Harjas Singh

That I live an honest life, I give back to society, and I remember God.

And I was really, really excited, but it had also been a little while since I was three years old, and I had seen some stuff.

Before the ceremony started, I thought back to my first day at St.

Xavier's School.

I was five years old, and I would be attending the same school that my father had attended when he was a child.

And I was so proud, and I almost felt like I had bragging rights, like kids who go to Harvard and say, oh, my parents went to Harvard.

My mom and I went through our daily ritual like we did every morning.

She oiled my hair, combed it, braided it, tied it into a bun, covered it with a patka.

I put on my school uniform, my navy blue shorts, sky blue shirt and tie, and my grandfather dropped me off at the bus stop, me riding behind him on his LML Vespa scooter.

And as a kid who'd grown up in a Sikh family and in a Sikh neighborhood, I thought everyone is supposed to have a bun on their head or wear a patka or have a turban.

So it was to my surprise when I get to the bus stop and none of these kids look like me.

No one is wearing a patka.

No one has a bun on their head.

But these kids keep looking at me funny.

For all they could care, I must have looked like Shrek to them.

But instead of being ugly and green and an ogre, I was ugly and had this thing on my head, this turban.

So after my grandfather had left, some of these kids started circling around me like vultures.

One of them came close to me and said, hey, what's that thing on your head?

Is that an egg?

And another kid said, no, dude, that's a tomato.