Dotty Circa 1950s.

Source Google.

It’s a Friday morning 6am to be exact and mum is shouting out my name from downstairs. It’s my day off from uni and I’m being woken up to accompany mum to the hospital. She’s been putting of this trip for months but she couldn’t take the pain any longer. So we’re going to the hospital to get her wisdom teeth removed. It’s a simple day procedure. Well it was meant to be but as the day pans out it turns out to be longer than we expected!

We arrive on time 7am and are seated in the reception area. There’s a young girl with her boyfriend and mother. Two old Indian men with their wives. We wait for a couple of hours. By midday the others in the waiting room have gone into surgery and their loved ones have left trying to pass time whilst they wait for their loved ones to come out from surgery.  At last mum is called in, to get prepared for surgery. Whilst she’s away. A granny and her 23yr old grandson rush into the reception area. He’s late for his surgery and his grandmothers telling him off! He goes to get ready and she sits in the reception area. It’s just me and her now. She’s a small elderly lady in her 70s. About 5ft tall wearing a long, loose grey coat. Her black hair is wispy with bits of white; tucked into a grey hat.

I continue reading my book and she leaves to get a coffee. She comes back and sits down. A nurse walks in to reception and tells her there’s a sign reading ‘you’re not allowed to eat or drink’ guess it wasn’t in the best of places as neither of us noticed it!  She apologises and the nurse takes her into a side room where she goes to finish her drink. A little while later she returns and I catch her eye, she says to me “I feel so bad I hate breaking regulations”  and that was how our conversation filled afternoon began, one I’ll never forget.

Her name is Dorothy, she’s Jamaican. We start talking and she comes across as a lovely prim and proper woman. I’m intrigued by her strong will and personality, I start asking her about herself. She tells me she arrived in England by boat as a young teen to join her father who was already living and working here. Her mother stayed back in Jamaica because she didn’t like the idea of travelling for such a long period of time.

England 1950s was a stark contrast to Jamaica but she soon settled in. Racism was strife, she recalls seeing the signs ‘No Blacks, No Irish, No dogs’ For a short while she lived with her aunty. She tells me there were plenty of jobs going unlike the current climate of today. She got herself a job print screening silk fabric it was run by a Spanish guy. Her co-worker was an Irish man and one day he asked her “Dotty is your blood black?”  She laughs dryly as she recalls this. He wouldn’t believe her, that they shared the same colour blood. So she took a needle and pricked her finger.

She was in her early 20s when she met a guy one day and they hit it off. He was a gentleman she tells me. They had only been out a couple of times when they decided to take a trip to the cinema joined by other friends too. The guy’s friend kept giving her weird looks. She thought he was a bit weird and dodgy and tried to avoid him best she could. But one day a little while after their cinema date her date’s friend came to see her and asked her if she knew who her boyfriend lived with? She thought he was jealous and wanted to make trouble. He gave her the address of his home and told her to go find out. She was confused but thought she ought to go see what he was talking about. She reached his house and knocked on the door to find a woman with two young children open the door. A girl and a boy. She said she could still picture the little boys face, the spitting image of his fathers. And he had told her that he lived with his mother. She told his wife that she had been dating her husband for a couple of weeks now and had had no idea that he was married. His wife wasn’t angry as Dorothy thought she may have been, perhaps her husband’s antics were something of a regular occurrence.

*A nurse walks in to the reception area and informs Dorothy that her grandson may be asleep for a while until the anaesthetic wares of and that she might want to go home and wait there. She looks at me and says “will you be okay here?” I reassure her I’ll be fine, even though I’m hoping she will stay and continue her story. She then says something to me that will probably stay with me for a long time. She tells me “once you become a mother you’re a mother to all children not just your own” she really is a lovely strong wise old lady. *

Dorothy was a strong lady but couldn’t stop her tears from falling, she found herself crying on the bus journey home. A gentleman approached her asking if she was okay and if she needed any help. She had just been humiliated and used by one man and wasn’t interested in talking to another. He was a good looking fellow Jamaican but she just wasn’t interested.

She later discovered the man from the bus used to work on the buses. She tells me in those days the communities were close knitted and it was easy to track someone down. He found out where she lived and he who would constantly call on her asking her for a date. She used to get her aunty to send him away.

After a couple of months she gave in and agreed to one date. They began dating and after a while her father told her that he thought he was a good man and would take care of her. He told her that he would be happy if she accepted his marriage proposal. She did. I asked her if she loved him. She said in the beginning she didn’t but agreed to marry him to keep her father happy but as time went on, she started to warm to him and could see that he was a kind decent man and would do his best to keep her happy. Not long after she got married her father passed away.

