by Anita Rani
First published in the UK by Blink Publishing
An imprint of Bonnier Books UK
The Plaza, 535 King’s Road, Chelsea, London, SW10 0SZ
Owned by Bonnier Books
Sveavägen 56, Stockholm, Sweden
facebook.com/blinkpublishing
twitter.com/blinkpublishing
Hardback – 978-1-788-704-23-6
eBook – 978-1-788-704-25-0
Audiobook – 978-1-788-704-26-7
All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or circulated in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue of this book is available from the British Library.
Typeset by IDSUK (Data Connection) Ltd
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Copyright © Anita Rani, 2021
Anita Rani has asserted her moral right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them.
This book is a work of non-fiction, based on the life, experiences and recollections of Anita Rani. Certain details in this story, including names, have been changed to protect identity and privacy.
Blink Publishing is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK
www.bonnierbooks.co.uk
For daughters with secrets.
And for my mum, who now knows (some of) mine.
Contents
Dear Anita
Introduction: The Right Sort of Girl
A Rough Guide to Being Punjabi
Go Back to Where You Came From
Families Are Never Simple
Food Will Always Be Life
Mum and Dad Aren’t Perfect, But They Are Superhuman
Be Your Own Superhero When You Can
Own Your Womanhood
Love Your Skin Colour and Your Nose
Yorkshire Will Always Take Your Breath Away
Half-Arsing a Job is Not in Your DNA
Every Woman Deserves a Room of Their Own
Give Yourself a Break
You Don’t Need to Compromise on Your Own Happiness
You Will Party, Whether You’re Allowed To or Not
Embrace Your Inner Drama Queen
You Can Love Home But Also Desperately Need to Leave
Work Harder Than Everyone Else and You Might Have a Shot
Freedom is Complicated
Find Your Sound
If You Don’t Do It, Someone Else Will
You’ll Never Feel ‘English’
Travel Like Your Life Depends on It
You Will Fall in Love and Be Loved
You Will Be Accepted
Your Anger is Legitimate
Conclusion: The Right Sort of Woman
Rani’s Dhal
Acknowledgements
Pictures
Dear Anita,
At 40, you will be a TV presenter, and you will have a share of the spotlight. You will be seen as a success. You will have your voice heard across the nation on the radio, across the world on programmes and documentaries. You will push forward with boundless energy, enthusiasm and optimism, you will have a ton of fun and will get swept up in it all, in the belief that if you work hard, you will climb the heights of success – and you will, to a point.
Only, it will be at a slow, steady pace. Sometimes it will feel like you are trudging through sludge to get there, sometimes it will feel so slow you wonder if you are moving at all. Life and its struggles will get to the point where you begin to doubt yourself and who you are. It will wear you down, but you will continue to smile because that’s what TV presenters do.
Sometimes, quite often really, you will feel like a fuck-up, a failure, a shell. You will get to 40 and realise you don’t really know who you are anymore. Once you realise this, it will become the most important thought you ever had. You will realise it’s time for a reset. To rethink, recreate and remember who you are.
We’re going to figure out if there really is a right sort of girl, together. It’s a question we’ve been haunted by. How is a woman built? What sort of building blocks in girlhood are needed to create the right sort of woman? A woman who nails everything in life, who hurdles over any boundaries in her way, who never stops, never fails, and really does have it all. Can such a girl or woman even exist?
So, young Anita, we’re going to delve into lessons I wish you had known. Things like the fact that ‘Food Will Always Be Life’ and ‘Families Are Never Simple’. There will be ups and downs, laughter and tears. But there will also be the essence of you, a portrait of a girl and the woman she grew into.
Now is your time. The pressure cooker has started to whistle. It’s speak or explode.
So speak.
Love,
Anita
Introduction:
The Right Sort of Girl
I’ve spent no time on self-reflection at any point in my life. Seriously, I’ve been too busy. I’ve been occupied from the minute I was born. Learning how to speak two languages, navigating two cultures, figuring out how to express who I am and planning my escape. An escape to freedom. Working, playing, thinking about boys, listening to music, going on Instagram. All the while trying to be the right sort of girl, and then the right sort of woman. I’ve been far too busy working life out to think about my life thus far. It seems right that in my forties, in midlife (ish), I take stock. I could have gone on a retreat, taken a holiday or just gone down the pub to do this. But I thought I’d share my tale with you, instead.
As one of the few brown women in TV, you might recognise me or my name. You might have mistaken me for someone else at some point – ‘You’re the one off the news.’ Try again! ‘Kids’ TV?’ Nope! My parents gave me an international name, one that doesn’t really give much away. For a long time, I kept my family background to myself. I didn’t want to be branded or seen as belonging to any gang. I’m whatever you think I am! It’s the way I’ve liked it. But the last 40 years have been spent exploring my identity in one way or another, and the world around me has helped it take shape. The world around me has made me question where I belong.
