Skin deep!

I do not wish to generalize an entire nation but I am talking about Karen and Ken.

Trevor Noah was right- the UK is racist! 

I should not be complaining on this one. We Indians are pretty racist as well. Every country is xenophobic. I have seen Malayalees giggling at the saib and madame on their exotic tour in India, when they are actually considered privileged. :) I have seen blacks being beaten up black and blue in India.

Well, I had this experience, how it feels to be in a foreign land where you are an immigrant - an outsider. I had experienced the eye goggling in Germany too, but the visit was too short to make me give a second thought about it.

I must start with my visit to the Cotswolds. Actually, it was serendipity that landed me in Cirencester in the Cotswolds. Landing at Heathrow Airport after a trip to the US, I got into the wrong bus and instead of heading towards London, I found myself going in the opposite direction towards Gloucester. After several hours when I should have reached London by then, I still found myself in the rugged countryside. At a road stop I enquired with the driver and he apprised me of the situation I had landed in and informed me as well that there were no return buses to London from Gloucester that day- Gloucester is a small town he said. I would have to wait for the next day to catch my bus to London!

I decided I would get down at that stop since I was dead tired after the long air and bus journey. I saw a board that said Cirencester- Capital of the Cotswolds. The Cotswolds, famed for its rustic charm, had always been on my bucket list so I decided to put up overnight somewhere.

A cheerful bearded man strolling on the road told me there was a hotel just several meters from the stop where I could stay overnight. As I was walking towards the direction of the hotel, I crossed a bridge when a young woman pushing a baby in a pram approached from the opposite side. Seeing me she froze and her reaction seemed something between shock, surprise, fear or bewilderment, I could not fathom. She went as white as paper. I might as well have landed from Mars!

I waved my hand with a friendly "hi" as I had seen people do in San Francisco from where I had just arrived, but she stood frozen, pursing her lips and only moved when I had passed her.

I did not think too much of that incident at that time, but later when I thought about it I felt there was definitely something unwelcome about her reaction. Maybe I was not supposed to be in the Cotswolds!?

The other incident I remember was on the bus I had taken from Nottingham to London on my way to London. There was an unruly black teenager on the bus who was singing and dancing and generally making merry at the back of the bus. He definitely seemed to be on weed since he did not pay any heed to the angry protests from the passengers in the front. A young white lady who was sitting just across my seat scolded him loudly with "Shut up You F**ing Jamaican!" The royal family visit to Jamaica recently had been in the news in the UK when the Jamaican government it clear that they were not planning to continue with the British Queen as head of state and there were wide public protests against the visit which they complained was a vestige of colonialism. The young black suddenly went silent and then he whimpered "I ain't no Jamican!" He was quiet rest of the trip.

Racist slurs, eye goggling, unwelcome stares, muttering at a stranger under the breath - they definitely told a tale.

I frankly was not too bothered by these encounters - I viewed these standoffs as a pure waste of energy on either side and pretty silly. One side taking pleasure at prodding the other, the other side aggrieved and feeling insulted. It would just make more sense to ignore such silly behavior. At the same time I should also add that while some Brits behaved like self-entitled snobs, there were another bunch who were overtly patronizing. Instances where people actually reprimanded the first kind of people in public for behaving the way they did - as if you needed to be handled with kid gloves, you were too fragile to take care of yourself!

Pakistanis for instance feel badly insulted when they and all South Asians in general are addressed as "Pakis" which they view as an extreme racist slur. I do not see a problem with that. If you are from Pakistan, nothing wrong in being called a Paki. Call a spade a spade! All this energy could be put to better use!

I must hasten to add that I still encountered some pretty friendly folks, but they were mostly working class whites - the plumbers who came to my flat, the electricians and the occasional neighbour who decided to have a short friendly chat with me.

Daffodils, Liquorice Candy and Starlings!

So here I am with my blog on my UK experiences. I may mention a few things that might make some people a tad bit uncomfortable including some of my friends in the UK, so I am writing this with some personal angst, because I do look back at my UK stay with a degree of nostalgia and fondness in spite of all its warts and hype.

The UK in my mind was not akin in anyway to the UK in reality. I had imagined a beautiful sunny country with lovely landscapes - hills and vales, delectable food as described by Enid Blyton and the daffodils described by so many British poets. In fact UK half of the time the UK is a cold, dark, damp country with very little sunlight and people stay indoors for most of the time once winter kicks in making up for it in the summer when it is pleasant weather - the bare foliage turning into all hue of colors - green, brown, red, yellow.

I landed in the UK sometime in late autumn and I was disoriented not hearing any sound at all  - evening or night, except for the wind whistling through the branches of leafless trees across my residence, its bare branches reaching into the sky. No mew of a cat, bark of a dog, or even a rat scurrying across to the recycling bins. Late winter when the days were longer, in the late night I could hear the the only sound outside of the melodic chirping of birds, maybe starlings? nightjars? I had no clue as I could only imagine them from the so many books I have read.

When spring kicked in I was delighted to discover daffodils in a public park, dandelions by the
side of a road and the usual glorious rose bush in front of every cottage - it seemed I was more familiar with the flora and fauna in the UK than the ones in my native land with so much diverse greenery.

The soft power of this small island with a remarkably low population is without doubt immense, having once ruled half the world and indirectly impacted the entire world, spreading English culture and language far and wide.

The nights seemed unreal. Locked in my room with all lights on, cooking my favorite Indian dish, I felt like I had crept under a thick blanket with a torch, doing my own thing, oblivious to the world, the world oblivious to me and inky darkness outside.