They had six children, 3 girls and 3 boys, 18 grandchildren and a handful of great grandchildren! For most of her life she worked as a nurse in various hospitals and worked hard to save up to ensure her later years were comfortable enough. Her husband passed away in the 90’s and she never married again. She tells me she never felt the need to. And enjoyed her independence too much.

Dotty is one of the strongest and wisest people I have ever come across. It’s often said we can learn a lot from our elders and it’s true they have lived through many more years than us and often have experienced and learnt a lot more. She was inspiring and I loved spending the afternoon listening to her various anecdotes and her advice on working hard and ensuring you become an independent strong woman.

I had the feeling that I wasn’t the first person to have had such an intriguing conversation with Dorothy but I’m glad she decided to keep me company, whilst I waited for mum to recover from her surgery. She brightened up what was becoming a stressful and long day!

Side by side.

‘Distribution of wealth’    Photography Source

On one of those rare beautiful sunny days we get in London, me and mum were out and about. Mum driving and me in the passenger seat. We stopped at some traffic lights and a rubbish truck pulled up alongside us. It reminded me of this poem I once came across, I’m not a huge fan of poetry but there was just something about seeing a regular occurrence explored in such a thought provoking way. It explores the two different extremes we see in society but for a couple of seconds waiting side by side.

Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes.

At the stoplight waiting for the light
nine a.m. downtown San Francisco
a bright yellow garbage truck
with two garbagemen in red plastic blazers
standing on the back stoop
one on each side hanging on
and looking down into
an elegant open Mercedes
with an elegant couple in it
The man
in a hip three-piece linen suit
with shoulder-length blond hair and sunglassed
The young blond woman so casually coifed
with short skirt and coloured stockings
on the way to his architect’s office

And the two scavengers up since four a.m.
grungy from their route
on the way home
The older of the two with grey iron hair
and hunched back
looking down like some
gargoyle Quasimodo
And the younger of the two
also with sunglasses and long hair
about the same age as the Mercedes driver

And both scavengers gazing down
as from a great distance
at the cool couple
as if they were watching some odourless TV ad
in which everything is always possible

And the very red light for an instant
holding all four close together
as if anything at all were possible
between them
across that small gulf
in the high sea
of this democracy.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

What’s in a word?

My grandfather [back row first on the Left] & his co-workers.

There was a time when people would actually ask ‘what? where’s Pakistan?’  Those times are no more.  Following the creation of Pakistan and the ending of the world wars many immigrated to Britain, to better themselves and to contribute to the economy and society.

Any person migrating to another land would find it difficult to begin life again with a new culture,language, climate, customs and traditions and a change of scenery. Many of these older generations did what they had set out to; work hard, to try and create a new home for themselves and their families.

My Nana [grandfather] (may Allah swt bless his soul) came in the 60′s and worked several different jobs. He worked hard to make a living for himself and to take care of my mum and her siblings. The work ethic of our grandfathers was amazing and something we can aspire to be. Many came without an education or knowing English. They worked hard to gain respect, integrate into society, becoming a part of society.

Life wasn’t all rosy for the new immigrants. My mum often recollects her childhood memories of growing up in London. In my mother’s time she really was part of a ‘minority’. There were very few Pakistanis at her school or in their home town. At one point racism was rife. My mum and her brother often heard the words ‘Paki’ or ‘dirty Paki’ hurled at them. Thankfully the part of London they grew up in wasn’t so bad. Unfortunately there were many cases of racism and racists acts such as ‘Paki bashing’ that took place in some areas around the country.

[Uk 2012] Photography source.

‘Dirty Paki’ is really an oxymoron, you see the definition of ‘Pak’ is clean. Hence you can not be a ‘dirty Paki’! During our Grandfathers and parents generations the word was used to insult and verbally abuse people. ‘Paki’ – The word sounds as if its almost spat out rather than spoken. The term itself was used in a derogatory manner. So why use it now? Being Pakistani doesn’t give you the right to use the term. Just as one would feel the same about the use of the word ‘nigger’. So when I hear or see people using the word it pisses me off. Our grandfathers and parents didn’t endure so much, struggling and working so hard. For future generations to have no respect or understandings of their roots.

We all have different experiences and ideas of what it means to be Pakistani. but we all agree we want to see a unified and progressive Pakistan. For that, we all have to work together as one.  Today marks 65 years of Pakistan , Happy independence day!

 I’m not a Paki,  rather I’m proud to call myself a  British-Pakistani  x

Detox of the soul and mind.

