I had a friend that lived about half an hour away from where I was staying during my second year at Bournemouth University. The guest house I was living in was about a ten minute walk away from Bournemouth train station and my friends flat was in the center of town on Westover Road. It was 1995 and the twin towers still stood with the world oblivious of the horrors to come. I would, at least four times a week, walk in the evening by myself to my friends flat and walk back alone in the early hours of the morning. ‘So what’ I hear you say, well indeed ‘so what’ as this sounds like a normal night out for a university student. But wait…I forgot to mention that I am a Sikh, a turban wearing Sikh. A turban wearing Sikh that many people today confuse for the Taliban.
I lived and studied in Bournemouth for two years and in all that time I was the only Sikh in the village. For the entire time spent in that part of the country I never once received any form of racism. The only time my ethnic origin was questioned was when I was sat on a park bench one day waiting for friends and a sweet old lady sitting next to me asked me, ‘so how long have you been in the country?’, she was astonished to discover that I was in fact born in London and as British as she was.
Looking back now I can’t believe that I escaped any racism and worse still a good beating. On my route back to my lodgings from my friends flat I had to pass a rowdy bar full of bikers who would by that time be spilling outside onto the pavement totally drunk. As I passed by I would innocently wave a hello to them and most surprisingly (looking back now) I received smiles and waves back.
One vivid memory that sticks in my mind is of a night when a group of friends and I visited a local pub. As we walked into the place there was that ‘American Werewolf in London’ moment where the two guys walk into the pub and everything goes quite and all eyes turn towards them. All eyes were on me as I causally walked up to the bar and ordered a pint. The place was full of those kind of people you see in a program about football hooligans and a punk band were tuning their guitars on a crappy little stage in the corner. Me being a total fool did not see any potential danger but my friends looked around rather nervously and decided that one pint in there would be enough and we moved on without any trouble. The point of this story I suppose is that I did not feel threatened because either I was a complete idiot or the state of the world in those days was less scarier.
Today I think twice about walking anywhere on more own late at night even in my home town where there is a large ethnic population. 9/11 and the subsequent wars have for me placed a spark of fear inside me that should not exist. I don’t think I will ever feel quite the same fearlessness walking past a bikers bar in the wee hours of the morning by myself which makes me rather sad.
Harbinder Mathadu 