by Anita Rani
Anita.
I love you.
Thomas.
WHAT THE ACTUAL . . . . This guy was a maniac and now I was having the worst day of my life. I had to explain that I had no control over the fact he was some kind of obsessive lunatic, or maybe he was just being French. I can still feel the heat coming off my face from that day and the combination of utter fear and humiliation. Dad listened and then he just said, ‘You’re lucky it was me who opened it and not your mum.’ And that was the end of it. Dad seemed pretty cool in that moment. Or maybe he realised that his child was a young naïve child, that this was not a big deal. Or maybe he filed it away and thought, better keep a close eye on this one . . .
So, you know by 15, boys are still not my priority. This didn’t mean that I wasn’t noticing or even fancying them. God yes, I was, but I’d watched enough Bollywood movies to know it was always going to be too much drama, plus why would anyone fancy me? Also, it just wasn’t allowed, so I curbed my real world desires, convinced romance was not my bag. Until, that is, I had my first ever snog on the staircase in Tumblers (the local club). If I’m telling you this tale, I might as well give you all of the juicy gossip that’s stayed with me all this time. My first kiss was with a lovely ginger floppy-haired sixth former from the boys’ school, called Zac. This is going to come as a major shock to my parents and I may never be allowed home again:
‘Yes Ma, it’s true, I kissed him.’
Camera flicks to mother’s face, her eyes widen, mouth opens in shock. Camera flicks back to Anita.
‘I kissed . . .’
Camera back to Mum. Back to me.
‘I kissed . . . a ginger!!!’
Extreme Bollywood style close-up on my mother’s face, as she screams.
‘NAHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!’
We’d met when I was selected to go on the mountaineering expedition to China. Zac was dreamy and talked to me. Can you imagine? He really seemed to like me and was kind and funny and found me funny. Plus, he was fit, with floppy hair. The hair was always important. I told him I fancied him (yes, I know right, what a flippin’ contradiction: one minute I’m not into boys, the next I’m just stepping up to them to tell them they’re hot). I mustered the courage to just tell him I was into him, and I’ve got to give it to my younger self, I was direct and had guts. Go me! And how did he react? Did he say the feelings were mutual and would I like to go to Andy’s Records then Burger King, or maybe get a cheese and onion pasty from Thurstons with him next weekend (dream date)? Did he say, how about we go for a lovely walk across Ilkley Moor, then a trip to Betty’s for a cream tea (dream man) or even just get a bag of chips? Naturally, none of the above.
Sadly, he had to break it to me that he didn’t fancy me and was seeing Vicky. We get it, Vicky, you’re hot! Big sigh. Let’s be real for a minute, why the hell would he fancy me? I was, no doubt, devastated, and this situation would have added to my ‘no one is into me’ narrative, but the great technique I had developed to deal with heartbreak back then was to just shrug it off and walk on. It’s worked for me so far and, look, I’m only having to write a book in my forties to figure out that maybe my own internal dialogue has been quite hard on me . . .
After half a watery cider (all the booze on tap was watered down at Tumblers), I was heading down the staircase and who should be on his way up? None other than dream boat ginger Zac. By this time, the alcohol had started to have an effect. I had a little buzz on, enough for me to lose the few inhibitions I had left. As I crossed him on the staircase, he stopped to ask if I was OK (what a guy!). ‘Yes, I’m fine and I understand completely,’ I said, slightly swaying because of the booze and because the DJ had just dropped Nirvana ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. Then to my surprise I said, ‘I don’t mind if you don’t want to be my boyfriend, but can I kiss you?’
There it is, girls and boys. I straight up asked for my first kiss.
Cue slow motion. The lights fade. Spotlight is on us. Portishead ‘Glory Box’ begins to play as our eyes meet, my bum-length hair is blowing in the mysterious indoor breeze and our heads move slowly slowly slowly towards each other.
Needle scratches off the record. Back to reality.
