My earliest recollection as a child was of primary school and school lunches. School dinners, what a revelation; my typical home meals consisting of rice and spicy curries were now replaced by sticky heaps of spaghetti hoops and fried chips. Then there were afters: desserts like sponge and custard and treacle pudding. I remember the summer school fete and sports day, were my favourite days in the school calendar. At one sports day, I was waiting at the start line for an egg and spoon race to begin. I remember scanning the spectators to look for my Mum for reassurance. Dad and Mum were there, Mum looking radiant in her frothy sari and one of her many cardigans. I suspect this one was probably one of her special purchases from Tyrell and Green department store, otherwise known as John Lewis. By the time I began middle school, Mum had discovered fish fingers, Birds Eye trifle and frozen chips. School dinners were now just a torturous assault on the palate. My friends and I would flick the balls of cold tinned tomatoes from our plate or anything else that could be easily catapulted out of the small window of our dinner huts, mindful not to be caught by Mrs Barton, or, as we fondly called her, “Mrs Barton-on-the-warpath”.
Bringing in bags of penny sweets like traffic lights and gobstoppers and giving away some of my prized marbles, won in friendly matches in the playground, cemented my friendship with the popular girls like Debbie Stark and Karen Cody. The bigger marbles I owned also enabled meaningful swaps with Kenny Chesterton’s Norwich City football mascot, a teddy bear wearing a green and yellow scarf. I still remember that the bear was only given to me as a temporary loan.

By the time I was 11 my Dad decided to turn his attention to start a life in Bangladesh.

I left our home in Southampton thinking that the trip was to be an extended summer holiday. The summer months turned into a year-long adventure living with my grandparents in a busy suburb of Dhaka. There was talk of sending my sister and I to school but for some reason my education played out on the verandah of the house. My days were spent watching out for the Igloo seller, or any street merchants selling fresh produce or rice that my grandma would need. I never mastered the art of bartering, but I was quite good at ludo and chess and I began reading Arabic. In that year we made two trips to my grandfather’s ancestral home in Jhalokati. We would board the majestic Rocket, which would navigate down one of the many rivers overnight to arrive at our village house, a rickshaw ride away from town. To me, the house that was squeezed in amongst the Palms and Tals and paddy fields, the house with no lights, with water drawn from the pukhur, and food cooked over wood fire, was idyllic. Only, it was also a house full of extended family, full of love and warmth but with its fair share of family squabbles and family rifts, generally stemming from economic disparity amongst some of the relatives. The house and the land stirred up resentments, and created land disputes that still exist to this day. I only got to know all of this when I returned to work in Bangladesh years later.

We left Dhaka, and the village holidays the following summer, and I started my secondary school a few months after our return.

Secondary school was a full timetable of lessons, but coming home to mum’s aloo ghost always made up for Double French and Probability. Even now I can hear my English teacher, Miss Rowe, recite Macbeth and extol the virtues of John Gielgud as a brilliant actor of Shakespeare. Miss Rowe would try and drill into us endless grammar and punctuation. “Safina”, she would say, “... never ever use the word ‘nice’; it is meaningless.”

My school life was full with home life consisting of homework, Sunday night listening to the top 40 and Annie Nightingale on the radio and a huge helping of Star Trek and Charlie’s Angel and the latest American sitcom. Weekends we would visit one of the other Bangladeshi families from the community: small affairs, but always lively and always including a hearty meal. During Ramadan when I was older I found it hard to fast during the long summer days and only much later did my parents celebrate Eid in bigger gatherings. It must have been very hard for my parents and my mum to be separated from all their family in Bangladesh during those special festivals. The only comfort I have when I think about their ensuing loneliness is that once my brother went on to further studies, my parents would return to Bangladesh annually and each year their stay would get longer and longer until mum passed away. I am grateful to my mum in particular for preserving relations with the family. These connections remain. My father retired and set up his life near to my grandfather’s village house, after 40 years in the UK. I dare say he’d have lived in Southampton longer if my mum was alive today but now he enjoys life in Bangladesh surrounded by mum’s relatives. My grandfather’s house still stands proud, extended several fold to house the growing cousins and their families.

Last year I returned with my husband and youngest son, my third visit within 18 months. We travelled to the tea gardens of the North, explored the mangroves of the Sundarbhans, and then visited my dad’s house. My son attempted to scale a palm wearing a lunghi, all firsts for him, and fished in the same pond that I had played in when I was young. I know we are truly fortunate to be able to step down from ShahJahal airport in Dhaka and be welcomed by both my husbands’ family and mine.

Equally in London, we go to dinner at relatives, Bengali, Syhleti and English all being spoken at the same time, with kebabs and mach, bhorta, dhal and chicken curry for dinner. ‘Strictly’ is on TV, the children all squashed together on the sofa, balancing their plates on their knees as they tuck into the meal by hand. They, like us, embody a blend of both cultures, and it can be hugely frustrating at times trying to fathom out who we are.

One minute you’ll be enjoying yourself, thinking you are comfortable here, and the next, it’s that all too familiar stare and those words echoing, “go home, GO Home!”

But where is home? I liken it to when my parents settled themselves into their new home in their new country. They were outsiders but it didn’t hinder them or if it did they didn’t reveal it to us, especially when we were children. At home, I was always supported, no demonstrations or disapproval even when my James Dean posters went up or my radio was blaring out the latest song. I went on to study at University, living far away, but Mum always seemed quietly content with my choices, giving me the confidence to grow and develop.

In the same way, I can step into Dhaka and much to my chagrin being called ‘sister’ and probed for not being able to speak Bengali fluently, I feel like an outsider. I then get picked up by my dear cousin, a Hafiz, who now runs a Quran publishing press that his father’s father established during the turn of the 19th century in Purana Dhaka, and suddenly that feeling of ‘belonging’ floods back. Finding your family thread, those ties of your kin, be it in Britain, or, if you are fortunate, and you also have family in Bangladesh, is what completes your story. It is both liberating and fascinating, complex and humbling to travel along our storyline of speaking Benglish, of laughing at Micheal McIntyre, reminiscing with my husband over the hit series, ‘Here Come the Double Deckers’, him singing ‘White Horses’, of talking over the latest family events both here and in Bangladesh, or of trying to perfect a good curry. It is certainly an honour and a privilege Being both British and Bangladeshi, simply because we can enjoy the Best of Both worlds.

Lady Safina Choudhury

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