There were five or six men in the dance, wearing matching sparkly vests, loose pants, and turban-like headdresses fanned up and out in the front, each one in a different bright color. When they danced, their bodies sank right into the beat. The movements were large, involving entire limbs. Their smiles were large as well, and infectious. A man at a microphone sang a song along with the drumming, and I knew their dance was telling a story, even though I could not understand the words.

I was flooded with emotion as I watched them, feeling that what they were doing was absolutely right. Their dance took all the Punjabi Bhangra pop music I had heard over the years, all the family and friends I had seen gyrating in peculiarly Indian ways on the dance floors of house parties and weddings, and made sense of them. This is where it all began: with the drum, the voice, the agile bodies; a folk art that went back hundreds of years, in the faraway villages of the Punjab. And not only my mind made sense of the phenomenon, but my heart said Yes and I felt that these were my people, that I recognized them and loved them and knew them deeply. The dance was over too soon, and I wanted to see more. I wanted to get up and dance myself, too, but when the DJ turned on the techno-Bhangra and opened up the dance floor, he pumped the volume and the bass up so loud that my insides were vibrating miserably and I felt an intense need to leave the room.

We needed to leave the wedding reception anyway, in order to make it to a retirement party for my husband's boss. It was a full day: we had been at the wedding since 10:30 AM and we would stay at the retirement dinner (at a trendy bar and restaurant in downtown Modesto called DEWZ) until about 10:00PM. I had felt a bit anxious about the day in advance, knowing that I would be an outsider at both events -- or worse, in the role of "supportive wife" who accompanies her husband to important social events linked to his work life (the bride at the wedding was not only a family friend, but also a Walgreen's pharmacist my husband had trained and promoted, and other Walgreen's employees were present at the wedding as well).

But before we left the house in the morning, I read my Course In Miracles lesson for the day (#262): "Let me perceive no differences today." And I found out: I am no different from the solemn man with the turban and long beard who sits at the holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, waving a horsehair ceremonial fly-shooer over its pages. I am no different from the Walgreen pharmacist who sat next to me throughout the wedding ceremony in her navy blue dress and white pantyhose, pelting me with questions and making comparisons between her own Mormon culture and the Sikh traditions she was newly absorbing. I am no different from the Vietnamese pharmacy manager who talked during the reception of moving his family into a brand new house, lamenting the switch from a four-car garage to a three-car garage, which gives him less space to practice his passion for automobiles. I am no different from the small, shy wife of a Walgreen's manager, who sat at our table during dinner with her sheet of black, shiny hair and her deep blue eye shadow and spoke softly of her job at the JC Penney fine jewelry counter and her dreams of becoming an interior designer. I am no different from a Bhangra dancer, jumping and squatting on powerful legs, cocking my head at flirtatious angles to tell the story, and then changing out of my sparkle vest and turban for an evening of hard drinking.

"Why should I perceive a thousand forms in what remains as one?"
L6(7)