How do I fit in? Where is my place in the world? I’ve spent so long morphing and shapeshifting into what’s expected of me in every situation I’m in, I think I’ve lost who I really am along the way. Am I the daughter, the wife, the TV presenter? Indian, British, Northern, Punjabi, a Londoner? These are the questions I needed to find the answer to, they are my motivation to write this book. To remind me of who I am. To tell my younger self not to lose her sense of self in her quest to fit in, trying to be the right sort of girl.
How on earth did I get to where I am today? This is no overnight success story, this is not a fairy-tale, not in the traditional sense, but there is plenty of magic. No one is going to save me, spoiler alert! This is a story about grit, determination and tenacity. I may have carved a niche in a landscape that wasn’t designed for me but, in the process, I may also have forgotten the most important thing. Me. I’ve spent so long trying to fit in, learning what’s required of me and adapting to any given situation, I may just have lost the point of who I am.
This is a book about time and place and escape.
It’s about food and family and friends.
It’s about years of trauma, shame, fear and anger.
It’s about power. Reclaiming power for myself, sending some back to teenage me and channelling some through to you, too.
I’m the fir
st-born daughter of Punjabi immigrants to this land, and I have to share my story. We have to tell our stories. We need to explain who we are, whether we want to or not. For us, art is political. Our existence is political. I’m a broadcaster and presenter, so my job is to tell important tales that tell us about the world and reflect something back about who we are. Now, I’m going to tell you my story. The story of a determined and frustrated lass from Yorkshire who wanted to find a place where she could become something more than what was expected of her, and a place where she’s accepted for who she is.
I believe it’s an important tale to tell. It’s a tale of a life of confusion, fear, shame, joy, love and laughter. It may not be what you’re expecting, but God knows I wish I’d read a book like this when I was a kid. Maybe then the world might not have felt half as lonely as it did. At times, this is a lonely tale. It’s the tale of an outsider, a misfit, an oddball on the periphery, a loose cannon, a nonconformist who was made to conform. I might make you sad at times, but I hope to hell I make you smile too. It’s just growing up, after all.
I’ve experienced life as an Asian woman, so my book is naturally written from that perspective, but there are themes which are universal to the human experience, that I hope will resonate with every sort of reader. I’ve exposed my secrets, aired my dirty laundry – including my actual pants – and dealt with issues I’ve kept buried for many years. Even now I’m nervous about what I say. How much I tell you. How much I share. Telling my story seemed important to me, for me to discover who I was again, what I stood for, the very essence of myself. But it’s not just for me. It’s for you, too. For anyone who has never felt enough, who has ever been left out, othered, made fun of just for being slightly different to the norm.
This is my opportunity to let it out. To tell you, I am you. That I come from nothing, that every day sometimes feels like a fight, that I still don’t feel seen, that I have a voice but sometimes feel mute, that I can still feel like an outsider in a system not designed for me, that I’ve made mistakes. But I also feel like a warrior who has a job to do that is bigger than me, as the voices of all the women around me, before and after, make their presence felt.
Externally, I have achieved great things and broken boundaries and barriers. But this, writing this, is my greatest challenge yet. To be this raw and this exposing – first of all to myself, and then to others, is the biggest leap of faith I have ever taken. But then I’m from a long line of badasses who have stepped into the unknown.
Before we get into it, I need to introduce you to my Punjabi side. I’m a girl and northern and brown, didn’t you know? A triple threat!
A Rough Guide to Being Punjabi
I’m from Yorkshire and I’m Punjabi and I’m fiercely proud of both. I used to think I could only be one of these, that I needed to be strictly defined – not fitting in was so confusing, but mainly for other people. I felt shame for my differences. Society made me feel shame about my ethnicity, my colour, the very essence of me. I knew I was from a proud and rich heritage and I have loved visiting India and understanding its ancient culture. But I have also spent a lot of time dialling down my ‘Indianness’ when it was required, trying to blend in. Which is ridiculous, because the one thing I could never do was blend in.
Bit of geography: Punjab is right up in the north of India, a landlocked state that was divided between India and Pakistan in 1947. Punjab is my tribal heartland. The state your family are from in India is important, it reveals something about your identity. Each state varies culturally: the food is slightly different, the language, the embroidery, the clothes, the folk traditions, the landscape, the history, the religions. Pre-Partition, Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and Jains lived side by side in Punjab. Sufism, a mystical Islamic belief, was a major part of Punjabi culture, and is a culture and heritage we share across religions. Punjabis are Punjabis, regardless of faith.
Punjabis are an extreme bunch; we don’t do things by halves. We have the best and the worst of Indian culture. We are basically the Irish of India. We are people of the land, a hard-working agrarian community. Brought up on hearty earthy carbs and dairy-heavy diets, we are gregarious, boisterous, open-hearted, loyal, salt-of-the-earth types, a proper laugh. You’ll find potatoes and Punjabis pretty much anywhere in the world. We’re also people of a divided land, divided by the British. Punjabis are rowdy and proud. We love a drink and we love a fight. We are brilliant at cussing as it’s hands down the best South Asian language to swear in. It’s the community that gave the world tandoori chicken and bhangra. We like to party and we are generous. You’ll never leave a Punjabi party hungry or sober, or in any doubt about how much money we have. If we have it, we’ll flaunt it. Punjabis can be right flash bastards. You get the idea.
