A View From Below

"Standing on the shoulders of giants"

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Samran, Bradford - 27

My Grandad, or Baba as we call him – Mohammad Din – arrived alone in England in 1961 aged 31. He had left his wife and 1 year old child alone in Kashmir. He says that there was no actual need for him to venture abroad in comparison to the economic migrants coming from South Asia at the time, since his family were wealthy tailors, but he kept hearing about how great Britain was and how much opportunity to make money their was. So soon enough he brought a one way ticket to Bradford, West Yorkshire, England.   Greeted by friends whom he went on to stay with during that early period in England, he said that the city was nothing like he had imagined. Albeit the locals were friendly and always smiling, Bradford was merely a town with cloudy, dark skies; and the walls of the textile mills in which he worked were as black as the night sky. The snow in those times he recalls, reached his knees!    Although Baba is of Kashmiri origin, his parents hailing from Baramullah, the Bradford snow, he found, was different. It was much colder than the type he was used to when travelling around the valleys of Kashmir; it is then that he says he began to feel that he had made a big mistake in coming to England and toyed with the idea of returning to South Asia to fulfil his short-lived dream of becoming a Bollywood actor. Baba recalls moving to Bombay in his late teens to work with his brother, whilst secretly, he was trying to break into Bollywood, by sneaking on to film sets with the help of a friend who had promised Baba that he had contacts in the industry.   Baba’s father was in the Navy and had died at sea when Baba was just a little boy, so his elder brother became the family’s breadwinner. He caught wind of Baba’s dream and pulled him up, since the family had no time to prance about in front of cameras! They were tailors and not ‘silly entertainment people’. With that, any idea Baba had about becoming an actor was crushed.   In ‘60s England, Baba’s social circle was growing as more friends joined him from back-home. His situation was steadily improving and he purchased a house and moved into it with 4 friends, living the bachelor life until my grandma caught a one way ticket with my mother to join him in 1963- she also wanted to see what was so great about the UK! Party time was over for Baba and the family soon moved to Chapeltown, Leeds, to raise my mum and her new baby brother. Baba was now a taxi driver and was making serious money; I’m told there was always enough food on the table and a new dress for my mum every week!   Before long, more and more of my grandparents’ friends and family had moved to Bradford and so my grandparents moved back in order to be amongst familiar faces. Baba continued driving taxis for Hackney Carriages and my Grandma worked in a factory making skirts and blouses, as well as sewing clothes for the now fast growing community of Indian and Pakistani women in Bradford. Together they raised 2 children, ensuring they had a very British upbringing amongst children of various backgrounds, and so the family of 4 celebrated all the different holidays and festivals!   My mum got married at 19 and taught at the local Primary school. Baba’s neighbour was an old English lady who took a liking to my mother and said she wanted to leave her house to my mum, but, my Baba being a man of pride, insisted that he pay even a small sum to the English lady for the house.   There are 4 of us siblings, all raised next-door to our grandparents. Although we studied and graduated with Law degrees (every desi parents dream!), the acting bug also bit me and I started up a theatre company (every desi parents nightmare!)- they say these things skip a generation J.   I am often reminded about the struggles of the first generation – ‘we came here with nothing, just a dream, to earn and provide: the new generation doesn’t realise how lucky they are’. I don’t argue – he is right to an extent, but growing up I didn’t see as many smiling faces from the “native locals” – the taunting, abuse and racial segregation in a very changed Bradford was real, followed by two major race riots which only added to the tension.   I’ve always likened Bradford to a Desi Harlem- a very rich city in terms of culture and identity which is thriving with British Asian owned businesses in all sectors, even the Arts; but we must acknowledge the stories and struggles that the 2nd and 3rd generations have faced, and still face today, which no doubt has moulded and shaped Bradford and the wider UK.   But one thing for sure, this is home. 

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Gurjeet, 46 - Nottingham:  I am the youngest of 6 children: the older 3 were born in India and us younger 3 were born in the UK. Between the youngest (me) and the eldest (my sister), there is a 16 years’ age gap; 14 between myself and number 2 (my sister), and 12 between myself and number 3 (my brother). Mum told me she got married at 18 but didn’t recall the year as recording and giving significance to dates just wasn’t a thing, especially in the villages at that time. She was illiterate and had no education, a village girl with a very simple life. She had brief recollections of the 1947 partition of India- she would relay her memories of the upheaval, trekking across land with her parents and siblings to find residence that would eventually bring them some stability. She always told me how poor they were; no money; little materials and having very few of the comforts that we now consider as basic needs such as food, clothing and warmth. Mum never really spoke about happy memories, I often had to draw out these deep-rooted, suppressed thoughts, and even then she would recite them as matter of fact, with little joy in her facial expressions. This led me to think that she was a depressed soul and would certainly explain her demeanor in the years I recall. 

