by Anita Rani
Which is probably why American TV always seemed more alluring – they at least had black people onscreen. (To be fair, we did have Desmond’s and The Real McCoy, both superb TV shows.) America, as we know, is deeply racist and divided, but when it comes to representation in the creative arts, it’s leaps and bounds ahead of the UK, which is why so many of our talent goes over there to find work. Not much space for black and Asian actors in period dramas, until Bridgerton. I watched and loved The Cosby Show, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Oprah. The queen of daytime TV, my Queen. Oprah had a big part to play in me wanting a career in TV. I loved her style, her warmth, her openness, her generosity, her limitless empathy; I even loved her whooping demented American audience, but mainly I was so intrigued by her capacity to share her trauma and the pain of her childhood. I was fascinated by how she was able to shed her shame and, in doing so, made it easier for others to do the same. That is some kind of power. On the rare occasions we did catch a glimpse of someone Asian on British TV, our entire street would know about it: ‘COME QUICK, APNA ON TV!’
We’d shout the house down, at the same time as every other Asian household in the country. All running into the front room to watch the Khans on Family Fortunes or Mr Singh drinking a pint in the Woolpack. We’d loyally gather around the telly, mesmerised by the novelty of seeing brown flesh on screen. Not seeing many brown faces on screen caused a major problem for me, a serious predicament, a life question I had no answer for: who on earth could I become on Stars in Their Eyes? ‘Tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be . . .’ No Asian popstars for me to transform into, no one in the UK knew about Nazia Hassan or Alisha Chinai. So, I decided I could be Sade. We were a similar shade and she always wore her hair tied back in a plait too. I’d dream of being Kate Bush. If only I’d known Freddie Mercury was Indian back then. If only we’d all known. Not only did the world’s greatest rock star have to hide his sexuality, he tragically felt he had to hide his ethnicity too. If only he felt the world could accept him as Farrokh Bulsara, a gay man of Indian Parsi descent. How far have we come 30 years later, I wonder. I also wonder how the heck we didn’t guess he was Indian with that tash. I miss Freddie.
I may not feel English and I may have struggled to grasp my British identity, but I do feel like a citizen of the world. I can blend in most places. It helps to look culturally ambiguous and have a universal name like Anita. Brownness can be a global advantage, for a woman at least. I always have to wait at airports around the world as my husband is ‘randomly’ selected for checks. For me, a respectful, humble, open and interested attitude towards other cultures has got me a long way. A curiosity and ease with talking to strangers must have its origins on those cold days at Shipley market, watching and learning the charm offensive from the seasoned market traders. It’s helped me not only when interviewing people all over the world but more generally when travelling. I’ll make friends and collect people wherever I go. I even got a friendly reception in the most hostile place on earth: Immigration at LAX.
I made a series for the BBC in a refugee camp in Jordon. Zaatari is a makeshift home in the Jordanian desert for 80,000 Syrian refugees. Filming there was both depressing and uplifting. Depressing for the obvious reasons, as the people there had all had to leave their war-torn country and were now trapped in a refugee camp for the foreseeable future. I often think of the people I met, the young women with unfulfilled ambitions and hopes and dreams, their only choice in the camp to get married and start a family. The woman whose hand I held while she had a C-section in a tent. I went in 2016 and in all the time that’s passed since then, they are still there, in the camp. The average time refugees spend in a camp is 17 years. There will be so many children born there who will know no other life. I was blown away, as I always am, by the human capacity to survive and thrive in the darkest situations and places on earth. Syrian people are some of the most generous and welcoming people I’ve met. Despite having nothing, every single family I met shared their food and always offered sweet mint tea – what a warm and beautiful aspect of Middle Eastern culture. Hands down, the tastiest falafel wraps I’ve ever had in my life were in that refugee camp. The people there were naturally all curious about where the team was from.
‘England,’ we’d say. Not much reaction, just deadpan faces. Definitely no smiles. But they looked at me and weren’t having any of it.
‘No, no, no! You. You Lebanese?’
Nice, I’ll take Lebanese. ‘Indian, but born in the UK.’
