test

test - does this still look like it's got a transparent film covering it? If yes, yikes! Does anyone know how to fix this?

Women's Library: Voices of South Asian workers

I was sent The Women's Library listing of upcoming events. The Library, now part of the London Met University, has a great programme but one event struck a chord - a display and discussion about the Asian women involved in the 1976 Grunwick and the 2005 Gate Gourmet strikes.

These events may hardly now register in the national memory but to the Asian community, to unionists and west Londoners they were big news. Each of the strikes, of course, had its own historical place and theme. Grunwick was an early example of action by minorities and making the trades unions pay attention whilst Gate Gourmet, an example of more modern themes of displacement by the next tier of immigrant labour, and a multi-national company playing legal footsie. But each resulted in a rarely seen phenomenon in the media - groups of Asian women standing up for their rights.

A personal connection is that my mother had worked for Gate Gourmet, though she had retired some 4 years before the strike. She was one of the many Asian women who had worked for British Airways for decades and was then transferred across when BA outsourced its catering to GG (and the catering's never been as good since!). It should be an interesting day on 28 November.

See here for booking details.

Sikh heritage on the Isle of Wight?

Another experience about which I've been meaning to write is our seemingly-now annual trip to the good 'ol Isle of Wight. We've visited during the last two May-half term weeks. For those who don't know it is a little, very little, island off the south coast of England, kind of opposite Portsmouth, Hampshire. It is known for being a little England stuck in the past, somewhere in the 1950s mostly. All deck chairs, ice-creams and ladies in hats. But many mainland families are attracted there because of its beaches, its holiday feel and its places to visit. So I set off for my next 'cross-cultural' experience of holidaying like the English. You also get to travel there on a 40-minute ferry ride, which always adds to the excitement.


We've stayed mostly towards the north-west of the island - near Yarmouth and then near Cowes. The children have loved it - excited visits to Colwell Bay, Carisbrooke Castle (where my son became a knight, right), Dinosaur Isle (in Sandown), Robin Hill (a ‘countryside adventure park' near Arreton) and Ryde Pier will, we hope, be memories they will keep.

However, a bit like that character in 'Goodness Gracious Me', my husband is amused by the way I manage to find a desi link everywhere (desi = from the home country). But this one is a biggie so stay with me...

On a trip to the island's imposing Osborne House, the home of Queen Victoria and where she died, I spied in a roped-off corridor a very special painting with which my psyche was immediately very familiar. But it took me a few moments to realise that this was the original painting of a very iconic image for Sikhs, and for British diaspora Sikhs especially. Here hung the 1854 painting by Franz Xaver Winterhalter of Maharaja Dalip (or Duleep) Singh. Who was he? Wikipedia (yes, I know, but I'm in a hurry...) tells us:

Maharaja Dalip Singh.. was the last Maharaja of Sikh Raj. He was the youngest son of the legendary "Lion of the Punjab" (Maharaja Ranjit Singh) and the "Messalina of the Punjab" (Maharani Jind Kaur), and came to power after a series of intrigues, in which several other claimants to the throne and to the Koh-i-Noor diamond killed each other. After his exile to Britain, he was befriended by Queen Victoria, to whom he gave the prized diamond which is now part of the Crown Jewels, set in the Crown of Queen Elizabeth, and on display in the Jewel House in the Tower of London.
Today he is considered as Britain's first Sikh settler, having been exiled to its shores in 1854, after being dethroned and his country annexed by the British Raj in 1849.

(No doubt some parts of this description are highly-contested - I mean, he GAVE the Koh-i-Noor to Queen Vic??)

It's a remarkable story of the end of a particular Sikh era, though quite sad in many ways. It was a very striking life-sized painting and the staff stationed there were not at all surprised to find this brown person intently peering at it - many had come before me - I'm sure it's on the Anglo-Sikh Heritage Trail. Actually, glamorous though the painting is, I've always preferred this surviving photograph - it has, all at once, a romantic, haunting and tragic air.

