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When Overt Racism was Everyday
My Mother was incandescent with rage the first time she met the only other Indian family to move to our tiny, Cornish village in the mid 1980’s. She couldn’t believe that after four years of being a social pariah because of her skin colour and trying so hard to make a place for herself and for us in the small community that another Indian family had moved in and become a stereotype – they had bought the corner shop.
Or the ‘Paki Shop’
I was seven years old and I was actually quite pleased that this new family had moved to the village. In the four years since we moved from the very cosmopolitan Hounslow in Greater London to the tiny village of Dobwalls in Cornwall, I had been the only ‘Paki’ in the village school.
I was stared at, bullied by children, their parents, and my school teachers. I was
All that abuse, just because of the colour of my skin. Which, incidentally, isn’t all that dark as my father is a blonde haired, blue eyed, English man. My mother’s father was also a blonde haired, blue eyed, English man, who just happened to be born and raised in India as his father was a General in
From the time my Mother and Grandfather had to leave India and come to Britain under the threat of being murdered in 1965 when the British were ousted and the Indians took back independence, her life was blighted by racism from those around her. She was 16 and suddenly thrust into a life in London, having to leave behind her Indian mother who was not allowed to leave the country, and everything she had ever
However, she thought she would be accepted. Having grown up in a British enclave, she was more British than Indian. Her first language was English (although spoken with an Indian accent) she was a catholic, had an English name and surname, wore western clothes and was more than well acquainted with a Sunday roast. The only thing that marked her out as different was the colour of her skin.
Over the years, things in London became easier with mass immigration from all over the world. My Mother recalled feeling actually quite lucky that she was
So why she chose to move us to deepest, darkest Cornwall, I will never understand. It was naivety I think, and a London mindset that everyone was accepted for who they were.
From day one there was gossip: My parents had run away from my father’s
None of those rumours were true. We were just a normal, boring, average family. But that didn’t stop the locals.
When the new Indian family moved in and bought the shop, I was selfishly very happy. As a seven year old, I was over the moon that
Oh, how wrong I was!
The teachers at my tiny school immediately paired me up with the
But the village
Still, when our school brought in swimming lessons, the two shop children and I were banned from joining in as the other parents didn’t want their children to share
For the most part, life in a small village in the 1980’s with dark skin was a hellish place to be.
We finally up sticks and moved to Slough, glorious, multicultural Slough, when I was ten, where I went from being bullied about my colour to
I sometimes wonder what happened to that Indian family after we left, if they carried on receiving the same vile treatment. I can only hope that it got better with time.