The staircase is brightly lit, my bovver boots are sticking to the carpet, the smell is a combination of beer and sick and stale fags, and people are trying to get past us on the staircase. And then a ten-second snog happened. I had a SNOG! The one thing I never thought I’d have, not for many years to come at least. My feet felt like they’d lifted off the ground, it was dreamy and so satisfying that I’d asked and he said yes. I felt so powerful. I’d soon discover that this is usually all girls need to do and boys rarely say no. I had to cut my moment of bliss short though because the dancefloor was calling. ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was blasting out of the speakers and I needed to go and jump and scream for joy. I was slightly tipsy and had kissed a boy, precisely the reasons my parents were afraid to let me out. They didn’t need to worry though, this little moment of experimental joy wasn’t enough for boys to become my thing, not really, not in real actual life, not yet.
* * *
Crucially, this is a romantic fairy-tale for non-romantics. I did not ever believe a handsome prince was going to save me and make everything OK and, it turns out, I was right. Anita, no handsome prince will save you, but you must work on selecting the boys you allow in! Or at least spend some time thinking about the qualities you’d like them to have. I was so content with living in my head, living my alternate dream life, that it would go on to mess up my future choices. I didn’t even realise I had a choice, so convinced was I that no boys were into me, that when any did show any interest in the not too distant future I was so grateful, I’d just end up in a relationship. I had developed zero critical faculties when it came to the opposite sex. I’m just going to take a minute to have a word with my younger self and if you need some friendly (if slightly skewed from my perspective) advice, it’s for you, too.
Well, 16-year-old Anita, you’ll be thrilled to hear that at uni and beyond, boys do fancy you. Maybe not always the ones you fancy, but that’s OK. You will have secret relationships. Sorry to reveal this to the world/your mother but, NEWS FLASH, a lot of Asian kids are having more than just ‘fraaanships’ with people out there.
You might not need a prince, but at least believe in yourself. Don’t keep going out with the first guy who shows you any attention because you’re so grateful for the attention. For all your sass and confidence, and drive to succeed and do well at work and everything you put your mind to, you are properly shit when it comes to boys. What you want from a partner requires some level of critical analysis. Have some.
Jo, one of our smartest friends, had a checklist: educated, listens to great music, well-read, wears cool T-shirts, has interesting friends, fit. At the time, you thought what a crazy idea, I’m just going to meet the man for me, it’s going to be totally organic and natural and I’ll just know. NO NO NO. Jo is a genius. Always have standards because you are incredible. What is this crazy pressure society puts on all of us to be in a relationship, this crazy pursuit to find ‘THE ONE’. Please spend some time on self-reflection. I know you are scared, I know looking into the past terrifies you, but you need to face your fear because it’s holding you down, it will consume you, corrode you from the inside. Yes, your outer shell is tough but the corrosion will begin to eat away at that too. You’ll smile smile smile on the outside, yet internally there’s a deep hollow. Making other people smile is also not the answer. As much as you love doing it, and ‘doing the right thing’, fuck ’em. Don’t be afraid to find your true power, and your true power lies in being you. Don’t worry about making everyone happy, because you’ll wake up at 40 wondering who the fuck you are.
I thought tight clothes and make-up were frivolous and daft and being sexy for boys was a waste of time. I was a massive prude in dungarees. I was, and remain, such a prude that I refused the first proper magazine shoot I was ever offered because they want
ed me in lingerie – the editor called me up in disbelief! I remember the conversation and how he couldn’t believe I was saying no. I said I couldn’t believe it was a genuine idea for a shoot. I was prepared to walk away from the entire magazine shoot rather than have my photo taken in my pants – not even my pants, someone’s selected fancy pants. They changed the brief and my briefs stayed covered up! Now, although I still have body confidence issues, I’ve learnt to love dressing up AND dressing down. I feel as OK in heels as in wellies, in trainers or in clogs. None of it makes me any less. I. Have. Power.
8 India in the nineties had no such thing as music festivals. Now they have them all over the country, including in palaces in the desert. When, 30 years later, I was filming my Bollywood documentary for the BBC, the producers did wonder why I was SO insistent on the rooftop dance sequence. I lived out my filmi fantasy.
