"The Pakis Are Here!"

All Aboard The Darjeeling Express

A few weeks ago I went for a well overdue catch up dinner with a very dear friend who I have known since we were at school. We went to Darjeeling Express on Carnaby Street; I had been keenly following the head chef and owner, Asma Khan, on social media since back when she used to host her supper clubs in Kensington. The images of her dishes and descriptions of her techniques have repeatedly elicited wonderment and salivation, and I was silently ecstatic throughout the day. The food did not disappoint. We savoured authentic street food like paapri chaat and puchkas, immersed ourselves in the decadent Mughlai venison koftas and robust Bengali goat curry, and finally, full to the brim and slightly tipsy thanks to my irresponsible compulsion to sample one too many of the gloriously sweet and fragrant whites, we settled on ordering just the one bhapa doi to share. I find the term “mind blasting” ideal for the sensory experience that followed: a thick and creamy, very slightly set, steamed yoghurt with a deep and raw – yet never overwhelming – sweetness much like that of jaggery or treacle, delicately perfumed with cardamom and garnished with dried rose petals. There was silence.

What ensued immediately after was, to me, a very interesting discussion.

I am not sure where it came from, but we were suddenly talking heatedly about ethnicity and identity. My friend’s parents are from the former British West Indies, part of the diaspora of indentured Indian labourers sent across the colonies after the end of slavery. She herself was born and raised in London. If I remember correctly, I was either attempting to unravel the mystery behind where in South Asia her family originated, or I was bemoaning yet another incident where I had observed fellow South Asians failing to unite, continuing to publicise and promote ideas of segregation within the community, and / or distance themselves from their ethnic identity. I suppose it was always the same with me, and my friend had expressed earlier on in the evening that she refused to get into any sort of conversation on such topics.

“I don’t really care,” she declared wearily, laboriously going in for another spoon of that irresistible bhapa doi.

“See, this is what’s wrong with our lot,” I said. “No one cares. Everyone wants to do their own thing: get their heads down, earn a bit of money, start a family. It’s typical contemporary Indian mentality. No one wants to deviate from the norm and nurture the arts, or to delve extensively into, or even promote, their own history… Like…What happened to your acting…?”

“I’m not Indian.”

“Okay, well from a South Asian back – ”

“I don’t consider myself Indian,” she reiterated clearly before putting down her spoon.

I have to admit, I was shocked. And speechless, for once. But not for too long. Could it be the wine? She did not really drink as much as I had. Was she just really full, and therefore exhausted after a hard day’s work? It was also a pretty stuffy evening. Perhaps she was not able to think straight. Unless she was genuinely annoyed at my bringing up the subject yet again, despite her insistence, and was trying to shut me up.

I questioned how she could say that. Were the names of her family members not of Indian origin? Were her parents not practicing Hindus, enough to convert an entire bedroom in their home into a puja room? Did they not wear saris and kurtas at religious and ceremonious events? And what about the food? Was she not comparing the daal we were served earlier to the one that her mother made? She replied, quite matter-of-factly, that it was West Indian culture.

Okay, but she was not ethnically West Indian. Did she have Arawak, Wai Wai, or Carib ancestry? Did Afro-Caribbeans not acknowledge their African roots and history? But she kept insisting that she was not Indian, and that she did not identify as South Asian in any way whatsoever. “So what are you?” I asked. She was British West Indian. So that would mean I could refer to myself as British East African, seeing as my dad was the second generation to be born in Uganda. Apparently, I should.  

We argued back and forth: she maintained that identity was by no means tied to ethnicity, and that she and her family associated their part of the West Indies with Back Home. As long as she had no existing ties to the Subcontinent, why should anything relating to that part of the world shape her identity? I, on the other hand, still incredulous, took the unnecessarily dramatic route, bringing up factors such as DNA and physical characteristics, criticising our media for failing to represent us, lamenting our education system for offering us neither a place in history nor a story to present our very existence on this island. More interestingly, why was it more acceptable to express pride in West Indian cultural ties over South Asian ancestry? In the same way, why do some British South Asians like to identify themselves as something other than what they are?

The Totally Buzzy New Zealander

I had taken in a lodger a few months back. Funnily enough, my dad had introduced him to me, leaving me an excited voicemail enquiring over my spare room. He said that the guy was from India, that he was looking for a room specifically in East London, and that he bore an uncannily similar resemblance and manner to me. So much so, that my dad relayed having to do a triple take when he first saw this young man eating dinner at the Spiritual University in Dollis Hill. So the guy turns up for a viewing, and he looks absolutely nothing like me. I am not sure if my dad is blind, or if he has a questionable sense of humour (I actually moaned to my mum, and she was not best pleased with my dad!). He did, however, speak with a charming and unmistakable Indian accent, he was polite and engaging, he seemed really laid back, – almost eager to please – and we ended up having a laugh.

