Trayvon Martin. Melissa Alexander. These names re-ignited a media furore in America and made us wonder how far we have come in terms of race relations in this country. Muslims here are beginning to experience more cases of Islamophobia but seem to forget what our African American brothers and sisters have been enduring for centuries.
Things were a little more tension-filled for minorities across the pond where I grew up.
Thankfully we were not victims of any horrific incidents of racism but my childhood was not prejudice free. These were the 1960s. Unenlightened times. Indians and Pakistanis? Oh no, the ones who wear gaudy voluminous clothes, eat smelly food and talk far too loudly in a funny sounding tongue?
Asians had not yet integrated into society.
One day, when I was around seven years old, I was walking home from school. Today we have car pools. In those days, you often walked in groups, mostly just for company. I would go part of the way with a few children I knew from our neighborhood and then saunter the rest of the way alone.
We lived about two miles from school which is mind boggling for my 2013 American self. I had one more road to cross. I was wearing a beloved peach-colored cape over my Timbercroft Junior uniform. My brother had begun calling me "Little Orange Riding hood" which would make me giggle.
Whenever I was alone, I would picture myself strolling to my grandmother's house with a basket of goodies and encountering a wolf I saw on the way. I forgot I was really in Plumstead Common walking past the corner butcher's shop and that my real grandmother lived thousands of miles away in Hyderabad and was probably sipping chai on a sleepy veranda with a host of grandchildren around her.
I used to half wish some kind of wolf character would come out of the shadows so that I could defeat it.
I approached the zebra crossing and suddenly a hefty boy who looked about 11 or 12 years old approached me. He pronounced just one tiny word.
"Paki."
I felt something on my my left shoulder. Was it a bird dropping?
A pool of spit, about two inches wide oozed there, ameoba-like.
I could not cry yet. I had to get home. I had to cross the street and I had to pretend nothing had happened.
I ran the rest of the way and burst into the house.
"But I'm not a Paki," I wept, sponging off the saliva from my coat, Lady Macbeth-like. "I'm from India."
I recall my mother nodding and caressing my hair as though it mattered from which side of the sub-continent's newly partitioned region we hailed.
There began my intention to out-smart the big bad wolf.
Things were a little more tension-filled for minorities across the pond where I grew up.
Thankfully we were not victims of any horrific incidents of racism but my childhood was not prejudice free. These were the 1960s. Unenlightened times. Indians and Pakistanis? Oh no, the ones who wear gaudy voluminous clothes, eat smelly food and talk far too loudly in a funny sounding tongue?
Asians had not yet integrated into society.
One day, when I was around seven years old, I was walking home from school. Today we have car pools. In those days, you often walked in groups, mostly just for company. I would go part of the way with a few children I knew from our neighborhood and then saunter the rest of the way alone.
We lived about two miles from school which is mind boggling for my 2013 American self. I had one more road to cross. I was wearing a beloved peach-colored cape over my Timbercroft Junior uniform. My brother had begun calling me "Little Orange Riding hood" which would make me giggle.
Whenever I was alone, I would picture myself strolling to my grandmother's house with a basket of goodies and encountering a wolf I saw on the way. I forgot I was really in Plumstead Common walking past the corner butcher's shop and that my real grandmother lived thousands of miles away in Hyderabad and was probably sipping chai on a sleepy veranda with a host of grandchildren around her.
I approached the zebra crossing and suddenly a hefty boy who looked about 11 or 12 years old approached me. He pronounced just one tiny word.
"Paki."
I felt something on my my left shoulder. Was it a bird dropping?
A pool of spit, about two inches wide oozed there, ameoba-like.
I could not cry yet. I had to get home. I had to cross the street and I had to pretend nothing had happened.
I ran the rest of the way and burst into the house.
"But I'm not a Paki," I wept, sponging off the saliva from my coat, Lady Macbeth-like. "I'm from India."
I recall my mother nodding and caressing my hair as though it mattered from which side of the sub-continent's newly partitioned region we hailed.
There began my intention to out-smart the big bad wolf.
3 comments:
I would love to hear more! Please!!! There's many a tale of "Paki-Bashing" ... A very dear "uncle" came home with his glasses broken, after encountering a group of skin'eads! He later became the Mayor of Hackney. It can only make you stronger!
Next time I am at your house I am going to scour the photoalbums until I find a picture of a certain Aunty G in a certain orange hoodie!
A hoodie after all, is a hoodie.
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