Dad was the eldest of 5 children. He became a father figure at 13 following the death of his dad. He had to take responsibility for the family in his father’s absence, as he was the eldest son and so gave up his dream of becoming a Ragi: he wanted to pursue the religious life. He worked hard in the physically and mentally straining fields of Punjab – a typical existence of many Jatts of his time, simultaneously raising his sisters and brother as well as looking out for his widowed mother. I’ve heard she she was a strong-willed woman; a force to be reckoned with. Both mum and dad came to the promised land of the UK – I don’t know exactly when, but Dad was living here for a good few years before mum and my 3 older siblings arrived. She told me she landed in this strange place and was told to remove her Chund (Chunni face covering) by her sister-in-law, as it was highly embarrassing. She lived with my Chaacha (dad’s younger brother) and wife as well as my Maama (maternal uncle). In those days 3-4 families lived in one house, in overcrowded conditions, pulling together and saving to make a living and one day, to get their own properties. 

Dad was a bit of a ‘wannabe’ (my thoughts only), he seemed to follow others and try to be more than he was capable of (never said this openly before now). He wanted to make a better life for himself and his children. He chased several business ventures but to no avail, however, eventually he gained himself enough financial security to purchase his own property. I really cannot imagine what they went through- not being able to comprehend the differences in the people, culture, buildings, language, food, livelihood, the air, climate, social networks, politics, inequality, oppression, the list is endless… 

From Radford to Clifton, back to the hood of Hyson Green and finally to Aspley, my experience of both parents was one that instilled a great work ethic, values and principles that I carry with me and I hope to pass on to my children. Don’t get me wrong, boy did I challenge their ethics and principles, and rightly so: they moved with the times and came to understand my torn culture between two worlds. Two worlds that even they felt lost in, as they somewhat succumbed to the ‘British way of Indian life’. 

As the youngest, I observed many comings and goings in our household- my siblings; their partners; my parents and extended family unit which included Chacha/Chachi plus 2 male cousins; Mamma/Mammi plus 3 male cousins. Dad’s Pua (paternal aunt) lived with us too, she had no children of her own and at the time, was done over by her late husband’s relatives. They swindled and stole her livelihood and assets from her, so Dad took her in to come and live with us. He looked out for her as though she was a Mother to him. I was fortunate in that I formed a beautiful relationship with Puaji. Apparently, I wouldn’t go anywhere without her: I would sleep with her and she would tell me Punjabi folk tales - known as Baat. We had a special connection. I believe she had a third eye and passed this sixth sense on to me. When she passed away, her death devastated me – I was 18 and had just lost my second mum. 

The older 3 siblings married when I was 6, 8 and 9 and so I don’t remember bonding with any of them as a child- the age gap was too big between my and my eldest sister. I had some relationship with my other sister who still lived with us, although she was strict and always seemed angry until she got married, moved out and had children of her own. As I grew up, our bond grew stronger, and she would talk to me about girly things like periods. Mum never told me about these things and I don’t understand how she expected us daughters to just know about them. I doubt anyone ever had “the talk” with her either, so these quiet notions of modesty and shame just get passed down the line, until someone talks about them openly and break the cycle. 

The 2 brothers that were also born in the UK and that I grew up with were both very different. I used to play with them and the other male cousins when I was younger – football, rounders, cricket, baseball, a right little tom-boy I was. Then one day it all stopped. I wasn’t allowed to go out and play, not even with my girlfriends. I was never allowed to go to my friends’ houses and sleep over, let alone have anyone over myself. I vaguely recall having a few friends round when I was about 18: I was rebelling and was happy to let it be known. 

We faced the usual familial difficulties – ones I feel my parents never managed appropriately and brushed under the carpet. I could not forgive this kind of ignorance so maybe that’s when I started to rebel. You see the old respect/izzat came into play all the time – “What would so and so say”, “they are pointing the finger at us, talking about us, how can I face the community, it is shameful” – so it’s better you keep shtum and let it eat at you and those in your immediate environment! This kind of containment was extremely unhealthy for us all, Mum I particularly felt for and I would hear her crying at night, I could feel her resentment and anger and I often sat up with her allowing her to just rant at me about her life, experiences and hurt. 

Despite- in fact, maybe thanks to- the rebelliousness, the challenging of Indian family norms and general patriarchy, I managed to get myself a good education, despite the remarks and lack of encouragement, despite the cousins doubting my abilities and my meager exam results at school and college. I started my degree as an adult at 21. I did enjoy this experience, although my life at that time was consumed by an avid love affair that was highly secretive and doomed from the start. I look back now and don’t actually know how I managed to scrape through- must have been fate. So; following the degree, I was receiving constant pressure to marry, I was able to ward this off for a few years, but then one day something happened to me - a realisation that I had the responsibility that could either ruin or maintain my parents’ reputation, which they had rebuilt after the divorce of my elder brother. Eventually, I met the man I have been married to for 19 years. He matched my requirements, and luckily enough, those of my parents. So, I gave up my previous life of sin to embark upon a new life journey that would make me a mother of 2 – Imani and Jai. 