9 Yes, I was that cool. Choir took me on tour to sing in glamorous locations like the school hall and Bolton Abbey – come on, don’t tell me you weren’t a little bit impressed with York Minster. I even convinced my mate Al it was cool and got her to join: ‘We get to have days off school together.’ She was sold. Al was tone deaf but successfully mimed the entire time she was in choir. The choir was of the highest standard.
You Don’t Need to Compromise on Your Own Happiness
A major factor in not being one of the lusted-after at school was the fact I was brown. No one really fancied the brown kid back then. In Bradford, no one thought brown folk were cool. We knew we were, but the rest of Britain hadn’t seen this yet. Back then, we were all just Pakis. Even brown kids didn’t fancy the brown kids. I know, some kind of crazy next level issues, right? ‘I’ve never fancied an Asian girl before you.’ This has been said to me by Asian boys at least three times. Is this meant to be some kind of compliment? Am I supposed to be flattered? Ooohh, lucky me, this guy with self-loathing identity issues has picked me as the chosen one. Stroll on, mate.
Asian girls think all Asian men are mummies’ boys (which is usually true) and Asian boys think all Asian girls are square and boring (which is far from the truth), but I think it’s much more than that. Both Asian boys and girls come with Asian families and that means a ton of baggage. Big family bumper packs, buy one get 500, multi-generational, jute sacks of baggage. It’s bad enough having to deal with your own families Indianness, sod having to take on someone else’s too. Not when all you want is a stress-free teenage romance.
Throughout my life I would go on to be fetishised by white boys:
‘Oh, you’re so exotic.’ I’m from Bradford.
‘I’d love to go to an ashram with you.’ Yeah, drum n bass clubs are more my sanctuary, or a walk on Ilkley Moor.
‘You could be my Indian Princess.’ No, no, I really couldn’t possibly. I’m not here to fulfil your Empire fantasy.
Turns out, I’m not alone in feeling sexually isolated as a teenager. Not that I wanted any actual sex. Brown kids of my generation are very much later developers than the average white kid. In 2017, Durex compiled a global list of 44 countries and the average age people lose their virginity: India was second from the highest age, with 23 the average. The UK was at number 19, with age 18. If British Asian was a category on the list, we’d be right at the top with NOT UNTIL YOU ARE MARRIED!
Had I grown up in India, maybe I wouldn’t have felt like I was missing out so much. Maybe everyone in India develops later and having imaginary boyfriends and girlfriends is the norm. Certainly, the idea of dating is relatively new over there and even then, openly, only amongst the urbanised upper middle classes. India is a deeply conservative society but from what I have seen, young urbanites in Mumbai are certainly making up for lost time, but ultimately marry who their parents approve of.
For most Indian girls and boys of my generation, boyfriends and girlfriends were a no-no. Romance? Denied. Sexuality? HAI HAI HAI. SEX? Chi chi chi. Ney ney ney.10 The shame of it. So, to get around the small problem of no dating, we simply lie to our parents. (Although from what I saw was going on around me, it was clear boys had it much easier than girls.) Who’s that boy on the phone? Oh, just a friend. They could never know he was a boyfriend. You’d be locked away, have your ass whooped or worse, be married off!
A friend of mine always had an eye for the lads. I’ll never forget the description of her first French kiss and how he’d licked her braces and how she couldn’t wait to get back to school for more. When she went to uni, no longer forced to wear the terrible dowdy outfits her mum picked, she’d turned into a beautiful swan. Everyone noticed, particularly the boys, and she loved the attention. Her Indian parents, meanwhile, were completely panicked by their sassy, sexpot stunner of a daughter, so they let her finish her degree, then found her a husband. Just like that, so she was no longer their problem to worry about. Her brother, however, left home, did whatever the hell he wanted and eventually married a white woman – but that’s to be expected. It ended well for my friend, she was happy to get out of her parents’ house and you’ll be pleased to hear her husband is lovely.