I asked him what he did for a living, how often he planned on using the kitchen, what he considered best hygienic practice. I asked him where he was from, and he replied, “Actually, I’m from New Zealand”. That didn’t seem right. Where was the accent? Did he recently move out there for work? Was he studying there? And then it came out that he was a Tamil Brahmin from Hyderabad who, after a number of years, had become a naturalised citizen of New Zealand. It was not that I really cared, I was just interested to know if I had visited the part of India that he was from, but if we put it this way: an Englishwoman born in Surrey with roots in Dorset moves to America to study. After gaining her Green Card, she decides to travel across Europe, settling in Prague for a few months. Does she tell the people there that she is from America, or does she refer to herself as English? I communicated this example to him a month or so later when he was briefing me on his “totally buzzy” weekend one Monday evening, and casually dropping how he introduced himself to the spaced out, hipster “bitches” as being from New Zealand.   

Never mind looking absurd, my point is that South Asians already have a stereotyped image attached to them – and they always have had, from the turbaned lackeys of yore to various exotic but obsequious, and frankly ridiculous, restaurateurs near the turn of the century – thanks to the media. In today’s America you have the submissive, heavily accented IT workers and taxi drivers, and here in the UK you have your arrogant and contemptibly avaricious business owners and opportunists.  Both stereotypes remain conservative and religious, always tied to their culture. And here was someone, my lodger, who could be perceived as “cool”, as “different”, as “refreshing”, “for an Indian”. Someone that was a trance DJ, was always experimenting with astral projection on psychedelic drugs, was not working in finance in Canary Wharf with an arranged marriage ahead of him next winter. However, he did fit the positive stereotypes: he practised yoga and chanted mantras every morning, he offered alternative healing therapies as his means of income, and he dressed and behaved like a white man in Goa. Why would you want to hold back on your Indian roots? He pondered over it for a moment, his bulging eyes looking to the ceiling, his mouth pursed in an ‘o’ shape, exaggerating his already herpetological features, before he beamed, declaring the revelation buzzy.

My friend too, being from a part of the world that is respected and acknowledged in Britain for its vibrant culture, for its community spirit, and most notably for its contribution to music. But how many know that people of South Asian ancestry also contributed a respectable portion to this culture? When I had first met my friend’s mother I was confused. I had never seen an Indian-looking person speak in a West Indian accent before. My next door neighbours growing up were from Jamaica, and I had heard Grandma and all the aunties and uncles speaking in their gentle, sing-song ways, along with some of the mothers at my school, and the stern nurses at the doctor’s, but they were all black. Would it not break the stereotype if it was widely known that there were South Asians from these parts of the world, whose mothers spoke in Jamaican accents (the entire Caribbean was Jamaica to us growing up – sorry, we were ignorant), and who legitimately danced at weddings in their salwaar-kameez to soca and dancehall music, as opposed to bhangra and Hindi film remixes? By at least being open about, if not proud of, your South Asian roots it offers an important opportunity to start discussions and question tired and offensive stereotypes.

In the end, my friend and I had no choice but to agree to disagree in order to avoid our delectable evening turning sour.

But that was by no means an isolated incident.

The Pakis are Here!

I have near and dear ones, all with the same or similar family stories of immigration and terrifying discrimination, who are with white British partners and spouses that voted to leave the European Union for reasons relating to such ludicrous ideas as immigration and the overpopulation of the United Kingdom being a direct strain on jobs, housing, and the NHS. But we are deemed okay because we have assimilated into the culture. I apologise to even have to explicate that ‘we’ have nothing to do with the European Union, and the European Union has nothing to do with the broad range of people, cultures, and races that are currently being accused of failing to assimilate. My near and dear ones grow to agree with their other halves because they are not part of those being ostracised by the whole of the “developed” world.  