I hear many parents say ‘I want my children to have everything I didn’t have’ - this is usually related to material items. Whilst I do give my children the enjoyment of material things, I like to think (and hope they would agree), that more importantly, I give them time in abundance. Something I feel that I didn’t get from my parents. 

I do wonder if my family has influenced the upbringing of my kids, even in some of their absences – (deaths, politics and illnesses). I instill some basic values, ethics and principles as a mother; however, I wouldn’t say that these were necessarily from my own upbringing, rather, perhaps it was the absence of some of these things which pushes me to make them present in my children’s lives. Now that I think about it I believe it is these very experiences of culture, difference, education, inequality, oppression, socialization and attachment (none of which would have impacted me had I not remained an integral part of my family), which have all influenced my being as a mother today. 

There is much more to be told and scribed, however, this is a snapshot of a short story of 3 generations of British-Indian-Punjabi-Sikhs, from my perspective as a daughter, sister, mother and aunt. It’s my brief, beautiful View From Below. 

#diaspora #british #britishindian #punjabi #sikh #immigration #migration #immigrants #thirdculturekids #firstgeneration #secondgeneration #family #race #politics #identity #patriarchy #india #england #nottingham #history #stories #familystories #avfb #aviewfrombelow #aviewfrombelowuk #womensissues #desiwomen #diasporawomen #indiawomen #sikhwomen #punjabiwomen #britishwomen 

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Huma, Bradford, 26. My grandma's journey began in the 1960s, she would tell us how when she first went to get her passport documents in Karachi her sister in law thought that the lift in the building was measuring their weight. We would all laugh endlessly at this and countless other stories. Two young children in tow, my grandma arrived from Pakistan to the UK, joining my grandfather who had arrived a few years earlier. She recalled the sky being gray and cloudy; thick from the smoke pouring out of the factories. She went on to work in one of these factories day in and day out - sewing cloth nappies and nightgowns to help my grandfather, a bus conductor, make ends meet. A car was a luxury my grandparents couldn't afford and so my grandma would often walk to places near and far to save on bus fare. There came a time when my grandfather suggested that my dad and uncle also get a full time job but my gran knowing how studious they were insisted that they be allowed to study to their hearts content! And so my dad went on to do well for himself meaning we got to live relatively comfortably. Despite being illiterate, only just able to write her own name, she always placed great value on education and how we must respect our teachers - I loved this about her. I was always so impressed with how my grandma integrated into life in England, even though she knew little English. One of her good friends was a Mrs Dobson - they would visit each others' homes and often bake together. My grandpa too, was a social butterfly and a rather generous man. He would often come home with half his wage or less because as a bus conductor he would let anyone he knew on the bus for free - this would then get taken out of his wages. My grandma of course was less impressed than I was at hearing this. My grandma taught me to be strong willed and to remember that when times are hard or things aren't working out to know that there will be better days ahead. My grandpa taught me to be kind, always. And although I ended up on this cold, wet, soggy island; I will forever be grateful for the sacrifices my grandparents made - leaving behind all that they knew to seek a better life in a foreign country and making it work no matter what.

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Zahra, 26 - London: Just over 100 years after the abolition of slavery Harold and Vera Pearce (née Clarke) were employees of Grove Plantation, St Philip parish, Barbados. As sugar cane still needed to be cut, plantations still functioned. Staff were paid and not owned but working in the fields was a job that my mother remembers as being for the poorest families. Her parents, Harold and Vera, were lucky in that way. A world away from the fields, Harold worked as the plantation manager’s driver whilst Vera was a maid in the plantation house. Perhaps unbeknownst to the white Barbadians that employed him and dutifully paid their respects at his funeral a decade ago, he hated working there. So when the opportunity came, leaving his six children and pregnant wife, he went to the USA where he found work on a pig farm. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he didn’t last long in 1950s southern USA and soon settled in Spark Hill, Birmingham where he found work as a factory labourer and was joined around a year later by Vera who began working in an ice-cream factory. The children remained in Barbados. Whilst memories of my grandfather are sparse, stories of the Spark Hill house are plenty. After 10 years of separation Granddad was reunited with four of his children as they arrived, strangers, shivering in their white linen in October of 1964 and between them, they made that house the family home. My mother and aunties alike remember it well: chores upon chores, cooking for Granddad between shift work and keeping Granny’s spotless kitchen clean and of course beats, beats and more beats, as was the norm in Caribbean households. Truthfully, the house in Spark Hill sounds nothing like the one I grew up in. Granny and Granddad worked relentlessly, constantly counting pennies, and when each of their daughters turned 16 they too started working and contributing to the family income. Eventually, after thirty years of labour given to this country, Harold and Vera lived out their dream and returned to Barbados to a brickhouse in St Philip where they would spend the rest of their years together. Linton Kwesi Johnson, a British-Jamaican dub poet of my mother’s era, describes his generation as the rebel generation. My grandparents’ generation came to survive, to cobble enough together to build a house back home that they could return to, and to leave their children with options. It was this struggle that allowed the rebel generation of 1980s Black Britain to engage in the struggle for equality that came to define my parents’, and eventually my, existence. As much as I mourn the separation, the trauma, the physical and emotional distance between my grandparents and I; as much as I even resent, at times, their decision to uproot my family in pursuit of an unpromised future: The simple fact that I cannot fathom why or how, leaving your children, to travel to a rainy, racist island and work yourself into the ground for three consecutive decades could be your best option, is testament to the privilege that this decision has afforded me.

