I heard something recently on social media that made me revisit my past, someone I know was racially abused while she was out for a walk by a passing motorist.
The murder of George Floyd, the portrayal of Black Lives Matter protests in the media, the English Defence League and other far-right groups turning up to defend statues and monuments has highlighted the disparity between the predominantly white population and people of colour. The trouble is our skin colour make us stand out. We are not British, how can we be. British means white, so the chants are out again ‘go back to Africa’, is what one group of peaceful BLM protesters heard in Hertfordshire.
I like many other families from the Caribbean, India, Pakistan, East Africa, arrived in the sixties, we came to places where we knew of friends and family who had settled. The Midlands, London, North West England where jobs were in abundance and British manufacturing was asking for workers to fill the gaps.
The first time I experienced racism for the colour of my skin came in the late 60s, Enoch Powell had delivered the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in Birmingham. A man deliberately reversed back into my mother and me as we walked on the pavement in Coventry and told us, “Go back home, Pakis,” my mother shocked and angry turned to him and said, “I’m Indian.”
After that incident, I saw the subtle racism. When I went to the shops, the shopkeeper would ignore me for as long as possible and serve me last. White people got priority over me. When I paid for my goods, he would point to counter to put my money down, afraid that my skin colour might rub off on him. The little signs that I was not the same, can you spell it for me, and how do you pronounce that, or you all look the same to me, dear (that one was from the deputy head at my school).
Nearly a decade later, one Saturday afternoon, a group of visiting football fans made their way back to the city centre. I was walking past Swanswell Gate when a man punched my uncle in the face and shouted, ‘Go home black bastard!’ My uncle held onto his nose and his heavily pregnant wife shouted, “Police, police,” to no avail. She held a handkerchief to his bleeding nose, and he said, “He called me black bastard, but I’m Indian.” There’s the rub. He didn’t think he was a problem in the country he called home. He genuinely believed that the continued racial troubles in Brixton, Notting Hill, was because of black youths on drugs and had nothing to do with Indians.
In the mid-eighties I was driving through the East End of London on my way to see my in-laws after a shift at the BBC and as I waited at a traffic light a group of white men, spat on my car windscreen, great big globules of spit, covered my clean windscreen as they snarled, their teeth on display and shouted “F***ing Paki. Go back to your home.”
That same year I had gone to India, the first time as an adult, and for once I thought I belonged. Everyone I encountered was brown like me. We did the usual tourist routes and while we were waiting in the reception of a hotel in Delhi, the man said to my mother, “I know you are from here, but these three are foreigners,” pointing to my father and my sister and me. That stuck with me. How did he know we weren’t Indian; we looked the same as he did, we even dressed the same as the other Indians? My mother had insisted that we wore salwar kameez while we were in India, not our usual jeans and T-shirt. No matter what we wore they knew we weren’t Indian and the brief spell of belonging was gone in those words.
Then the safety net was pulled from under us - when I say us I mean Indians, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Arabs, people who are brown, after 9/11 in New York and 7/7 in London. Brown young men became part of the problem, they fitted the racial profiling as Muslim terrorist; Indians realised they too are the other, the alien who have invaded this green and pleasant land.
So, when someone says to me I don’t fit in with their idea of an Indian, I’m too light-skinned, I don’t have an accent, my preference for music, I shrug my shoulder. I embrace my Indian heritage when I want and don’t always embrace the customs. This is who I am, I am home, I am British, so next time anyone says, ‘Go home Paki, black bitch.’ I will be braver and say, “But I am home.”
Excerpt from My Heart Sings Your Song University - Reena and Nikesh.
Letter from Usha Solanki.
Why have we come to this land? Do you remember how happy we were to get the navy-blue passport, to get the plane ticket to begin our life in the country of our Queen?
How wrong I was to think the people here like us, want us. You don’t hear what I hear. They think I’m one of them, with my light complexion, and talk about how we smell and don’t wash and worship false idols. Then when they hear my voice, they realise I am one of the smelly, unwashed idol worshippers. They look me straight in the eye with no apology as they refuse to take money from my hand, slam doors in my face, sell me rotten fruit and vegetables.
The photograph is a set of books I’m reading for my next duet in the University Series, the story of Sonali and Deepak. The outline is ready, some scenes are written, and I have a vague idea of where the story will lead the characters. But before I start on that I am in the process of creating printed books for My Heart Sings Your Song and Where Have We Come and my new novella Made in Heaven for Me, please sign up to my newsletter and follow me on social media for updates.