I’m bilingual since birth and love speaking Punjabi (well, I’m actually trilingual now, but I don’t want to show off). This might be surprising, as some second-generationers have very sketchy language skills. We either understand Punjabi perfectly but haven’t quite mastered speaking it, or are too embarrassed to speak because we do so with an English accent and family just laugh at us when we try. This was the case for my little brother. When asked to speak Punjabi as a child, he’d just wobble his head and in an Indian accent say, ‘My name is Kuldeep.’ This changed after he got married to my brilliant sister-in-law, who is fluent not only in Punjabi but Hindi too, and now they have my niece, they are desperate to make sure she too can communicate in Punjabi, so her understanding and connection with her culture isn’t just through clothes and Bollywood. Bollywood is not Indian culture! We all want my niece to be able to speak her mother tongue. Even Rafi, my puppy, is bilingual.
Being bilingual from birth is a gift I treasure. To speak a language is to understand a culture. How a culture thinks and laughs and expresses itself gives you an insight into its people, and the nuances of that culture. I’ve loved being able to sit with elders and hear their stories, to approach strangers, particularly elderly Asians in Britain, and offer them help. It makes me feel humble and connected to my roots. I love to hear elderly strangers call me ‘beta’, a beautiful word that means ‘child’, a term of endearment and affection that makes you feel you are theirs, a kind word offered after a kind gesture. I love to make elderly Asians feel proud that ‘one of theirs’, born and brought up in a foreign land, can speak the mother tongue and understands the culture enough to respect an elderly stranger because their lives in Britain were tough. I love blowing minds in India, when elders fully expect us ‘Britishers’ to come with airs and graces and noses turned up. Even amongst certain upwardly mobile wealthy middle classes in India, English is the only language they’ll converse in. (I’ve also blown a few white and British minds when I’ve spoken with a Yorkshire accent, too.)
Maybe my generation, the second generation, the last generation to grow up with people directly from the source, will be the last ones to speak the language fluently. I sincerely hope not. My beautiful little niece will be spoon-fed it, whether she likes it or not. She will be forced to say things in Punjabi, just like I was. Let’s hope she doesn’t do what her dad did and just wobble her head and put on an Indian accent! Maybe holding onto aspects of our culture is more important to the diaspora. Maybe speaking the language and learning the folk songs and celebrating all the ancient rituals and festivals in the old-fashioned way is really only being upheld by those who left the land, as a way of staying connected. India, or at least the middle and upper classes, have moved on – for them, modernising and moving away from the old-fashioned traditions is important.
There are some amazing aspects to Punjabi culture and a load of tribal shit we really should have left in the pind. The diaspora can be accused of being trapped in a time warp from 60 years ago. My family included. So, it’s important to me to explain what it means to be Punjabi. I claim all my identities and I have many, to think that we only have one label is reductive and dangerous. You can also be proud of something that is flawed. Being Pun
jabi isn’t straightforward (being British isn’t straightforward) and, as a generalisation, us Punjabis are quite messed-up. But then which culture isn’t? You’ve just got to be able to acknowledge the good and the bad.
So, what does it mean to be Punjabi? How will you know if you don’t meet the people?
Punjabi mothers
She likes to feed, any time of day, all day long. She can whip something up as quickly as the doorbell rings. Just as a guest’s car is pulling up in front of your house, the Punjabi mother won’t even be detected sprinting into the kitchen, like some culinary ninja. In five minutes, she can produce a plate of 5,000 pakora – you can never be short, to not have enough food would be a huge disgrace. In and out of the kitchen, an entire feast prepared, done, five minutes, bosh! The faster they are, the prouder they are. I’d love to watch a speed cook-off show between Punjabi mums called Fatafat. I’m calling Netflix with the idea now.
They are mechanical in their domain: make chapatti, stir pots, shout for kids, cut salad, water in jug, shout for kids, glasses ready, plates out, SCREAM FOR KIDS, pickles decanted. ‘KIIIIIIIIIDDDDDS, roti khalo! Jaldi jaldi!’
Do not interrupt when they are in this robot mode, this is when they are at their most impatient and can really lose it if you get in their way. If they have a rolling pin in hand, they are armed and dangerous. Beware, they have excellent knife skills. Punjabi mums do not use chopping boards, they cut everything in their hands. Angry, impatient, cursing the day you were born. Still, there’s nothing like being fed from the hands of a Punjabi mother, whether she does it patiently and kindly, or whether she’s taking the day’s frustrations out on you. Nothing beats those beautiful hands that made the chapatti, feeding you, one burki at a time.
The Punjabi mother can wear two faces at once, just like the dude from Batman. The smiling, gracious, obsequious ‘We have guests’ face. Then the angry, questioning, impatient ‘Where the hell have you been, we’ve got guests, it doesn’t matter that they turned up unannounced, get in that living room, be nice and don’t embarrass me, we’ll talk about where the hell you’ve been later’ face.