So there endeth my desi story about the Isle of Wight. Though not without noting the poignancy of Duleep Singh dressed in his 17thC Sikh regalia, and some 150 years later, my son (of part-Sikh heritage) dressed near the same spot, as an English knight...

Click here to watch a BBC2 documentary on Maharajah Duleep Singh, the 'last Ruler of the Punjab', presented by Hardeep Singh Kohli and screened in 2005. Or here to watch a BBC1 documentary, Inside Out, screened in 2004, showing Gurinder Chadha researching the history of Maharajah Duleep Singh and his daughter Princess Sophiya for a feature film. It includes some fascinating information about Princess Sophiya, one of Duleep Singh's daughters, who became a well-known 'militant' suffragette and later, for her work during WWII with evacuees.

Update: If you have £30k-odd spare, I co-incidentally came across this article about the forthcoming sale of Duleep Singh's mother's (Rani Jindan's) necklace at well-known London auctioneers Bonhams, on October 8, 2009. [UPDATE: it went for £55,200]

Keith Sweat at the Indigo O2, London

Anyone going to see the man on 25 September? From my last quick look, there only seems to be standing room ('from' £27), and you know what, at my stage and pace of life I really can't do that anymore! Let alone go through baby-sitting palaver. Still, it's been nice reminiscing with Mr Husband about our favourite Sweaty tracks. He is one cool dude (I am speaking, of course, of Mr Husband...).

Hanif Kureishi: 'Rebel With a Medal' on the Couch

You might have seen this article about Hanif Kureishi in TIME magazine a couple of weeks ago. It struck a cord because not only do I happen to be reading his latest novel, Something To Tell You, but because I have always been fascinated by him. The article refers, of course, to the recent staging at the National Theatre of his 1993 novel, The Black Album. The novel was engaging and timely but, having seen the reviews of play, I demured from making the effort to go see it. As one would with a long-admired artist, I had willed his play to be a great success, not least because it was a Tara Arts co-production.

The reason why Kureishi was a bit of a hero of mine is touched on in the TIME piece:

While other children of immigrants tried to create an identity through cast-iron faith, Kureishi forged his through rebellious fiction. His works were a mosh pit of high and low Western culture, with knowing references to Wittgenstein and Genet, ecstasy raves and gay sex. Suddenly, Asian Britain wasn't just about corner shops, victimhood and longing for Bombay, but anarchy in the U.K.

What a revelation his work was in the 1980s for young British-Asians. Later, I was transfixed by his Buddha of Suburbia - he really managed to nail down a time and a place that was London, the 70s and 80s, the suburbs, culture and aspects of race and class. I know that it inspired a few of my fellow sixth-formers and, later students. This included a young and talented Harwant Bains who went on to have his plays produced at London's Royal Court, amongst other places, and later a film Wild West, which happened to star the Buddha actor himself, Naveen Andrews, long before he got 'Lost' on an island.

If you want to read more about Kureishi, I'd recommend this longer and typically more considered piece by Johann Hari in The Independent based on a lengthy interview with Kureishi and dwelling on his relationship with psychoanalysis, a preoccupation of the latest novel, Something To Tell You.

A socialist’s guide to camping?

While we're in holiday mode, and harking back to my camping post in June, a quick mention of the New Statesman this week which has a quirky, though quite reasonable, piece by G A Cohen likening communal behaviour during a camping trip to a form of socialism - he muses on why society cannot be like this:

You and I and a whole bunch of other people go on a camping trip. There is no hierarchy among us; our common aim is that each of us should have a good time, doing, so far as possible, the things that he or she likes best (some of those things we do together, others we do separately). We have facilities with which to carry out our enterprise: we have, for example, pots and pans, oil, coffee, fishing rods, canoes, a soccer ball, decks of cards, and so forth. And, as is usual on camping trips, we avail ourselves of those facilities collectively....

You could base a camping trip on the principles of market exchange and strictly private ownership of the required facilities.