I was speaking to my aunt the other day, now that it has been two years since I moved into the old family home in Stepney, and I was asking her what it was like to live in the area over forty years ago. As I had imagined, the row of quirky renovated houses along the charming cobblestone mews leading up to the old church of St Dunstan and All Saints, used to be a row of shops selling everything from children’s toys to ladies’ underwear. There used to be a pub on every corner, with the two almost adjacent to the block having since been converted to an NHS Health Centre and a chicken shop. “I used to go into both of them sometimes,” my aunt told me in her ever-strong East End accent. “Everyone used to know your name and ask how your family was.” She told me how in her teens in the late Seventies she used to spend most of her wages at a record shop run by an old Jamaican man on Grove Road, and how a group of black boys always protected her at school when the white kids used to pick on her and throw chewing gum at her hair. I asked her what it was like when they first moved to the block. My aunt described how the family – my grandparents, along with my dad, two uncles, and two aunts – were given many options to relocate from the RAF Camp turned refugee camp at Greenham Common in Berkshire, to such enticing destinations as Manchester, Leicester, India, and even Canada and the United States, but my grandfather was staunchly set on London, and that too the East End, with its textile and wholesale fashion industry on Commercial Road and the abundant possibilities of work for a tailor like himself.

After almost a year at the camp, my aunt remembered how a group of families finally hopped on board a minibus destined for London. One by one, not too dissimilar to a travel company coach dropping off families at their luxurious, all-inclusive destinations along a strip of glitzy yet oppressive hotels, my family was let off at their final stop: a smart and tidy council block just along Regent’s Canal. I was told that we were the first and only non-white family to move into the block, and that every resident of each flat had come out to see who had arrived. The woman that lived downstairs was a “racist bitch”, being the first to loudly bemoan, “the Pakis are here!” as my family huddled confused, unsure what to make of this new future ahead of them. “Pakis, Pakis, Pakis, Pakis, Pakis, Pakis,” my aunt whispered almost manically, “That’s all I could hear around me. And we were thinking, hang on! We were confused. Why were these people calling us Pakis?”

I had recently finished reading, and thoroughly enjoyed, Shappi Khorsandi’s autobiographical A Beginner’s Guide to Acting English, where she describes her own experiences as a child from pre-revolutionary Iran growing up in West London during the 1970s and 1980s. Many times in the book her family are insulted as Pakis, with one particularly memorable passage relaying a time with her father at Portobello Market. Her father is haggling down an item when the aggravated stall owner resorts to racial abuse, with someone ultimately calling him a Paki. Her mother is shocked at the ignorance of the English, who are not even able to tell the difference between a Pakistani and an Iranian. Khorsandi herself makes many subtle references throughout the book to distinguish herself from South Asians, be it mentioning the boys in the playground who enquire over whether she is an Arab, Pakistani, or Bengali, though “The boy himself looked Indian” (?), or even making one of her closest friends seem almost like an exotic alien because she came from India. Although, to be fair, Khorsandi also ardently differentiates herself from Arabs and Iraqis, and any ethnic group that is not Iranian.

Regardless of whether we are from the West Indies, East Africa, South Asia itself, or even evidently parts of Central Asia and the Middle East, when push comes to shove we are indistinguishable in the eyes of many. Before 9/11 we were collectively known as Pakis, and we have since turned into Muslims and terrorists regardless. I can imagine a contemporary role reversal of Khorsandi’s book playing out with North Indians: “Of course I am not an Arab / Iranian / Turk! How can I be a fundamental Muslim if I am Indian?” (and I have experienced a very similar example with a middle aged work colleague who, when staff were asked if they would be taking time off for Eid, flatly declared, “Why would I? I’m Indian”). What difference does it really make? Why succumb to their divide and conquer?

I understand and accept that it is fair to identify with what you choose, be it your ethnic or racial background, the country of your ancestors, the country of your birth, or even your adopted country. But all of that is superficial in the fight against ignorance and prejudice. There are many varied and beautiful cultures from all over the world in Great Britain, and I feel as if all the different ethnicities, from Moroccans, to Kurds, and even to Nepalis, who are still considered South Asian, acknowledge their ethnic identities with pride. What is wrong with the rest of the South Asian diaspora? 

May the Diaspora Unite

India has been in the media a lot lately, and almost always for the wrong reasons. For every positive news story there are around triple the number of articles countering the news: pretentious and patronising, imperialistic in tone and highly conceited. And the readers comments sections pack such unnecessary venom that it renders me speechless and choking, the inflicted poison refusing to wear off even after twenty-four hours. For months I have endeavoured to voice my own opinions, my notebooks full of resentful writings on random pages, but the level of indignance I have felt has been so overwhelming, I have been at a loss for where to start.