‘Aaahh, Indian.’ Faces instantly light up. Massive smiles and then they burst into song. Bollywood songs. ‘Aaahhhaha ha kabhi kushi kabhie gham . . .’
They couldn’t speak a word of Hindi but they knew all the actors, Shah Rukh Khan, Amir Khan, Katrina Kaif. They asked me if I ever wear sarees and bindis. Had I ever been to India? Did I watch Bollywood films? I was in. Here, in a refugee camp in Jordan, my Indianness was far more impressive and important than my Britishness.
My Indianness has worked in my favour a few times while travelling, too. It got me out of a few sticky situations while backpacking across East Africa in 2001, just after finishing university. I was hitchhiking and camping up through Zambia (my wonderful parents had allowed me at 21 to go for an adventure of a lifetime!) and making my way to a campsite I’d spotted on the map with the mark of a tent. It was a ten-hour journey to where tent marked the spot. On the bus journey, I was told to hand over my passport at a ‘checkpoint’ and then to hand over all my money if I wanted my passport back. Drats! I’d been suckered into a situation. I tried to argue and realised I was in the middle of nowhere and this could end quite badly for me. After an hour-long stand-off, I handed over the couple of hundred dollars I had in my wallet and a 20-pound note. But they didn’t get the travellers’ cheques stuffed in my socks. Travellers’ cheques?! What bloody good are travellers’ cheques 300 miles away from the nearest city anyway?
I just needed to get to the camp and thought there was bound to be someone who could help me out. Five hours, a smaller bus and the back of a truck later, I was trekking up to the gate of the camp. There are very high gates on this camp, I thought, that’s very strange. A big blue sign outside too. Is this a popular backpacking spot? There weren’t any other Westerners on the journey here, though. I was actually walking towards a UNHCR refugee camp for people fleeing the war in neighbouring Congo. (In 2021, 20 years later, I would be given the honour of becoming a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador. But now was not the right time for me to enter the camp.) There certainly weren’t any other backpackers. I was told there was a one-horse town a couple of miles away and the only shop was run by a man called Krishan. Krishan? Got to be Indian.
I got there and was exhausted so went straight for the killer line, no warm-up: ‘Are you Indian? I’m Indian too. Can you help me?’
Krishan invited me in, with his little old Gujarati mother, to the back of the shop. I ate a fabulous Indian lunch and this lovely man changed my travellers’ cheques, trusting that I would meet his brother in London to pay him what I owed when I got back. The diaspora connecting. He dropped me off at the most amazing waterfall to camp. This is how spotting someone who looks like you can add an extra dimension, a connection, and help you out in a tricky situation, even if they are Gujarati and you are Punjabi.
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There was a lot that was different about me and Krishan based on the experiences of the countries we were born in, but also a lot of commonality. We shared the same references and understood what it meant to be brown and alien. Plus, we both knew what it meant to have an Asian mother.
I have a global network surrounding me and every time someone succeeds, it feels like a success for us all. This is why Mindy Kaling, Lilly Singh, Priyanka Chopra and Kamala Harris are important for the global diaspora. While we sit and wait for South Asians to reach real positions of power in the media and creative arts over here, they are smashing it in the US. Lilly started as a YouTube star and now has her own show on NBC. Mindy’s most recent sho
w for Netflix, Never Have I Ever, has an Indian main protagonist. It was thrilling and emotional to watch, and I cried. Priyanka Chopra is the most famous Indian woman on earth right now – already a Bollywood megastar, she’s now forging a path in Hollywood. A win for them is a win for us all. New ways of consuming entertainment, social media and online platforms have opened up the globe. We can now all find our tribes across the planet and see ourselves reflected somewhere. But our stories, all our stories, don’t belong on the fringes. We want to see ourselves reflected in the mainstream. A true reflection of modern Britain. My Britain.
Travel Like Your Life Depends on It
My multi-layered identity, feeling like a global citizen and travelling with ease and bravery (with the odd wrong turn) all comes from belonging to two worlds. I have Britain and I have India.
