hopes that they don’t have to walk the roads that we’ve walked. And as a wrap up question, I know this question was already— I did ask in the pre-interview, before we recorded, but especially since you’ve gone through the interview as well, in case that has changed, I wanted to ask if there are any hopes that you have with— what do you hope comes out of sharing your life story with us? Any hopes from this interview particularly and in sharing your life story to us?
                

01:46:08 SPEAKER_KK

My hopes for sharing the story [pause] I think that creating this space, like prabhdeep and you, and other people that are a part of this, is so, so important for the sake of representation. I think people really underestimate the power of representation, and usually the people who underestimate it are the ones who have a lot of representation. I am 32, almost 33 years old, and I cannot think of a single time in my life that this has existed for me. So I hope that by sharing my story and others sharing their stories, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I hope that this creates proliferation in terms of standing in our truths and taking up space. I hope that we all take up some real space in this world, that we take up space in all of the community meetups. I hope that we take up space when we go to the Gurdwaara. I hope that, and I know that this is such a far— it’s such a far aspiration for what’s something so small like this, but I really believe that progress is incremental. And that by standing in it and actually engaging in the day-to-day behaviors of it, something like this can be monumental. I’m just grateful to be able to take up this space. And I hope others are able to take up space when they see these words put together. And I think that’s really, really powerful. I hope that this is just the spark to a very big flame. And I hope that we can do it with our whole chest. I hope that we can step forward and just be like, “We are here, we’ve always been here”. Respect it, just respect it, you know, accept it and respect it. Please don’t meet it with violence. I understand that you feel like this challenge is a lot of thing, but I don’t know, I am coming at this with love and hope. I’m coming at this with generosity of spirit. I’m coming at this with just love. And I don’t know, it’s not meant to be disrespectful. It does not challenge what you assume to be correct. We exist and that has value and we deserve to be heard. We really do. And I, for one, am not going anywhere and none of us are. So just add to the menu and welcome us. Us existing does not take away from you. It’s not finite. And accept it. Just do it. It’s gonna be so much easier. And it really is all love for me. Like it is, and it’s love for myself and my communities that is leading me to be able to speak this way. And it’s not intended to be disrespectful. It’s just a slight fight to take up space instead of being completely dismissed, because that leads to so much pain for an entire part of your community that why would you want to? You’ve experienced it. Why would you want to exclude people and deny people just because it’s different? And I know this is just— this is just an interview, But I really feel like this is real, and this is a great way to take steps in a direction that I want for myself and my communities.
                

01:51:15 SPEAKER_MS

Thank you so, so much. And thank you for being part of that direction as well, in terms of for supporting us and for just so much time and generosity and care that you’ve shown and being willing to share such intimate, such vulnerable details and aspects of your life. So I really, and I know a lot of it can also be sometimes triggering to revisit, so all the work and all the care that you put into sharing that with us in hopes that it does move us in the particular direction, it’s just so, so much love and so much gratitude to you for that. And with that, that concludes our interview. So I will press stop recording.