I was sent a link to an article featured in India Today by a friend the other morning: ‘India & A Blonde Tourist: an alternate account’, by Jane von Rabenau. It was a response to Michaela Cross’s report on CNN about her experiences studying abroad in India. Like most people, reading Cross’s report did upset me, brought up feelings of shame and disgust, but after all the articles and comments following the horrific gang-rape in Delhi almost a year ago now, and subsequent reports of violent sexual assaults on tourists, it was like listening to a bad broken record over again whilst desperately anticipating the delivery of a new one, a better one, one with a new and superior melody. Furthermore, the report garnered so much attention and appeared to be pounced upon by the US media as some sort of universal lesson for the developed nations to bear in mind about the culture and society of India. Indians are sexually repressed. Indian men are brazen perverts. Indians turn savage at the sight of fair skin. They scoff irately that India can even consider calling itself the world’s largest democracy.

I can recall such snidely deriding comments being made by both the British media and the public during the run up to the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. India was ridiculed and the Western generalisation of Indians as lazy and incompetent was reinforced. This stance continues to embellish the majority of British articles I have read on India: the stench, dirt, and ubiquitous dire poverty appears necessary to adorn travel and culture pieces, with a primitive and backwards depiction of Indian mentality used to set the scene on its society and development commentaries. I observed sanctimonious national pride back in February when David Cameron, though apologetic, defended the British Empire over the 1919 Amritsar massacre and, whilst I was examined on the holocaust and apartheid as part of the GCSE history curriculum, such truths and important historical events relating to the British Raj – the reason anyone from the Indian subcontinent is in Britain in the first place - are swept under the carpet, replaced instead by a subtle, systematically inculcated anti-Indian sentiment. I am even seeing British newspapers commission Indian writers with set agendas, biased viewpoints that match those of the British media, to comment on Indian current affairs, denying the common British public any counter arguments or debates, further enforcing an already long established antipathy – or at least hopeless apathy amongst the reasonable – towards India and Indians.

This is why Jane von Rabenau’s article struck such a chord with me. Not because hers was a beacon of light, nor because I was sentimentally moved by her disapproval of Cross, her humble reasoning ability and her defensive stance, but because it took a white student to make people take note and perhaps accept a little perspective. When Indians talk in defence of their own country, not through pride, but because they are primary witnesses with the ability to objectively attest daily life in current climates, their statements are overlooked, passed off as blind patriotism. If a British newspaper decides Narendra Modi, currently the longest serving chief minister of Gujarat and a leading candidate to becoming India's next prime minister, to be a right-wing Hindu supremacist, then it must be true. Let us pore over all the reports focusing on his alleged involvement in the 2002 Gujarat riots and his condoning the murder of between 790 and 2,000 Muslims, and on the various speculated definitions of Hindu nationalism. Let us ignore the voices of the majority of Indians who, according to opinion polls conducted by such news mediums as The Indian Express and OneIndia News, chose Modi as the preferred next prime minister of their country. What do they know? I too was of this ilk from the moment I heard of the man, back in 2011. I was growing increasingly fretful learning of his possible rise to power, especially because all that was published about him here connoted his anti-Muslim stance, opining that he did not do enough to make minorities in India feel safe, and that he could incite further conflict with Pakistan. As a minority in Britain myself it is the safety, well being, and peace of mind of ethnic minorities worldwide that I hold closest to my heart; it is minorities I sympathise with and relate to. What was happening in India? I read comments from Indian nationals vehemently supporting Modi, but could not understand why. Then my own cousin who lives in India began posting his speeches and applauding him on Facebook. Finally, it only took a little bit of research, a little expansion of my sources of knowledge, to be able to see another side, to understand how millions of ethnically, socially, and religiously diverse people could see hope in someone our media misrepresents as another fascist nut job.  

Why do so many Indians, especially those abroad and those of the diaspora, lack pride in their ancestry? Even Indians in India fail to accept unity. The “modern” youth want to do things the Western way; they too want to pour scorn on the ancient culture and practices inherent in them. Vedic medicine and sciences, spiritual practices, and the universally Indian virtues of tolerance, humility, and benevolence (as noted by the 16^th Century Italian traveller Ludovico di Varthema upon observing the people of Gujarat, and the numerous examples throughout history of Indian kingdoms granting asylum to religiously persecuted refugees of Central Asia and the Middle East – communities that continue to thrive in India to this day) are rapidly being discounted as superstitious rigmarole, traits that make you weak and have no place in economic development. Rather than offer anything constructive, eminent Indians in the media, those turned to for insider information from personal experience, give the West what they want to hear, a variation of what has already been propagated. In a CNN interview with the Indian-born American model and television presenter Padma Lakshmi, she responds to the Delhi gang rape with, amongst other misguided statements, “[sexual discrimination] is ingrained so deeply into our psyche, into our religious texts”. Though she may allude to a suggestion or two towards resolving this serious concern, these are overshadowed by her anecdotes that describe being aggressively leered at whilst popping to the market for cilantro and unbearable sexual harassment on crowded buses on the way to school, both experienced as a teenager.