Now, most people would hate that. Most people would be more drawn to the first kind of camping trip than to the second, primarily on grounds of fellowship, but also on grounds of efficiency. (I have in mind the inordinate transaction costs that would attend a market-style camping trip. Too much time would be spent bargaining, and looking over one's shoulder for more lucrative possibilities.) And this means that most people are drawn to the socialist ideal, at least in certain restricted settings.

Slightly off-beat analogy maybe, (though not when you think about co-operative living) but you know it makes sense...

Back from South of France

And so we are back. Back in the swing of the new academic year, commuting to work for grown-ups and, for the children, their new school year (starting Years 1 & 3, how diddy they look in their new uniforms).

But for a moment, let the magic of the holiday last (and let me make the obligatory holiday post).

As you will have gathered from my previous post, this year, in our third dalliance with the south of France, we stayed just outside the small town of Lorgues, about an hour west of Nice. Lorgues is a typically Provencal town with its maze of old streets, ancient fountains, olive trees and vineyards.

The church here is a landmark of Lorgues - the 17thC Collegiale St-Martin, with its 40m tall bell tower (a poor photo, I know, taken from our car).

We loved the gorgeous stone farmhouse (or mas) we had rented for the week - it seemed that the old house and its to-die-for pool rose up out of nowhere in the middle of a forest. The pool was a very welcome as the temperatures hit the mid-30s upwards all week. Being so hot all week and in such a lovely house, we had decided to take it easy this time and not dash around. We had no neighbours that we could see but had been warned about some visitors that may occasionally drop by - the local wild boar!

Lorgues was a good location for experiencing the best of both worlds - inland Provencal life and the lovely south Mediterranean coast. Some may like the location for its access to the glitzy coastal towns of St Tropez and Cannes but, to be honest, they held little attraction for us.

We chose to visit the coastal town of Frejus which is the oldest Roman city in Gaul, founded by Julius Caesar in 49BC. It was at that time apparently a flourishing naval town and had a greater population then than today. There are still a number of Roman remains in the town including an amphitheatre seating around 10,000 which is still used today, a Roman theatre and some arches of the original 40km aqueduct.

To the east of Frejus, where it merges with its neighbouring town of St-Rapheal, lies Notre Dame de la Victoire de Lepante, a huge, florid late-19C church (in this photo) which can also be seen while bobbing in the sea off Frejus-plage (as we did). What struck me immediately was the following question: what fool saw fit to grant planning permission for the horrid 1950s-60s buildings surrounding this beautiful building? Perhaps the former Mayor of Nice, Jacques Médecin, who fled France in 1990 before being charged with corruption, only to emerge in South America...

It was lovely pottering about in Frejus - swimming in the sea, watching the children shriek with laughter every time a mini-wave hit them (why do kids find that so funny?), dawdling around the harbour, and making footprints in the sand.

If you do visit Frejus, try to stay on until after dark when the sea front changes changes character and comes alive with street entertainers and a lovely craft market by-fairy-light.

We rounded off the week with my son's 5th birthday (being an August baby he is destined to spend his birthdays abroad...) - a trip to an AquaParc and little family pool-party, complete with a French birthday cake.

We're quite charmed by the southern half of France and having been to Caux-et-Sauzens (near Carcassonne) last year and to Eygalieres (near Avignon) the year before that, we're wondering which part we should visit next. Any ideas welcomed.

Hello from France, Cote D'Azur

This week we are holidaying in the Var region of the south of France, about an hour west of Nice ('A' marks the spot!). We have splashed out on a beautiful stonehouse mas near the small town of Lorgues, famous for the Chez Bruno restaurant. The weather is hot hot and the children are enjoying the huge private pool at the house. We've been pottering about the local villages, having lunch here, a coffee there. Yesterday we spent the day at the seaside town of Frejus, about 50 minutes drive away. The technology to post pictures from this location has failed me, so more when I get back! My holiday reading, when the time allows (!) is Obama's Dreams From My Father - wow, what a story this man has, and the ability to tell it so articulately, with many poigniant analytical observations. Au revoir for now.