What you need to know about my own mum is that she thinks of herself as an open-minded Indian mother, because she’d say, ‘You can marry anyone you want, aaaaannnyyyybody, you are lucky I’m so open-minded, other girls’ mothers are much stricter than me, you can pick the person you want to marry . . . as long as he’s Indian.’ This was her obsession – marrying, and marrying Indian. She was liberal enough to allow me to pick for myself, but also told me ‘no one knows where to start with you’ (like I was going to let anyone else do it) as long as he was a boy from a family from any state in India, which was really useful in suburban Bradford. The worst crime I could commit would be to bring home someone non-Indian.
What’s the worst that could happen if you fell in love with and wanted to marry someone who didn’t fit your parents’ expectations? For some Asian girls, falling in love with the wrong man is a crime. Back in the 1980s, I used to lie on my granny’s sofa pretending to sleep but actually listening to my two aunts have a good old gossip about which of their friends had run away from home, usually with a boy. Probably to escape a forced marriage. Punjabi parents disowning their daughters was commonplace when I was a tot. Mainly because they’d dared to make their own choices about their lives. There is no such thing as unconditional love in an Asian household, unless you are a son of course. Here’s the deal: you bring shame, we disown you. You don’t even need to bring home a person as shocking as someone white, black, Muslim, Hindu or Sikh (depending on your religious perspective) for Bollywood-style melodrama to ensue. Even someone from the wrong caste can result in children being outcast. A person who has the same religion, same food, same language, same culture, same customs – you are the same sodding people, but three generations ago your ancestors did a job that Britain decided would help define you and now here you are refusing to speak to your own child because they made their own decision about who they want to spend the rest of their life with. Utter madness.
What’s the worst that could happen? The worst? The worst is the worst. I knew someone whose husband was doing time for killing his own sister because she’d fallen in love. A so-called honour killing. I fail to see the honour. Shame shame shame on those who treat their daughters like chattel. Who place the burden of being the families’ pride on their daughters, who suffocate their existence, who crush their souls, who believe their only use is to bear sons and make roti. Shame on you, I say. I’ve seen so many crushed wills, I watched all my aunts and cousins bury their own wants and desires to keep their parents’ heads held high. I too was filled with this nonsense. The moment you marry is when parents can breathe a sigh of relief and proudly watch their daughter – the one so many said had too much freedom and would end up marrying white, or would run away – have a traditional wedding and marry someone Indian. Fulfilling her dharma, her duty. That’s the moment they wait for. As though bringing up a daughter is an act of danger and trepidation, a great, heavy joyless burden, until yo
u can finally say she belongs to someone else.
Marrying within your culture is the ultimate, then there are degrees of acceptance depending on who you go for. To marry white is often accepted, probably because Asians aspire to whiteness. Although there’s the threat of the watching, judging eyes of the community to keep you on track (‘Give her too much freedom and this is what you get’), we still feel to be married is a level of acceptance and, for the fairer-skin Indians, a way to vanish your identity, should you want to. There will be beautiful fair-skinned, mixed-race babies and everyone will live happily ever after.
Then there is what is rarely ever accepted, that will put Indian Hindu or Sikh families into a tail spin – to marry Muslim, to marry black, to marry black and Muslim, and to come out as LGBTQ+. The levels of prejudice within the Asian community are shocking. Don’t get me wrong, things are changing and more and more families are happy to accept their children and the choices they make, but for every family whose son or daughter has come out as gay or married who they’ve wanted, there are many more who could never bring themselves to do this for fear of abandonment.
Pre-colonial India had very different attitudes towards sex and sexuality. When did we, the land of the Kama Sutra, where gender was always fluid and not binary, become so uptight? Was it when the British, with their colonial attitude and Christian morality, turned up? With an audacious sense of superiority and their shock and disgust at the sexual expression they saw? It was the British who added the petticoat and blouse to the saree. They also quickly put a stop to any homosexuality by making it illegal. Killjoys. We took that colonial legacy and ran with it, and haven’t stopped running.