My first experience of seeing India was from the front of a motorbike. The very front. Almost as though I was driving the thing. I was three. Mum held nine-month-old Kul on the back, and my seat was on the petrol tank, in front of Dad. Somewhere, also, was the baggage.
This was our first trip to India as a family and we had two weeks to do everything. By do everything, I mean visit relatives. Dad decided to buy a motorbike to get us around. My nan was terrified. How would this young man from the UK find his way around a foreign country? Dad pointed out there were milestones put in by the British, explaining how many miles to the next town. Indians have little faith in us ‘Britishers’, they think we’re wet behind the ears. This was my first taste of how to tackle the motherland – not like a tourist, just go for it. Headfirst. Confidently. Treat it like your own. Neither of my parents are precious, nor do they talk to anyone in a patronising manner. They are life’s adventurers. To be like them was my first travel lesson, which was to come in very handy when travelling the world making programmes 30-odd years later.
I have to tell you about India. I’ve never lived there and I feel more British than ever when I’m there, but it’s also a place I feel so very at home. India taught me to be a citizen of the world. I’ve been visiting regularly since the age of three, to attend epic family weddings that go on for weeks, or backpacking to explore it on my own terms. I’ve made TV programmes about the place, I’ve had luxury high-end holidays there and I’ve been to meet up with friends for pure hedonistic, unadulterated fun. Young, modern Indians know how to party. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been but whenever I think about India, I want to be there, exploring more of it. It’s an unquenchable thirst. I’m addicted to the place. All the clichés are true: food, smell, colour, every sense is stimulated and turned up to 11. It hits you as soon as the plane doors open. The distinct dense, warm, musky air of India. A combination of dust, incense, pickles and a mild undernote of sulphur.
My childhood trips were always to see relatives. There’s no way you can enter Punjab without paying a visit to your extended family. The family politics of not seeing your family is something you do not want to have to deal with, so you’ve got to suck it up and know you will be drinking a lot of tea and making small talk with a lot of people you’ve never met before. It’s enough to put some people off going. It can be a major source of conflict for a lot of British Asians to have to visit family in India. We have been conditioned to take the next bit of food being offered to you, even if you will explode as a consequence. When you’re in India you want to see the country and have experiences, you don’t want to be trapped being force-fed another gulab jamun by your dad’s third cousin. Taking people with you on adventures is also a common courtesy (and a good way around staying multiple hours at a relative’s house). It’s why my mum and dad’s honeymoon, a daytrip to Blackpool, saw them take all my dad’s little siblings and cousins with them, too.
India taught me and my brother so much about who we are. It was in India we understood our culture by seeing it being played out in context. It was here we saw being Indian in action, not just in Bollywood movies. It was in India we fully understood why our family in the UK did things differently. Why Granny dressed the way she did. It was in India we grasped that intense spirituality is just part and parcel of everyday life, not a ‘lifestyle choice’. We learned that we are all connected to something much bigger than ourselves, not by religion, but because in the East understanding that we are part of the cosmos is a given. We were taught this in children’s stories about wandering mystics and monkey gods and demon-slaying goddesses and gods in the form of cheeky children, who open their mouths to reveal the universe. Why wouldn’t everything have a soul? Of course we are part of something much bigger than just this. We visited Hindu temples, Jain temples, Buddhist temples, all the temples, Muslim shrines and gurdwaras, and holy men and holy women and holy cows. And everyone meditates. It’s just we’ve always called it praying. Simple paath, reciting holy text and mantras.
It was in India I learned to love Indian clothes. I understood how much effort, hard work and pride goes into hand weaving material and embroidery. That sarees are an heirloom to be treasured, not worn once and chucked away. My eyes would light up on seeing my aunts dress up in their finest silks, jewellery, eyeliner and bindis, and look more beautiful than any women I have ever seen. In India, strangers told me how lovely I looked in my Indian clothes. In India, I was told I was pretty.
We saw what it truly meant to be Punjabi, not some filtered down version based on the biased memories of relations who left many years earlier. We saw wedding traditions played out in the original way, before they had to adapt to semis in suburban Britain.