“So that literally would happen on the bus,” the newsreader asks, unable to conceal her confounded disgust, “that men would touch you and grab you…?”

“Sometimes, yeah.”

Lakshmi then laughs, perhaps nervously, as she describes India’s bus policy of providing reserved seating for women. Why does there have to be this hint of derision, this distinction to be verified between “them” and “look at me now, I've escaped the horrors”? Why the hypocrisy? Von Rabenau quite correctly points out the double standards between an Italian man’s wolf-whistles and stares, often considered a compliment, and an Indian man’s stare, deemed threatening. In most cases, speaking from my personal experience of visiting various parts of India, people are staring from a place of curiosity. Once, on the Delhi metro, I suffered an anxiety attack from the number of passengers I found staring at me, scrutinising me from head to toe. Perhaps the sight of a man with a 1920s inspired haircut, stretch-skinny jeans, and vintage tennis plimsolls was not something East Delhi commuters were accustomed to so early in the morning.

And how about some perspective? The first time I visited India as a preteen I stayed in Gujarat, where my elder cousin and I were driving back late one night from an uncle’s house on her scooter. Upon nearing her neighbourhood a couple of young men on a motorcycle began to follow us. They kept sounding their horns and whistling at my cousin for her attention.

“What are they doing?” I remember asking with fear in my voice. Images of distressing harassment scenes, so common in popular Indian cinema of the 80s and 90s, flashed through my mind. “Why are they following us?”

Just as we were approaching the narrow alley that served as a shortcut to the entrance gate of my cousin’s courtyard house, the youths overtook us and blocked our path. We had been cornered in a deserted and unlit side street. In true Bollywood style there was even an abandoned bullock cart of hay propped against a wall. My heart was racing and I went to hold my cousin tight, praying for the intervention of some hairy-chested, angry hero to leap down from a ten-foot wall. Before the youths were able to utter a word, my cousin leapt from her scooter and charged towards them. She threatened them with a slap so hard it would leave their cheeks burning as red-hot as an iron tawah. They promptly rode off, giggling and cursing to save face.

I have seen women harassed in the same way all over London. Men would call out to them, follow them, pester them incessantly for a hug, a kiss, or a number. I can see the discomfort and unease in these women’s faces as they initially try to ignore the louts. And when they can take it no more, disappearing into a taxi, behind a door, or telling the men where to go, they are met with laughter and abuse. They are ugly slags in any case; their mouths disregarded as unfit for urination. This scene is regularly played out up and down the country.

Of course India has a problem, but what nation does not? Is Britain branded as the paedophile capital of the world? Does every child abuse case look to indigenous British culture and psyche for explanations? And what about the self-imposed unemployed Britons, happy to sit at home or at the pub as they malign immigrants for their work ethic? Any mention of a lazy Briton and the public commentators hit the ceiling. How dare you suggest a Briton to be lazy! You lot need to give us our jobs back. Britain for Britons! Return the Koh-i-noor diamond? Illogical! Acknowledge British atrocities bringing about the devastation and demise of a once powerful civilisation? On yer banana boat mate.

This brings me to that primitive dullard Vinnie Jones and his recent comments to the Radio Times on an unrecognisable Britain, over which I initially lost much sleep. He readily handed himself over to our media to be ripped to shreds over his feeble-mindedness so I can save my time pointing out the baseless bigotry of his every word, but he did give me cause to mull over something of greater significance. His opinions, absurd as they are, seem to hold true for an increasing number of British people. When I was younger this resentment towards foreigners and immigrants appeared to be directed at ethnic minorities for being different, and spending more time with my mum growing up made this difference more apparent. Though my dad and his siblings spoke, acted, and thought like English people (even going so far as to decidedly condemn India as a filthy and smelly place, full of flies), we knew that they were not born here; their stories of racial abuse, although relayed light-heartedly, have marked my mind with a lasting terror to this day. Now we are seen as a threat, as direct competition for work, for accommodation, and for resources. Simpletons like Jones criticise immigration to the UK whilst seeing their own migration almost as an honour bestowed to their host country. In the same way, these people have no idea of the distress or insecurities their thoughtless words can induce in the hearts and minds of those ethnic minorities to whom Britain is the only home they know, a home they were born into, a birthplace that is their primary identity. Should the question arise, ‘where are you from?’, our immediate response is to proclaim Great Britain, or our British city, with as much pride as any full-blooded Englishman. Jones and his obtuse lot see all immigrants as one, be they black, brown, or Eastern European. They do not care to hear how some of our parents and grandparents have worked through blood, sweat and tears to contribute not only to the British Empire, but subsequently also to the British economy and society. How they have staunchly refused to accept a penny in benefits whilst saving up to buy family homes and set up businesses in order to survive, to live as responsible and law abiding citizens, to make something of themselves. In order to support Britons unable to work, pensioners, and the disadvantaged, a great deal of whom continue to fantasise about a Britain devoid of Pakis.

