Something kind of horrible and shocking happened at the
Diwali: Lights of India festival at Seattle Center yesterday. It only lasted two or three minutes, but it was an interruption of a cultural stage performance, but that didn't make it any less horrible or shocking to me. I had never seen something so overtly bigoted happen at this event, and this was the
third one I have attended.
It was right-wing protesters, who I thought were a larger group but were apparently just a couple of them, who gathered on the floor between the stage and the audience, lifting two huge stigns, solid blue with white lettering:
STOP HINDU REPLACEMENT OF CHRISTIANS
and even worse:
DEPORT ALL DOT HEADS
And I was like: holy shit. "Dot heads" is not a phrase I have heard much, maybe surprisingly given my 22-year relationship with an Indian person, and it's kind of objectively stupid, but there is some truly racist heft behind its intentional meaning. It felt a little like a gut punch when I saw that, pretty on par with how it would have felt if someone had walked by and called me a faggot. I really could barely believe what I was seeing, this kind of display in Seattle. And the thing is, I'm used to this sort of interruption at, say, Pride Parades, where a handful of right-wing nutcases is always walking through and shouting about how we're all going to hell. What gets me is that Hindus in America have far less influence on the culture as these people are weirdly giving them credit for.
Hindu replacement of Christians? In what fucking world? These people are morons.
A much larger group immediately got up and pushed them out of the way and out of sight, many of them White people who got right up out of the audience to shout them down and push them out. The performance on the stage continued without stopping, but the nervous looks on the dancers' faces was unmistakable. I can't imagine what this was like for them.
When the performance was done and a woman went up to a lectern with a microphone, she held up the peace sign and said, "Peace to everyone. Peace to everyone. Unity through diversity, right?" That got applause.
I had a split second of considering taking pictures of the interruption while it happened, but decided against it. I even started a post on Bluesky to share about it, and then I thought: I don't want to give them the air. I texted about it to Laney instead, just to find someone to express my shock and frustration with. Neither Shobhit nor Alexia, who was with us, reacted much; I suppose it's possible they were nonplussed. Alexia did make one comment that I could not quite make out, and we all just kind of moved on when we decided to go up to the second floor to look at all the art.
I did notice at least one woman recording them all with her phone while the group was being pushed out of the way. One of the things Laney texted me was,
This is heartbreaking. I hope people got photos and I hope the doxxing begins. I would be surprised if they even get that kind of attention; this event is not that huge, and neither is the Indian-American community. Still, posting to Bluesky would give them more attention than I want to give them; you might wonder why I am writing about it in detail here, but this blog is nowhere near as easy for people to run across at random. Plus, it's still something I experienced, and I record my experiences here. I will say, this is the most specifically bigoted thing against Hindus I have ever witnessed. Usually it's just Indians or brown people broadly—historically with idiot Americans conflating them with Muslims, which is even more idiotic given the longstanding tensions between Hindus and Mulims—but this was a pointedly anti-Hindu stance. How they think Hindus are "replacing" Christians is beyond me; I kind of can't get over that one. (I realize it's all of a piece with so-called "Replacement Theory," but that doesn't make it any less stupid.)
Well, I guess this incident got more worldwide attention that I realized: it's getting coverage in
multiple outlets in India; it was
commented on by our local U.S. Representative, Pramila Jayapal (who was born in India); and even had some U.S. national coverage, such as
in Newsweek.
So, I just decided to
post about it on Bluesky after all. I get really ambivalent about giving people like this any attention at all, which is what they want, but shit like this should be condemned. And I'm pleased to see that although it got far more attention than I expected, it was also widely condemned.
And now I've given half the space in this very post that that one, few-minute incident. Oh well. I still had a nice time otherwise.
There were a few days there when the plan was for Alexia
and Ivan to join us for this, and we would all go meet at Shobhit's and my place and go down there together. Alexia is coming over from Issaquah again today to see Shobhit in
The Jury Experience with me, and a while ago it was mentioned that the Diwali Festival was happening at Seattle Center this same weekend. She expressed interest, so we made a plan that she would drive here, park in our garage, and we would walk down to the Monorail together.
And then, when I last saw a movie with Ivan and we were walking back up the hill together, he asked if I was "going to Dwali." I immediately realized she meant this same festival, and said yes, Shobhit and I already planned to go, as was Alexia. He said he would meet us at 11:30 which was the time I had set with Alexia, telling me it was not too early.
