2024, a year commemorating what it means to be ‘free to be me’

The campaign timeline

In marking the South Asian Heritage Month this year, I was faced with a question my privilege had always protected me from, a question I hadn’t needed to consider before: what does it mean to be free to be me?

So I answered the question in the only way I know how - I wrote an essay. Well it ended up being condensed into a series of posts for insta.

(pssst - if you are interested in reading it then click on the pic - it will take you insta by the way. Or if you prefer click here on this link to read the full article in house on our website).

What I didn’t know (because I am not omniscient) was that my words would fail me. History repeated itself, and we now had 2 generations sitting around the dining table - all of whom now experienced race riots. For the first time I stepped into a world of fear, eyes locked on me as if they were rifles pointed in my direction - there wasn’t a wrong move I could take, as being wrong came from the colour of my skin.

Despite the blubbering hot mess that was the 2024 race riots unravelling in society, I found peace and a home within a home from listening to qawwalis and embroidering phulkari’s. A part of my culture had re-entered my life and freed me from overthinking and nourished my soul.

(**qawwalis is a genre of music renowened for blending spirituality, love and emotions and phulkari is a type of stitch which derives from Punjab, the land of the 5 rives, the land that has nourished and protected my family for generations).

In part of being free to be me has meant there were sacrifices that were made. One which includes forgetting parts of my culture - ghazals (pronounced ‘guzzle’). Both ghazals and qawwalis are pieces of culture that sustains two different communities, and enabling these communities to co-exist in harmony, or to be used as a starting point at least. Yet, in the diaspora, at least for me, this part of our culture (even though it is being rejuvenated) has been forgotten about, left behind in the motherland, and cast aside as it wasn’t a useful tool for surviving a foreign land.

A month, with race riots and culture bombs, was not enough to put into words what it means to be free as someone who wrestles with two different cultures. How do they fit into your identity? Are you British? Are you Indian? Is it possible to be both in a world where neither accepts you?

These questions the diaspora are fraught with could only be answered through the world Meera Syal created in the book - Anita and Me.