Rather than being so quick to scornfully distinguish ourselves as Punjabis, Bengalis, or Gujaratis, to distance ourselves from Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, or even freshies, all children of the Indian Subcontinent diaspora must stand united. Rather than choose to ignore racist comments, to sit quietly in a corner, we must speak up and correct the statements, educate the uninformed, even if it means stepping out of our comfort zones, confronting those close to us. My sister has a mixed bunch of good friends from working class, council estate backgrounds. She relayed to me recently how one of them, one she is quite close to, throws the word Paki about willy nilly. The latest episode occurred on a night out when some South Asian guy must have accidentally bumped into her in a crowded club. This friend’s instant reaction was to call him a stupid Paki. I asked my sister if she said anything to correct her. She did not. When asked why, my sister responded that it was not her that was being called a Paki. And besides, she was not from Pakistan. One of my closest friends told me just the other day of an incident she encountered on a visit to her boyfriend’s house share. A brother of one of the housemates had come to stay for a few days from out of London. She described him as boorish and opinionated; something about his manner made her feel uneasy. One night, as she and her boyfriend sat in the living room watching television, this man decided it was appropriate to announce that he was “just goin’ down the Paki shop”. My friend looked at her boyfriend in horror, who just shrugged helplessly in response. I asked her why she did not say anything to the man. Her reply was that she just did not want to get into it all with him. 

Consider the Jews of Eastern Europe, once the surviving victims of genocide and now one of the most powerful and influential communities in the United States. They have utilised their influence over Hollywood and the media to constantly remind the world of their plight. They have worked together to build their reputation and authority, not just for themselves but also for Jews the world over. How about African Americans, and the Afro-Caribbean community of Britain? They too have worked just as hard to break down stereotypes and aggressively challenge prejudice in order to achieve the respect and recognition that is owed to them today. All of these communities have used the media to push their stories and to educate the world, in effect glorifying their self-image whilst simultaneously promoting the ostracism of their critics.

What is happening in India should be of significance to us, but they are issues too vast and from which we are isolated. We are constantly reminded of our statuses on visits to the Subcontinent, how we do not belong, how the experience will always be novel for us; we are disregarded as foreigners who could never adjust. And when comments like those of Vinnie Jones explode onto the media, following the recent reports over the Home Office immigration vans targeting people of an “Asian appearance” in specific London boroughs, it is disconcerting because it is being indicated to us that we do not belong in Britain either. We cannot even be classed as nomads, for we do not travel from place to place. If anything, we are in danger of being displaced. It is now up to us; it is the responsibility of those who work within the media, of those who have some influence, to put their faculties to good use in order to educate and inform the masses. Indian history during the British Raj must be taught at schools, including such dark and disturbing truths as Macaulayism, in my opinion the inflicted root cause of Indian mentality today, the many Indian famines under British rule, brought about through greed and selfishness, and the indenturing of Indian labour to all corners of the globe. Writers and directors need to cinematise significant moments in the history of India and its diaspora: colonial attitudes, Indian massacres, partition, the 1972 Expulsion of Indians from Uganda. We need to show the world where we have come from, what values we have brought, and how much we have contributed to our new homelands. In this way, united, we can challenge attitudes and misconceptions, collectively earn respect, and find our place, with reverence, as part of British society.

The Devil Makes Work For The Complacent

The Royal Wedding weekend has come and gone proceeding the Bank Holiday weekend and my two weeks off work. And what have I to show for it? Not a lot unfortunately. I have pages of notes yet to be articulately typed up and have forsaken a university course application for a fortnight now. There is a list of half-finished home maintenance jobs I have still to go through and, to be perfectly honest, I cannot recall having shaved once throughout the entire fortnight.

