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I don’t have a Hounslow gene
A friend of mine is a successful 50-something female.
She was born into a white British working class family living in a rundown council estate where expectations led no further than marriage, pregnancy and a council house of your own. Driven by her own exceptional intelligence and ambition she was the first in her family to make it to university and then onto a very successful career in Finance.
“But I feel guilty” she tells me. Questioned about this she claims she feels like a fake as she languishes in her expensive Holland Park home knowing her roots couldn’t be further from her present existence.
She harbours secret feelings of embarrassment about her parents who have remained in their council house and can barely read to this today. Her deep-seated feelings reveal themselves further as she half jokes about the plush David Tang restaurant I take her to for her birthday, “this is a bit much for an Essex girl”. Despite her success I perceive some dissonance between her aspirations and self-image.
She thrusts that annoying old adage at me “you can take the girl out of Essex but you can’t take the Essex out of the girl”. I wince in response. “I got outta ‘ounslow and got ‘ounslow outta me, innit” I half joked. I argued that I wasn’t born with a Hounslow gene that was continuing to shape my behaviour into adulthood. I didn’t deny where I came from but neither did I suffer panic attacks every time I stepped into the Mandarin Hotel Spa rather than Preetie’s Beauty Salon in Heston. The only gene I couldn’t account for was the Prada handbag gene, which I’m certain, didn’t come from my Punjabi lineage.
In this liberal age it appears more politically correct to assert your roots rather than to awaken to who you have become. My friend is intrigued by my penchant for fine wine, travels off the beaten track and for being an occasional agitator. Not qualities I was bought up with. I suspect she has read too many books like Jewel in the Crown and A Passage to India and would admire me more if I vehemently asserted my Punjabi identity in some attempt to singlehandedly right the wrongs of colonial racism.
Instead I assert a reversal of this premise. Why should it matter how you’re being if you are being an authentic expression of yourself? We human beings are wonderfully equipped to develop and create ourselves anew. As we step into ventures of self-discovery we become greater, more evolved versions of ourselves. It’s not about denying where we come from it’s about recognising how many more facets are part of our being. Embracing the totality of that allows us to define ourselves beyond our roots.
Many of us consciously or subconsciously still operate in a limited world of what we are ‘supposed to be’ as shaped by our upbringing. There is a guilt or discomfort if we take ourselves into areas unfamiliar.
As an Indian woman whose entire upbringing was based on conformity and expectation this is a personally poignant subject. We were expected to be doctors as well as domestic goddesses and none of this finding yourself lark.
What about those trying to be something they’re not? This the popular counter-argument leveled at those who break out of their tribe. Trying to be what you think you’re supposed to be and ignoring what you’re feeling inside is the inauthenticity. I wouldn’t be me if I had acquiesced in favour of expectation instead of yielding the call to seek within and discover different worlds without.
It’s not about making one choice or another; it’s about not being trapped by feelings emanating from upbringing if they only serve to limit you. No matter if that means a taste for caviar or cabbage or whether you hailed from Hampstead or Hounslow. I feel equally thrilled at nabbing a great pair of £10 shoes from the High Street as I do with buying a Todd’s handbag. I have enjoyed Rita’s in Southall as much as the Michelin starred Jean-Georges in Shanghai. I have stayed in bare Punjabi village houses and suites in the Four Seasons. The devil wears Prada and Primark.
A friend of mine is the ultimate free spirit and adventurer and in her youth waged years of fierce battle with her Punjabi parents in her quest to fulfill her passions. She traveled the world, undertook daring activities and befriended diverse characters from all walks of life. Today she is a successful senior corporate manager and a strong leader and mentor in a white, male dominated company. She attributes much of her success to the sheer force of will and determination to follow her calling despite parental hostility. As she says “I don’t have an instinct to do things because of my culture or background but neither have I rejected my heritage. I do what comes to me as a natural part of who I am”.
I cringe when I listen to British born Indians vehemently declaring themselves to be Indian not British even though they have little in common with their Indian born relatives. They fail to recognise they are a different breed influenced by a multicultural environment. In fact many recount tales of distaste after visits to the subcontinent. An example, which illustrates this well, is when my white British friends get the jokes in Goodness Gracious Me but Indians from India don’t.
I once lived as part of an expat community in Singapore and it was interesting to observe other expat British Indians. Many of them would feel ill at ease with local Indians and would relate more to their British or other western expat friends despite having been bought up in Indian communities in the UK. The absence of an enforcing cultural expectation often frees someone to just be themselves. Ironically, these people asserted their British backgrounds once out of the UK particularly as a distinction from Indian programmers from the subcontinent. And I found I had more in common with British born Chinese than Indians from India.
Identity is more than our background or culture. It is the sum of who we are and at the core of that is our unique individual human expression. As British Asians we are lucky enough to have an additional asset to our characters, which if embraced with authenticity of self enriches us beyond the norm. Culturally we are neither pure British nor pure Indian but a combination of both which in itself creates a new unique culture. It is different from our parents’ generation and different from our white compatriots. If woven together in harmony we can take the best from both worlds and create a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
My 20-year-old niece illustrates this point well. A truly impressive girl, who has done voluntary work for aids charities in Africa, has friends from all over the world, speaks fluent Punjabi and French and is doing a degree in Medicine. She has that rare confidence in being totally in tune with every facet of her life and feeding it with sheer vivacity.
Why is it that so many of us still haven’t reached that elusive authentic self? I think we are born with a ‘natural’ self which gradually switches off to operate from an ‘adapted self’ for the majority of our lives. That’s the self that develops in order to fit in, honed and refined in response to parental upbringing, peer group influence and environment. The real, passionate you gets buried beyond recognition and often takes a loud wakeup call – usually a major life event, to surface.
This is a cross-cultural phenomenon as any society has prevailing values and norms where the majority of people fit in somewhere along that wide spectrum. If you put this in the context of an upbringing that emphasises conformity rather than individualism it further shuts down the individual impulse.
The notion of self-growth and personal discovery is by nature counter to conformity. It threatens the status quo. We Indians excel at developing ourselves educationally and professionally but aren’t always given the support to develop our emotional consciousness. That’s about being comfortable enough in your own skin to create a life serving your – and not your mother’s, highest good.
The conversation with my 50-something friend was 2 years ago. In the last 18 months she hasn’t uttered a word about feeling guilty. On the contrary she’s indulging in politically incorrect jokes about the ‘Vicky Pollards’ wobbling down the High Street only to recoil in mock horror as she notices the resemblance to her sister. We laugh. She finally accepts she has grown into someone different from her council house beginnings but with an endearing acknowledgment of where she came from. She has even acquired a discerning taste for good wine and designer handbags. I suspect something of my being has rubbed off on her.
About the author
Name: Harjeet Virdee
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