This interview gets a bit meta at the onset: Speaking in a low, measured, articulate tone is author and researcher Dr Manpreet J Singh. Her book, The Sikh Next Door (Bloomsbury) is due for release today, and unlike its international debut in 2020, it will be in all major bookstores across the country in a few days. It’s a book that talks about the various Sikh identities—away from the agrarian and military stereotypes and the mainstream cinematic tropes. The loud Punjabi, ever ready to break into a bhangra. It’s a book she hopes everyone—not just Sikhs—read.

“People come up to me at weddings, and ask ‘Aap dance nahin karengi, aap to Punjabi hai’; we’re more the reading sort,” she says quietly as we sip lactose-free chai (another stereotype broken there, most members of the family are mildly lactose intolerant). “While we are proud of that aspect of the community identity, it remains only one aspect. But it drives all other aspects to the periphery. There is heterogeneity within homogeneity—Besides, over time, the contours of community identities change in response to other factors.”