Happy holidays

Again, I know I haven’t written for a while. The heat seems to have gone out of the recent fevered political atmosphere. A lot of this has to do with the summer vacation arriving, at work and for our two young children. The six-week spreadsheet of amusements for the children has been compiled – so far they’ve visited Eltham Palace, the Royal Festival Hall, the Hayward Gallery, the Tate Modern, Thorpe Park, Danson Park, the Horniman Museum, assorted farms/parks, grandmothers and aunts. Phew! And it’s not over yet…

British Asians dominate TV programme (well, just one, and on a small freeview channel...)

Yes, a whole TV programme comprised completely of ... brown people, and it's not comedy. 'British Asian' is the (admittedly rather uninspired) name of a programme showing on the 'Community channel' (on Freeview, channel 87). It's a programme, which:

... made by six teenagers from Sheffield, offers a fresh and direct look at multicultural Britain through the eyes of young British Asians of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage.

A wide range of people, young and old, talk openly on the subjects of integration, culture, work, racism and religion.

They explore the growth of opportunities, the mixing of two cultures and what each generation has learnt from their experiences.

The film British Asian highlights the history of South Asian immigration to Britain and the changing expectations and ideas of young British Asians compared to those of their parents and grandparents generations, who came to Britain after the Second World War.

The programme features a number of interviewees talking to camera with virtually no on-screen intervention. Despite this beginning to seem a little monotonous at times, stick with it, and the skill, focus and articulation of the youngsters shows through, giving us an honest and refreshing half-hour with few slick-production bells and whistles. It's the same reason I enjoy listening to some pirate stations occasionally - it's the unmediated, unresearched and unmanipulated honesty of it all.

Many of the interviewees of 'British Asian' are northern folk, but one of the talking heads (a young Asian man brought up in Norfolk for godsakes, poor bloke) tells the story of how 'in the early days' , when he and his brother were walking down the street, such an unfamiliar sight were brown people, that they saw a car crash into a lampost whilst its driver craned his neck to stare at them!

Just thought I'd mention this little known programme - you might want to check it out - it's showing on the Community Channel during July, as part of their Meet the Future month, at the times listed here.

William Morris' art influenced by Islam

You might like to know about this interesting broadcast next week:

Morris and the Muslims
Tuesday 7 July, 11:30 on BBC Radio 4

Navid Akhtar examines the influence of Islamic design and values on the life of the Victorian designer, poet, craftsman and socialist radical William Morris.

Morris was inspired by Turkish ceramics and Persian carpets to create a new movement in British design. For him, the Muslim world had managed to preserve the art of the craftsman and avoid the ills of industrial production. He espoused the philosophy that art should be affordable and hand made; this was already a reality in the Islamic world.

Not stopping at arts and crafts, he was a passionate advocate of social utopianism and believed in the rights of the worker. Today, these ideals have profoundly influenced a new generation of British-born Muslim artists, as they rediscover Morris and look to his artistic work and socialist ideas for inspiration.

The connection had never before occurred to me though when you think about William Morris' designs, it seems obvious. But it's also intriguing (perhaps more so) that he was interested in 'the Muslim world' in relation to his own socialist beliefs. If you miss the broadcast slot, then you will probably be able to catch it afterwards on the R4 'listen again' site.

Picture right: Snakeshead printed textile, 1876 (Morris & Co. textiles)

Carry on Camping

It's been getting pretty hot in the public sphere - what with the general feeling of malaise in politics and the economy (i.e. the tired-looking government, the EU election results and, above all for some communities, what the election of the BNP means and how we should respond.

However, some perspective, people.

With the economic downturn and political storm swirling around us, we carry on, for better or for worse, with our everyday lives, with its everyday concerns. One of the important ones for me is trying to support my family and children, and we've had a busy time of it recently. So I thought I'd share. You know, perspective.

