But I Smile Anyway…

Where is your home?

British Skies

I am not talking about the bricks and mortar that you spend the night in, where you have your family of friends living with you.

I mean where are you from, really?

A little scene I saw on a TV programme earlier made me think.

A Sri Lankan comedian, Romesh Ranganathan, was travelling around America and was entered into a chilli/hot food eating contest, and the cameraman was surprised that he found it so hard. Ranganathan asked him why he thought that he would have been ok eating pure chilli and the other guy couldn’t really answer. Because he assumed that being brown skinned meant being immune to the properties of all the chillies and spices in the whole world.

The thing is, Romesh was born and brought up in the UK, in Crawley. Not in Sri Lanka.

And the same goes for me. Born and brought up in Birmingham, in the UK, I abhor chilli. Spice, I can cope with, but not hot food! I will often add to my introduction of myself that I am a bad Indian, as I can’t eat hot food!

But how Indian am I?

Genetically I am 100% Indian, born to Indian parents, but they were born in Kenya. So are they Indian or Kenyan?

Similarly, am I Indian, Kenyan, or British?

If someone was to shout out to me to go home, back to where I came from, do they mean I should leave the Garden of England, in Kent, and scurry off, tail between my legs, back to Birmingham? Or are they referring to my skin, and telling me to go back to whatever South Asian country I obviously came from?

Thing is, to me, my home is here. In Great Britain. I have grown up for the last 40 years with the same influences around me as the average ‘English’ 40 year old. We watched the same TV, went to the same schools, drank at the same pubs, danced at the same clubs…

Granted I had rather colourful family orientated weekends, due to all our various celebrations and get togethers, but that only added flavour to the Ritu that I was.

I could probably bet that there are many white skinned British folk who have eaten more curries than me. My mum was never one of those Indian mummies who always had a pot of curry on the boil… Yes we ate traditional Indian food, but not that often. We would even eat certain Kenyan foods like Ugali, a steamed corn bread with spinach or chicken. In fact if you ask me, my favourite dinner is a good old Roast Lamb with mint sauce, complete with roasties, Yorkshire puddings, veg and lashings of gravy!

In my car you’ll find CD’s ranging from Brit Pop to Bollywood, the Swinging Sixties to Soul, Bhangra to The Beatles. Eclectic, but it’s a reflection of me heritage, and growing up.

At home, I lounge around in my trackies and hoodie, not a Punjabi salwar kameez.

And I know that everything seems better after a good old cuppa tea. (But that goes for British, and Indian values!)

But it still doesn’t change where my home is.