Well, that proved incorrect: I got a text from him at 11:01 that
I am recovering from a rough past few days. I will be going to Diwali a little later and will meet you over there. I knew that meant I would not see him; I told him we would likely not be there much more than an hour. (In the end, largely because of Alexia's participation in the crafts, which I also participated in, we were there closer to 2 hours.) Ivan replied that he probably wouldn't see us then, "unfortunately."
We still went with Alexia, but she did not meet at our place in the end either; she said her knee was acting up, plus she was already planning to spend the afternoon later with her friend Bonnie on Queen Anne. She was able to park much closer to both her and to Seattle Center down there, free of charge, and walk to Seattle Center. So, Shobhit and I walked the entire way, and we met up with her at about 12:15.
It was just as well; Shobhit wanted to get there right when the festival started at noon, theorizing that the buffet of free Indian food would have a short line. I assumed that would not be quite open yet by noon itself, and I was right. It was sometime between 12:30 and 1:00 before they opened the buffet line—I should make a note of this for next year—and we looked around at the art upstairs for a while before we saw that the buffet was open and went down to get in line.
In the past, they had naan for us, I think. There was a separate line for rotis, but they cooked those to order, which made that line
really slow. We had gotten into the regular food line first, which moved fairly quickly, but by the time that was done, we actually got in the roti line for a minute, but the line had a good 20 people or so in it, and we could tell it would take forever to get through. We decided to forgo the rotis and just eat our
plates of food, which were quite tasty on their own anyway. They exceeded my expectations, actually.
It kind of felt like there was less going on, on the main floor than in previous years, but I could be wrong. The more interesting and interactive arts and crafts stuff was up on the second level, where Alexia and I both participated in two different crafts:
coloring hand drawn bookmarks (before lunch), and
coloring wooden flour designs (after lunch). Shobhit did not join on either of these, which together would be the biggest reasons we were there for two hours instead of one; he just waited with barely contained patience. I'm glad I did them, though; I'm very happy with my results. I don't tend to use regular bookmarks because I constantly lose them, and it's nice to just use the due date receipt from the library because it's regenerated every time I check out a new book and it also shows the due date. But, I'm going to try using this new one for as long as I can; I'm very happy with my gay little elephants with rainbow mohawks. And the wooden flower, I plan to hang as an ornament on the Christmas Tree. (Oh no, it's Hindu replacement of Christmas Trees! Because Hindus have exclusive ownership of flowers, of course. And Christmas Trees aren't actually Pagan
at all.)
Anyway, Alexia departed ways with us, walking toward Queen Anne, and Shobhit and I walked down 1st Avenue and to the Army Surplus Store, where he bought some socks and gloves. We walked through Pike Place Market after that, just meandering to kill time until we finally went to Pacific Place for the 4:00 showing of
Godzilla Minus Zero.
Shobhit had loved
Godzilla Minus One in 2023 so much, he was not only moved to tears, but he immediately declared it the "best movie of the year" as soon as it ended. I was like: okay, settle down. But, because of that enthusiasm, I really wanted him to go see this one with me as well. I aimed for Tuesday or Wednesday at first, since those are half-price ticket days, but we have Action Movie Night on Wednesday, and he has a board meeting to attend on Tuesday. So then I thought, fuck it, why don't we go on Saturday? And he agreed, even though the ticket for him was full price. (I did cheat and pretend he was 60 to buy the senior rate. That saved me about a dollar.)
Predictably, he was
super into this one too, especially when the monsters are destroying everything and each other. I didn't think this was quite as good as the previous one, but still found it thrilling enough to also give it a B+. We were walking out though, and Shobhit said, "A?" I laughed and said, "I'm not giving that movie an A!" He replied: "A-minus?" I said I would give it a B+ at best. Anyway you can read my review to find out why.
I had taken myself to see
La bola negra the night before, and
that one immediately made its way to #2 on my working top 10 movies of the year list. It was incredible. I've seen some criticisms that are fair, but I love it anyway. That movie was made for me. I now have seen three solid-A movies this year. But,
Godzilla Minus Zero was not one of them, nor would I ever expect it to be. It's still really entertaining though.
[posted 10:22am]