One of the side-benefits of being married to a 'non-BritishAsian' (jeez, what torturous categories, what negative hyphens) - Mr Husband is a 'white Brit' (more laden categories) - is that I get to have loads of 'cross-cultural' experiences. You know, the sort of things alien to a Brit-Asian. For example, all the family sitting around the table at the same time having dinner together instead of the truncated experience of children eating first, then the men and then the women. Another example is going on holiday to places where you have no relatives, not one, none at all. And more than that, staying in a hotel or suchlike rather than in the relative's house. This is bizarre behaviour. But believe me, this is what 'indigenous' English people do.

More recently, the family and I have been - are you sitting down - 'camping' (I can only ever imagine that word said quizzically and in my mother's Indian-accent English). Yes, camping is where you work very hard most of your life to pay for and equip a lovely home with luxurious mod cons (well, we have, er, two TVs) and you leave it all behind to cook and sleep in...a field. Yes, you prepare for weeks as if going on a major Arctic expedition, pack the car full of stuff as if to survive a jungle isolation and basically aim to recreate your mods cons (in portable, foldy-uppy form) by using a gas canister and lots of zips. All this I did, in the name of giving our two young children 'A Memorable Experience'.

The occasion was a family 'fun camp' organised by my daughter's Beavers group (for the uninitiated, that's the pre-Scouts age-group) - yes, I know, I know, having to swear allegiance to 'god and Queen' sticks a bit in throat of an atheist and Republican, and I'm not fond of some of Baden Powell's illustrious record. But children will want to do what their peers do, and I don't think my daughter, at six, was quite ready for the lecture about the terrible evils of the scout group (ok, I copped out). And so we went.

Would I find rabid, jingoistic, grown-up boy scouts amongst the other parents? Would there be group prayers? (God, no!). Would I be the only 'person of colour'? The answer to all of these turned out to be 'non' (not, obviously so anyway).

There was quite a team spirit and a friendly atmosphere. The family to one side were high-achieving Romanians (a banker and a business analyst - I'm such a desi to have picked that up right-away - well, their 7 year old son was interested in my 7 year old daughter! I had to know). Other groups included one or two Indian-looking men, and two black men. However, before we fall over in homage to assimilation (or diversity, choose your poison) each and every one of these guys (and me of course) was part of a mixed-race set up. Hmm, interesting.

There were no promises to love 'god and country' - the single giveaway in this respect was a gigantic, I mean enormous, Union Jack flag silently fluttering over the small facilities building. Slightly unnerving for someone bought up to cross the road when we saw the flag on show (though that was in the mean 70s and 80s in the former-NF territory of the west London suburbs).

I have to say that it was a good communal outdoors experience in a happy and safe environment - what more could you ask for the children?

RIP Michael Jackson (and the public frenzy)

Sad news that's got to be acknowledged. The premature death of a brilliant artist albeit who seemingly lead a bizarre life. For anyone like me in their 40s, Michael Jackson was a constant presence, providing a soundtrack to their life. No doubt he had his critics and, who knows, there may be more to come, but it's hard not to take a moment to mark his extraordinary contribution, as well as some meditations on the response to his death.

As I sit in the morning traffic of South-East London, on this grey and muggy day, I get the opportunity to listen to the blanket playing of MJ tracks on many stations, with stunned presenters and callers. Although I had been shocked by the news late the previous night, and watching the footage this morning, it was when I was exposed to track after track of his back catalogue that my emotional response was heightened. And it has to be said, it brought back memories of the 'Princess Di' moment in this country in the days after her death in 1997. That extraordinary response has, I think, affected the way in which we now react to 'celebrity' deaths. It also made me think about how we respond to the deaths of artist-musicians as opposed to other types of artists. The music of MJ will now have a particular poignancy in a way that the novels of, say Martin Amos or Hanif Kureshi, would not have, I don't think, if luck forbid, they passed away before their time. Part of the answer is of course that musician-artists achieve a 'reach' and celebrity that other types of artists do not.

