The Brits Are Not Racists!
Sunday, March 04, 2007

We gave P a big bday bash yesterday. We'd been telling him for quite sometime that for his 5th birthday, we'll throw him a big party and we did. We invited every one of his classmates plus a few of his nursery friends as well as some desi friends whose kids fall in the 4-6 category. The pains started fairly from the word go. I did not have a complete list of his classmates and made do with an incomplete birthday list compiled by a mom and random inputs by P. Still, I managed to leave two children and when his teacher pointed that out, I furnished extra invitations for the two.

Then there was the RSVP. I thought it was the desis who could not fathom the whole RSVP concept. Turned out, the Brits were too. Or maybe they just decided to ignore the invitation. When there were two full days to the party, I had heard back from 30% of his classmates. But text messages kept coming in till 3 hours to the party from mums of supposedly eager children. We never said 'oh no we can't take them as we've finalised numbers' as in typical desi style, we had ordered extra places.

Then there was the actual event. We arrived at the venue to find some parents already there. Though none of them had deigned to say more than the occasional 'hello' to me till that day, I still knew them all by face and welcomed everyone and tried to get the party started. None of them had a clue who I was. I am sure they must have walked past me most mornings. But none chose to retain an Indian woman's face in their posh brains.

When the kids were busy bowling, S and I went around asking if the parents would like drinks etc, generally trying to play our roles of hosts to our best efforts. The firang had all gathered together, like nails to a magnet and S and I and our desi friends were stood a distance away from them, as always. Every now and again, the two of us would bridge the gap to ask them if they were comfy, to which we normally got curt nods. Though I smiled till my teeth ached, all I got from the other mums was random stern glances but no answering smiles. After a while, I got tired of being sidelined in my own son's party, gave up the Brits as a lost cause, sat down with couple of friends and cousins and watched my son enjoy his party.

Then came the time to say goodbye. Other than P's best mate, whose mum is the only one who treats me like I am human, NONE of the others remembered who the birthday child's mum was. They ALL went to S's cousin and said 'thank you for inviting us to the party', to which she said 'thank you and there's P's mum, why don't you say that to her?'. I ask you! Is it that hard to be nice? I am no alien, I assure you but I swear, last night, any alien would have been welcome in that gathering, not me!

To everyone thinking of the Brits as racist or discriminatory, I say this: they are not racist. I am no Shilpa Shetty but I tell you they are not. Why? Because they can't be arsed. Intense feelings of any sort requires an effort and these lovely folks cannot be bothered to waste half that effort on the likes of me even to discriminate against me; so they just go on like I am invisible. Of course, our paths might literally cross again from Monday morning but they don't give a shit. Even if they collide headlong into me, I would never cause a blip in their radars.

Sod you!

Posted by DesiGirl 2:54 pm 2 comments    

Labels: britain, british, desi, discrimination, india, indian, racist

Judgement Day?
Tuesday, January 23, 2007

I am tired of Jade. Tired of seeing her carefully school face showing remorse peering at me from every street corner. Tired of hearing her well rehearsed apologies 'I am not a racist but I can understand why you would think so'. Her well oiled PR machine is working overtime to clean up her tarnished image and I, for one, am tired of being played like a banjo.

Jade is using the 'tu queque' argument someone accused me of, to excuse away her actions. She keeps saying what she did was wrong but is repeatedly pinning the blame for it on her upbringing, her social class, her parents and anything else she could think of.

Couple of other 'interesting' repercussions of the BB row are Danielle losing a £100,000 modelling contract and worse, being dumped by West Ham footballer Teddy Sheringham, the same man she slept with to win the Miss Great Britain crown last year. Of course, Danielle doesn't know that she ins't a WAG anymore. Jo, on the other hand, didn't have much of a career to speak of since her S Club 7 days so doesn't have much to lose and is carrying on as before.

Whilst I have had my fill of the Jade Baddy Saga, I feel Danielle and Jo, who have said more racist comments and have egged Jade on, deserve to take on the blame as well. It was Danielle who said 'I thought you were going to punch her' after Jade's pronouncement 'you are stuck up so far up your a**e that you can smell your own s**t' and even said 'your mother would be so proud of you' and even called Shilpa a dog. Jo has generally been nasty and while I cannot remember what pearls of wisdom she dropped, she has been coming across as the type of person I would cross the road to avoid, purely for my own personal safety.

I was watching The Wright Stuff earlier on Channel 5 (young P's down with chicken pox - hence am cooped up at home!) and today's panellist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown said something that seemed real sensible to me. Jade was the 'expert' on the show today and after 30 minutes of 'yes I can see how it will be construed as wrong, but I wasn't the only one' and many rueful shakes of her head, Yasmin adviced Jade to use the next three years to get a proper degree and.... well, we never heard what as Jade butted in, prattling about the same old stuff and made Yasmin gave up what she was trying to say. But I can see where she's coming from: one of Jade's biggest reasons for being such a bully is that she learnt those at her mother's knee. Well, she's in her mid-twenties now and cannot blame Mum for teaching her every wrong thing under the sun. It is time she learnt few good things on her own, especially with two young children to raise. Yasmin's advice strikes me as an exceptionally sound one, as well as her view of it will take a long time for someone to change their views (the racist or the bullying sort) and will not take place in the span of three short days, as we are seeing in Jade's case.

Education is the only way to open people's minds to the world out there. Respecting others' differences and not feeling threatened by them will only come with time. Britain today is as multi cultural as it gets, a fact that threatens many, many people. One of them decided to show their distaste by spitting in front of me as I was out for a walking with my little one and shouting 'Go back home!' Another one did his level best to push my husband on to the rail tracks by catching hold of his shirt fronts and yelling 'You bl***y Paki!' As more and more Asians come to the UK as skilled workers and as more and more jobs are being sent to the subcontinent, the ire of the locals who perceive us to have cheated them out of their jobs is on the rise.

Being different always makes us fair game and this is true none more so than in our own country, which is as widely diverse as it can get. State, language, religion, social / economic strata - we have innumerable things seperating us from another. Try to imagine the case of a Madrasi amongst a group of Hindi speaking Bombay or Delhi folk. Attire and accent are just two of the things that are causes for mirth. My telugu neighbour still speaks to me like I were from a planet many light years away rather than from a nearby state when she speaks of the 'customs and traditions of Nellore' (my husband is Telugu while I am Tamil). Couple of my tam-bram friends changed their minds about me in a hurry once they heard of my own mixed parentage.

While I do not rue the loss of their so-called friendship, I rue our own penchant to divide ourself so neatly. Even after paying with our own freedom for celebrating our differences hasn't stopped us from going back to doing the same. What is needed for us to look at one another as just people, instead of 'Jain, rich, gujju' or 'Hindu, Tamil, padayachi'? When will we stop judging one another? Isn't it high time we changed our outlook for the better?

Posted by DesiGirl 10:51 am 2 comments    

Labels: big brother, british, channel 4, colour, goody, india, jade, racism, racist