Ninety-nine percent of the time I put this down to smoking skunk. In order to procrastinate, especially whilst taking a break from something needing pressing attention, I find myself lighting up a “well deserved” joint and settling down to delight in some unconstructive reading; blogs scrupulously scrutinising every conceivable incense available in the West, research on the genetics of Gujaratis residing in Texas, tracing back their ethnic makeup to Western Asia and the Caucasus and the history of Persian relations with the Punjab, for example. At times I tune in to Soma FM, for their “playful exotica and vintage music of tomorrow”, or to Music India Online, to relish in Classical North Indian raga’s heard at the correct samay for maximum atmospheric effect. And then there is always Facebook… All too soon the pre-dawn sky turns from cobalt to a clear, baby blue; my screen still blank, my ashtray runneth over…

I have always beaten myself up over this; the adolescent years spent locked away in my bedroom actually working for nights on end on some creative project or another, all with the help of nothing more than a trusty score, are long, long gone. I am no longer nearing my twenties, nor does the stuff evoke any other inspiration than a sole aspiration to relax. Yet I continue to use cannabis as an excuse for creativity, an excuse to unwind, an excuse to socialise. Or is it that these activities are used as an excuse to smoke? Year after year I have watched people jog past me on the road to success, each year sprouting younger participants, and I have remained content to stroll at my leisure, enjoying and criticising the surrounding scenery, iPod on shuffle, joint perpetually between my fingers. I have rebuffed handfuls of opportunities through laziness, lack of enthusiasm and a lack of commitment; gigs secured at prestigious venues where we failed to make an appearance, foreign language tutors abandoned, work openings from casting agents disregarded. There is no one to blame for the impending loss of my twenties but myself. But is weed the devil in this case?

I have been discovering over the past few years that many of my friends, acquaintances and even family members have fallen victim to this critical and contagious disease known as Complacence. My closest friend, an exotically beautiful chanteuse – a criminology and sociology graduate – with an infectious and electric persona, has toiled for London’s Emergency Services for the past half-decade; another rather handsome young acquaintance who has only recently moved to the capital with the dream of being discovered as a fashion model, seems to work all the hours that God sends at a well known West End department store to maintain his rent and bills, allowing him no time to pursue his ambition; my sister, a celebrated thespian back in her university days, who had attempted her first novel aged twelve, freelances as a Presentation Scheduler. Others, closer to thirty than they are to twenty, are yet to ascertain their calling and have applied for jobs in sales or within local councils in the meantime. None of these people smoke.

So what could their excuses be for their complacence? Some have family commitments and responsibilities, others choose to save as they live at home whilst simultaneously indulging in retail therapy with the surplus of their income, others still are earning only enough to manage the maintenance of a lifestyle with perhaps a chance to enjoy themselves once in a while if the budget allows it. A job may ultimately be just that, a means to an end, but for how long can it be so? Especially when so many of us in our mid to late twenties have had the education, possess the abilities and raw talent and are also fortunate enough to have the freedom and opportunities to pursue any career we choose. Especially when time is very quickly running out.

One theory is that we are a spoilt bunch! Many of my friends choose to remain at home; I know people who are earning over forty thousand and are still happy to tuck themselves in snugly under the wings of mum and dad. Though I may be supporting myself, so to speak, I do not pay any rent. Also, were anything to go awry, forcing me out of my home, I know that my parents are but a twenty-five-minute drive away in North-West London. I do not, nor would I ever, expect anything from them but I am still secure in the knowledge that my parents’ support is unconditional. I may not even be speaking for a whole generation, rather for a select minority, but never actually having been thrown in the deep end of anything, knowing that I am never alone with an obligation to fend for myself, may have made me soft. My parents were never well off; my dad was the main breadwinner with my mum helping out – either by finding work or by setting up some sort of business or another – over the numerous periods that my dad’s job was under threat. Despite both parents having to really work hard in order to sustain three children and a household, we were never left wanting for anything. It was only recently that our mum divulged to us her secrets and the struggles they had faced over the decades, or we would have been none the wiser. We had still enjoyed a very happy and truly fulfilling upbringing.