I also came across an interesting observation at Next Left:

Alistair Campbell recently pointed out that the increasingly autistic British mainstream media can only deal with one crisis at a time. One minute we were all about to be killed by swine flu and newspapers could think of nothing else, the next minute we were up to our ears in the biggest constitutional crisis in the history of Westminster and hamaggedon was long forgotten....Will new media be any different? It could be; Michael versus Mahmood might be the test.

The death of an icon in the the age of 'web 2.0' is already throwing up some bizarre happenings - for example, David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary, has apparently 'paid tribute' to Michael Jackson on Twitter saying "Never has one soared so high and yet dived so low". [UPDATE: this has turned out to be a hoax! That's why The Telegraph have presumably removed their report and my link doesn't now work (harump). Still, shows the power of the medium - the BBC and The Guardian also reported it...]

I was about to blog yesterday with a lighter post than of late - things seem pretty bleak out there on the economic and political front. I wonder if the public emotional reaction to this sad and unfortunate death will provide people with the vehicle to pour out out their frustrations, albeit in the guise of a grieving reaction. No doubt therapists will have something to say about this - I await Susie Orbach's words or wisdom...

For now though, in keeping with the millions of blogs, tweets, etc. out there, it would only be fitting to share some of my Michael Jackson memories:

1970s - my first memory is of the childish competition in our primary school days between the two cartoon shows of the day - who do you support in The Osmonds versus the Jackson Five? It was always the Five for us.

High school days - My brother and I practicing our dance moves in the living room to Off the Wall tracks (embarrassing but true)

1988 - Seeing MJ at Wembley (not a good experience and put me off stadium gigs forever)

1989 - A distinct memory of dancing at Fino's (a bar/disco off Oxford Street, London) with my friend L and the rest of the crowd from the ILEA, to 'Baby baby with the high heels on..."

1995 - Attending a spectacular showy Indian wedding (is there any other type?) in Vancouver, Canada, where the stunning bride and groom entered through a flowering archway ( I kid you not) and did the opening dance to 'You are not alone"

1997 - a bizarre scene in Gambia, Africa - the staff of our hotel resort performed a serious enactment in the hotel grounds of the video for 'Remember the time" (they were really good)

Now - My young children never tiring of watching the Thriller video and chanting "Mama-se, mama-sa, ma-ma-koo-sa" (from "Wanna be Startin' Somethin') during car journeys. Hey, it's one route to bilingualism...

If you still want more, see this BBC tribute of Michael Jackson's memorable moments.

RIP.

Breaking News - BNP face legal action

At last, their illegality may be recognised...read the rest here.

Busy and bewildered

I know I haven't posted for a while - life continues to be somewhat HECTIC. I hope to get time to write about some interesting 'cross-cultural' experiences and about some recent English-Desi reading. But whooa...never mind that, the stories in my last post have taken off and how.

On 8 June I woke up to news which left me bewildered and feeling the opposite of the elation I felt almost exactly six months ago one morning (Obama's election). The European elections on 5 June had resulted in the north of England returning 2 fascist MEPs, including the leader of that odious party which would have me and my children 'repatriated' and which would constrain rights according to 'race' (how can they be a legal party?). It was ironic that nearly 1 million British people who has just commemorated the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings during World War II had now voted in these xenophobic thugs.

A blip maybe. After all, in the EU elections' alternative voting system, that party only won seats due to achieving a larger share percentage of the vote, rather than significantly increasing its actual votes. But then this week I read the depressing story of about 100 Romanian residents in Belfast, Northern Ireland, being hounded out of their houses by mobs including some chanting nazi slogans and giving nazi salutes. The residents included a pregnant woman, children and babies. What is going on? A good attempt is being made over Pickled Politics at picking apart the manifesto of the BNP, with a list of practical questions posed to them.

And I haven't even had a chance to write about the election next Monday of Speaker of the House, following the resignation of Michael Martin. One of the candidates is one Parmjit Dhanda, Labour MP for Gloucester since being elected in 2001....