Racism as a topic of conversation appears unavoidable at the moment. It's all over the world, spreading like an epidemic of nastiness.
There is Trump's cesspit, and that sewer he promised, in 2016, to clean up; there are whole areas of the world from which the distressed are fleeing, including people being denied citizenship in the north-east of India, though they have lived there for decades. And all over Europe, many countries are turning their faces away from the sad and lonely refugees looking for a place to be.
I am an immigrant too, I remind myself. I came to the UK in 1974, when attitudes to foreigners were more antagonistic, but I didn't notice the hostile environment, which shouted at me from buses and public places to go away. I got a temporary job at the North Thames Gasworks near which I lived, at fifty-nine pence an hour. Within three months I was offered a job teaching Mathematics at a school in Essex.
I had difficulty finding accommodation; most bed-and-breakfast landlords did not want black, brown or animals.A friend of mine put me up in her home for a weekend and then found me a place to stay with a Goan man. It was a tall townhouse and we were two Indians and two Irish girls. Apart from the days on which rent was due once a week I didn't see him. Rent was nine Guineas a week for a room with no heating, a shared kitchen and bathroom and practically no furniture. When the other girls came to chat we sat on the floor, near the gas metre, which consumed fifty pence coins greedily, while we brewed cups of tea on my kettle. Milk was kept cold on the window sill. Sometimes that worked.
Dinner was bread and jam with that tea. Baths meant trying to keep clean in four inches of tepid water. But, in school, I was treated with respect and camaraderie. My accent was, of course totally alien and I heard things wrong too.But it was all good natured. In Wickford where I worked I had a tiny, warm, box room and I was happy. Piles of Maths exercise books sat on my two-and-a-half foot bed.
My daughter was called a chocolate drop in school and I was Paki on the streets. Considering the state of alienation between India and Pakistan that was a joke.
Now I suspect much of the Brexit fever in the north of England is closely allied to the fear of the 'other.' They are willing to suffer financial collapse to get rid of the foreigner. Theresa May's hostile environment and those despicable slogans on buses failed to take into account the contribution made to the society by Asians, Eastern Europeans and all else who have come here to make a living, or to escape torment.
Modi's casteism is like a malignant growth on the body-politic of India. The tragedy is also that so many of my educated, kind Indian friends can find nothing wrong in this policy. I suffer because, from day to day, I have never had a religion or caste to call my own. I gave all that up before I started wearing long skirts to school in India. I had a no-nonsense father to thank for that.
There is Trump's cesspit, and that sewer he promised, in 2016, to clean up; there are whole areas of the world from which the distressed are fleeing, including people being denied citizenship in the north-east of India, though they have lived there for decades. And all over Europe, many countries are turning their faces away from the sad and lonely refugees looking for a place to be.
I am an immigrant too, I remind myself. I came to the UK in 1974, when attitudes to foreigners were more antagonistic, but I didn't notice the hostile environment, which shouted at me from buses and public places to go away. I got a temporary job at the North Thames Gasworks near which I lived, at fifty-nine pence an hour. Within three months I was offered a job teaching Mathematics at a school in Essex.
I had difficulty finding accommodation; most bed-and-breakfast landlords did not want black, brown or animals.A friend of mine put me up in her home for a weekend and then found me a place to stay with a Goan man. It was a tall townhouse and we were two Indians and two Irish girls. Apart from the days on which rent was due once a week I didn't see him. Rent was nine Guineas a week for a room with no heating, a shared kitchen and bathroom and practically no furniture. When the other girls came to chat we sat on the floor, near the gas metre, which consumed fifty pence coins greedily, while we brewed cups of tea on my kettle. Milk was kept cold on the window sill. Sometimes that worked.
Dinner was bread and jam with that tea. Baths meant trying to keep clean in four inches of tepid water. But, in school, I was treated with respect and camaraderie. My accent was, of course totally alien and I heard things wrong too.But it was all good natured. In Wickford where I worked I had a tiny, warm, box room and I was happy. Piles of Maths exercise books sat on my two-and-a-half foot bed.
My daughter was called a chocolate drop in school and I was Paki on the streets. Considering the state of alienation between India and Pakistan that was a joke.
Now I suspect much of the Brexit fever in the north of England is closely allied to the fear of the 'other.' They are willing to suffer financial collapse to get rid of the foreigner. Theresa May's hostile environment and those despicable slogans on buses failed to take into account the contribution made to the society by Asians, Eastern Europeans and all else who have come here to make a living, or to escape torment.
Modi's casteism is like a malignant growth on the body-politic of India. The tragedy is also that so many of my educated, kind Indian friends can find nothing wrong in this policy. I suffer because, from day to day, I have never had a religion or caste to call my own. I gave all that up before I started wearing long skirts to school in India. I had a no-nonsense father to thank for that.