Though my mum, being the last child of five, may have been raised in modest comfort – her father worked abroad, in Karachi, and would send money over whilst her mother taught classical languages at the local primary school – my dad’s family were part of the Asians expelled from Uganda by the mentally deranged Idi Amin in 1972. They were an affluent middle-class family of bespoke tailors and musicians who were forced to abandon all their belongings, both sentimental as well as three generations worth of accumulated revenue, and flee the only life they knew to seek refuge in England. The Ugandan government permitted them to take only fifty pounds out of the country and this is all they had to their name when they first stepped into the UK. My dad’s family were first-hand witnesses to the atrocities committed against their people over the twenty-mile drive from their home in Kampala to Entebbe airport; Indians being looted of their heirlooms, the ancestral gold and jewels they had attempted to smuggle out of the country on their person and on their children, men being beaten and hanged on roadside trees, women being dragged off by the Ugandan soldiers to be made an example of before being murdered. And upon arrival at the countries of their destinations – a number of families were severed as some members were sent to the United Kingdom and others to India, Canada and the Untied States depending on their passports – the refugees landing in London were greeted with anti-immigration protest marches led by British meat porters clearly fuelled by Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech from a few years earlier, still fresh, warm and rapidly putrefying in their savage minds. My father, being the eldest of the boys, had to find work as soon as he could; he has been working for the same company since he was fifteen. My youngest aunt and two uncles went to school having fruit pelted at them and chewing gum thrown in their hair, facing chants of ‘Piss Off You Pakis’ during their journeys. One of my dad’s brothers was so badly bullied and beaten up by racists that he ultimately died in his teens of a brain haemorrhage. Even after my parents met and married ten years later and I was born on a council estate in East London’s Stepney Green in the mid-eighties, the sheer amount of racial discrimination and abuse the family would regularly have to endure forced them to move to a more racially diverse area of London. Over those past ten years, my dad had managed to save enough money to buy a spacious four-bedroom, detached house in suburban Harrow for his parents and younger siblings, and a much smaller semi-detached for his wife and kids only a mile away in hospitable Kingsbury; this is where my sisters were born and where the three of us were raised. 

So what do we know of true endurance and of having to work hard? We now complain of our interminably drawn out commutes to work, of injustices and of benefit fraudsters, the “council estate scum”. We complain that there are not enough career prospects out there yet we pull sick days when we have guzzled one too many bottles of wine the night before or when we simply cannot find the will to go into work. We complain of our working hours, of how we have such little time to ourselves to actually utilise our free time proactively in order to accomplish the goals of our dreams. Our mothers were managing employment, children and a household whilst our fathers were working unpaid overtime just for job security. It is definitely not in our genes, so why are we still so damn lazy? How is it that hard work has actually become totally anathema to us? It has to be because we honestly have no idea what it is to have to make ends meet; we have no real responsibilities or dependants. And we are complacent in this bestowal. We relish in it.

Again, it’s not all of us who suffer from this disease. Ultimately, as with anything, there is always a balance and just as we are complacent, there are the go-getters of the world, the high-flyers and the doers. They may not have the knowledge, the charm nor the looks but they have the vigour and the patience to persevere. Then you have us, the complacent layabouts, waiting for our successful futures to be handed to us on a warmed plate in one easily digestible and deceivingly delicious portion. We may have it all, the knowledge, the charisma and the strikingly good looks, but none of the drive and fortitude to work hard for an end result.

Now I am the first to advocate the easy life, a life full of enjoyment and devoid of stress, but reality constantly reminds me of the necessity to work to see any of my dreams come to fruition. Besides, remaining idle gives us more time to think wasteful thoughts than is necessary for any human being. Rather than strategise a future for ourselves, we choose to obsess over such insignificant issues as relationships, appearance and other people’s hidden agendas, for example. We seem to lose our grasp on reality through this kind of thinking and begin to take all our parents’ years of hard work, efforts and generous provides for granted; we take the good fortune of our lives for granted. All too soon, the years will have passed us before our very eyes and all we will have to show for it are a developed form of neurosis and deep regret. This wasteful thinking is the work the devil makes for us, both aiding and challenging our complacence to cause utter confusion and lead us to the dangers of self-doubt. Albert Einstein once defined the height of insanity as “continuing to do the same thing over and over, and then expecting different results”. This appears to be the precise nature of the complacent lot; we seem to come up with the loftiest justifications for our intransigence.

“It is only laziness that can make a slave of a free man”

This is a quote I once read in the Shahnameh, the Persian book of Kings, and I have it written in magnetic ‘ransom note’ letters stuck onto my fridge. It is what I strive to live by; I read it every morning to remind me to exert my efforts and to not throw my life away for the temporary pleasures of indolence. Yet, though I see this quote every single day, it seems to have failed to make much of a lasting impact on me; this universal truth is thoughtlessly dismissed as just words on a fridge, part of the furniture, and this is where the roots of our problems lie. The longer we choose to ignore the unmistakable writings on the wall, regardless of whether we smoke the highest grade, regardless of a conditioned complacency or laziness, the more we will suffer ourselves, growing bitter as we grow older, over how we have wasted our lives.

It is up to us to shape our destinies and subsequently the future and fate of our societies. Thoughts and talk are ultimately useless without being followed by immediate positive action.

News clippings of Ugandan Asian refugees landing in the UK, August 1972

My dad with his eldest sister at the flat in Stepney around the late 1970s