My New York debut

Many come to New York with a pipe dream. It's fabulous to have dreams if we don't get carried away with the fantasy and focus on our own strengths and passions to make them come true.

A few months ago I realised one of my own on the upper west side of Manhattan: I played guitar and sang in public for the first time in my life. When I first started to sing a few years ago it was a mystery to me what my voice would sound like, especially because my speaking voice is soft-spoken. 

At the end of my performance of a Bruce Springsteen and a U2 song, complete strangers clapped and came up to tell me how they had enjoyed my "soothing" and "rich" singing and playing. I then repeated the feat at a house party last night where again - people I did not know - were hanging on each word I sang.

I am looking forward to developing my singing and playing further and discovering other parts of me that I only dreamed existed but which have become real in New York.

Light of Day 2011

Yesterday night I attended the Light of Day benefit concert in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Great show for a great cause (to help raise money for sufferers of Parkinson's disease). Unbilled and unsurprisingly, Bruce Springsteen played a 90-minute set. Kelly-Jane Cotter from the Asbury Park Press described Springsteen as the 'gift with the purchase' for those with tickets. And you know what to expect when Springsteen plays NJ.

The clichés: the gig was mostly attended by affluent, middle-aged men, many in gold jewellery, who would not be out of place in an episode of the Sopranos and ladies looking like New Jersey housewives. Not a typical Springsteen crowd outside of NJ. Another cliché: Springsteen stole the show. Well, he's going to isn't he? That's not to say the other performers are not stellar artistes. But Springsteen's mantle as spokesman of joy, broken dreams, hopes and romantic nostalgia has pierced the consciousness of more than one generation of fan. This means he's going to affect more listeners than those whose work hasn't been given that platform and investment. Third cliché: grown men blubbering "I love you Bruce!" and screaming in desperate joy as he begins fraught-father-son-relationship song, Adam Raised A Cain. Fourth cliché: ultra-tetchy bouncers and security trying to control over-zealous Springsteen fans' attempts to shoot to the front of the stage.

I am sure there are many others. Springsteen joined Jesse Malin, Willie Nile and others on duets before belting out his own The Promised Land, Atlantic City, Your Own Worst Enemy and more to satiate a salivating audience - and an irrepressible Springsteen! An unexpected punk highlight was photographer, Danny Clinch's harmonica on simple and fun, Pink Cadillac.

Alejandro Escovedo played a soulful, acoustic set that ran the gamut in emotion, style and rhythm. Jesse Malin and the St Marks Social's fresh chemistry buoyed the audience with songs from Malin's latest album, Love it to Life. Willie Nile horsed around yet sang with heart and conviction, including the rousing, One Guitar.

Springsteen played one of the longest sets he's ever done for a Light of Day show. Could this be any indication of a tour in 2011? Let's hope.

Rebel Queen

I wrote a piece in the New Year Eve's edition of the Guardian about the last queen of the Punjab, Jindan Kaur.

The piece highlights the life of an inspiring, gutsy and far-from-perfect heroine in Punjabi culture. But it is also is a microcosm of a wider issue that needs to be highlighted: that there is a culture of female dissent in the east. This may seem obvious. But how often are women in "the Orient" to use Edward Said's term, made to appear too eager to be dominated and often victims rather than pro-active women in charge of their destinies. Too often and this view is perpetuated in the media too.

Knowing about a historical figure like Jindan Kaur may not change the image of women or even people's minds overnight, but it shows that there are figures to look back to. Complex women who had much to contend with and showed grit and persistence in the face of odds. Highlighting such women helps us begin the process of asking: where are they? How can we continue to highlight them and raise awareness of them?

There is a argument I did not get to make about how western feminists can sometimes look down on women’s struggles in eastern countries without realizing that a history of dissent does exist and we don’t always know about the figures that instigated it. Or the figures are not always spoken about in a way that makes them recognizable as part of a social movement.

But there are figures like Jindan Kaur. Then there are others like the writer Amrita Pritam who wrote about the horrific fallout for women in the Punjab during Partition - stories not discussed enough. Also the Rokeya Hossain story mentioned in the feature - Sultana's Dream - came ten years before what is considered one of the first western feminist utopian stories, Herland, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. This indicates a visionary attitude for society by women living in it at the time; not just passive women living as victims of oppression.

What history/stories are we missing while we are engaging in debates? When I went to the British Library to do research on Jindan Kaur, a search of her name yielded few results in the computerised archives. The librarian told me women were "very badly represented" in the catalogue. There needs to be radical rethinking of how we view history and one place we can start is by digging out these 'hidden heroines' and spreading awareness of them.