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Meryem, 26 - Leeds: My parents met in art school in Oran-Algeria after my mums family relocated there from Bulgaria. Between a Bulgaria that was coming to terms with itself in the aftermath of the collapse of communism & an Algeria on the brink of civil war, my parents decided to move to Paris, where myself & my younger sister were raised until the age of 8. Mum & Dad faced a lot of prejudice & discrimination in Paris. They wanted better for their kids, so they moved once again, this time to the UK. It was important to them that they lived in a place where they were able to practice their faith and have opportunities just like anyone else. This is how we ended up in the UK. As both my parents are artists, I grew up constantly watching them create, always by their side ready with my own pen at hand. I think my own need to make marks sparked from my dad giving me piles of paper to draw on as he would use the pieces as part of his thesis research into children’s art forms. Without my parents, I perhaps would never have come across art, or had such an innate desire to practice it, nor experienced the way it continues to touch my life. And for that, I will be eternally grateful. When most people around me discouraged & belittled the importance of art & creativity, my parents gave me that confidence to believe in what I was doing; to believe that it was of actual value & not just a hobby.

Today, Dad is an interior designer & Mum a ceramist teacher, working with the elderly & children with mental & physical disabilities. Their creative expressions embody their complete selflessness. They’ve always taught me that nothing comes from us- and the ability we have to create comes from a higher power: it’s a gift. Everything I have achieved has all been due to them: for pushing me through school & to find stability; for encouraging me and believing in me to pursue a life and career as an artist. They are my art work’s biggest critics, and they deserve to be. They’ve gone above and beyond sacrificing themselves for me to be able to do so much- to relocate and live in London, to forge my career as an artist in this city and ultimately, to stand on my own feet in search of my dreams.

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Shruti, 25 - London: We moved to the UK in June ‘91- I was 1.5 months. Before that my parents & my brother lived in Bhopal just after the 1984 power plant incident, Hong Kong & then Pune-where I was born. Mum says we moved to the UK because Dad got offered a job, but Dad stresses that he wouldn’t have been brave enough to move were it not for Mum. 'She’s more adventurous & encouraged me to see the world’’. In 1993 we moved briefly back to India & soon after my Dad’s friends started a company in the Caribbean. So we moved again! First to Jamaica, then Barbados, where I started nursery & Prateek started school.

In Jamaica we lived in an apartment complex with my Dad’s colleagues. He loved the vibe there but mum not so much, so when in 1995 Dad got offered a transfer to the UK we took it. I think they were conscious about Prateek’s education now & thought the UK system would set us up well.

Mum had worked before having us, as a geography lecturer on the Andaman Islands, but didn’t return to work till I was 7. She found a job in a bra factory (!) & was grateful to meet other Indians in an otherwise white area. She later started work as a social worker, completing a Masters in Social work whilst working full-time and looking after us. She would study between 11pm-2am daily. My parents worked hard & taught us that nothing comes without effort. When Prateek was 11, Dad borrowed some money to send him to the best school in our town. My mum also saved a lot over the years, running our house on a shoestring so that we’d have money to start us off as adults.

There is so much I wouldn’t have achieved without my parents. I’m grateful for the hours Dad spent with me on my Maths homework after work, Mum sending me to piano & dance lessons & ferrying me between them; their love for us & innate kindness to others.

It’s impossible to say what life would be like if we hadn’t moved. I often think about who we would be now if we had stayed in Pune. But the more time passes, the happier I am to be here. Travelling has enriched and improved my life experiences & deepened my relationship with my brother, as we we have been each other’s only constants in life. #immigrantstories #diaspora #uk #family