It was here that we realised how British we really were. How we freaked out at squat toilets! The first time I went, I refused to bend my knees – I was the motivation for the family to fit an English-style toilet. We were always clocked as ‘foreign’ without us even opening our mouths. It’s the way you dress, your mannerisms, our gaping mouths and the permanent look of shock and awe that people from the UK have on their faces that gave us away.
When we visited when I was eight, my cousins had a live-in servant, a boy, Shankar, the same age as me. When you watch a child the same age as you cook your chapattis every night, it makes you realise a harsh truth about the unjust and unequal world we live in. You understand that freedom of choice is a luxury not afforded to many. According to my family, they were providing this boy with a good home and he was learning a skill. His money was paid to his elder brother every month. I’m not sure how much of it Shankar got. We’d insist Shankar sit and play with us of an evening, or at least sit and have his glass of milk with us before going to bed – we loved him.
India taught us that personal space is a privilege, especially if your entire life is played out on the side of the road. Even then you can be invisible to people walking right by you. India taught us that being treated with respect is a privilege not extended to those deemed beneath you, and that there is a caste system that brands people at birth. India taught us to question ingrained cruel systems of oppression. It was here that we learned the meaning of poverty, true abject poverty, of injustice and how cruel humanity can be. It was here we understood the delicate walk of life and we were taught to walk it with kindness and humility. To never think ourselves better because of our material wealth. To comprehend that it is by pure accident of birth that we are where we are. In India, I saw that just because I had a British education it did not make me in any way superior to any child I met in India, especially not the ones begging on the street. To treat them with disdain and disregard would be an act of cruelty and heartlessness and make me no better than colonialists. Humility before everything is a mantra my mother drilled into us. For better and for worse.
We know, from the umpteen programmes of posh white men heading out on Indian railways, that riding a train in India is an experience not to be missed. On the railways you will experience all of life and come face to face with the wealthiest people (before cheap airlines, most people travelled by train) and the poorest, Indian beggars, who are often kids. This was the first time m
y brother and I witnessed children begging, boarding the train from Delhi to Jalandhar, and we bawled our eyes out. Asking Mum to ‘give them money’, finding the pennies we had in our pockets. Their faces were dirty, their hair bleached light brown by the sun, wearing rags. They had no food, no home, no money, no voice. They were children just like us, but life had dealt them the shittiest card on the planet. So many people visit India and say ‘they have nothing but they are so happy’. From my journeys to parts of the world where people really do have nothing, this is where you find the true strength of the human spirit. But, given the choice, don’t you think they would swap with you in a heartbeat and have their basic needs met? It was here we learned we didn’t have much to moan about.
It was in India where we also learned the meaning of love. Abundant love. The love you get from a massive extended Indian family. We experienced life and the human condition in a whole new way. It was in India I also saw my mum in full flow. In all her radiance, on her patch. Mum is a firecracker at the best of times but in India she flourishes. I saw her exuberance and fun-loving personality. The playful dynamic she has with her family. Unlike back in Bradford, Mum got all the jokes. Here, she knew how to talk to everyone, and she really did talk to everyone. Mum was loved and respected and not patronised. Here, she was happy. In the UK, she was constantly saying ‘hai hai, no no,’ and worrying about our every step. Here, Mum wanted us to experience it all. To see it all. She wanted to feed us every ounce of the world she grew up in.
My mother’s family doted on us and called us ‘vilayati’. Vilayati means foreign in Urdu but in Punjabi it’s used as a term for the British. It’s where ‘Blighty’ comes from. Vs and Bs are mixed up in Punjabi, as are Vs and Ws. Window becomes vindow and then bindow. So, Vilayati, Bilayti, Blighty. See? That was us, the kids from Blighty. Sometimes they might call us the ‘gore’, which means white folk, when we were doing something particularly British, like complaining about the toilets, or behaving like we owned the place, or taking pictures of everything we found quaint that was just their day-to-day. We provided hours of entertainment for our Indian relatives. Their cute little British Indian cousins, the first of their kind, Indian with a British twist, or British with an Indian twist, depending on your perspective.