[The past couple of weeks I’ve been writing a lot, my notebook is stuffed with ideas and unfinished paragraphs and I can’t wait to write it all up! With all this in mind, I decided to make-over my blog and start afresh so here it is!]

Weird things have been happening in my mind. I’m mid-way through my degree. During university you’re preoccupied with studies and deadlines. You finish university for the year and the walls come down and the thoughts and stresses come seeping in.

I always see my year academically, so during the dark cold months you’re slaving away at uni and the summer is what you work towards. So this year we had two close family weddings in the summer during and after my exams.

Lately I’ve been having real body image issues well I suppose I have been for most of my childhood and my teen years. I’ve always been the heavy, ’chubby’ one. The weddings brought these depressing thoughts to the forefront. The families involved with the wedding have plenty of slim pretty girls. And my insecurities and lack of self-worth came flooding in like crazy. It hit me when I realised I have issues with actually looking into the mirror. Subconsciously I knew these thoughts were there just never pondered on them much.

For as far as I can remember family have been pestering me about my weight. They probably don’t realise but recently it’s become more of a depressing issue for me. I suppose even if they knew they wouldn’t really understand. I’m not the type of person that is vain or self-indulgent (my mates will back me up on this) so all this thinking has actually been driving me crazy and guilty there’s far more important things than my insecurity issues!

Following this I learnt a lot. During the weddings I Learnt to take chances and have conversations with new and old people you know, be more open and make the effort to get to know distant relatives, that you only meet once in a blue moon.

Each day I’m learning to be more confident, comfortable within my own skin. Working it out one day at a time but until I get there, I’m in middle grounds. It’s never good to be carrying around mental weight. You need to smile and laugh once in a while and know its okay to have a good time now and again!

I’m grateful to Allah swt for granting me good health, family, love and guidance. Alhumdililah I have so much to be grateful for, how could I forget. Ramadan is here and I have all I need and more. I’m going to take the time to pray and raise the spiritual aspects of my life.

I have discovered comfort, support and guidance from the most unexpected places. People wise beyond their years! thank you to you guys (you know who you are =) it means a lot to me.

I shall remember you all in my duas  X

Maybe..

 Hey guys!

So prior to writing this I discovered that I actually have some regular readers, yay! so I just wanted to thank you all who do wander over to my blog occasionally. It’s comforting to know that some people ‘other’ than my friends are reading my babbles and seem to enjoy them, so thank you <3

So this post is kind of a written thoughts/poem-ish. I’m not a poet at all!  but I was kind of inspired by my previous post and some thoughts I’ve had floating around my head. So here it goes…

****

We were never enemies neither were we friends

so where did that leave us?

The times have changed, the status quo of high school no longer exists

we are individuals now.

No longer in our separate cliques, that high school forced upon us.

Stripped of all the titles and boxes,

maybe we have discovered that we are more alike than different.

Maybe we needed time to grow, to mature

to leave our self-absorbed immature selves behind.

Maybe we see the world differently now

perhaps we even share the same views, aspirations, loves, hates and hopes.

We may have discovered that we weren’t so different after all.

How were we to know if we never made the effort to discover this?

Now we’re out in the world, 

Maybe… we could be friends?

 ****

The lost Eras.

i want this!

My mum’s always going on about the 70’s and 80’s. ‘The good old days’ she retells the long days when her and her siblings would easily spend whole days playing in the park without their parents supervision. Apparently it was seen as safe and most people would trust one another easily. (Seems like a totally different world today hey!)

Okay I’m digressing  the 70’s and 80’s were responsible for producing some of the great classics in both cinema and music. My taste in music and movies has always been slightly different (to say the least) compared to my mates. The thing is, past eras fascinate me; they were so rich from entertainment to fashion and politics. During the years I’ve discovered and have fell in love with many movies from these eras. Great classics such as The outsiders, Grease, The Karate Kid, Footloose (1984) and Big.

For a while I had been meaning to watch ‘The Breakfast club’. I finally got the chance to watch it a couple of weeks ago. The movie was released in 1985 a Massive 27 years ago! Nonetheless I fell in love with it   It’s a well known as a classic and now I can understand why! 

The story is simple yet works brilliantly, It focuses on five teens. The typical stereotypes found in high school; the jock, princess, nerd, the quite loner and the bad boy/bully. But don’t be mistaken it’s not your sickly-sweet typical ‘High school musical’ movie. All five teens are reporting to school for an 8 hour detention on a Saturday. Yes Saturday! Can you imagine the uproar if we had Saturday detentions  :D

The movie may seem slightly slow to begin with but it sets out the individual characters and their personalities. The ‘only’ main adult character in the movie is the teacher in charge of detention. Mr Vernon is the ‘no bullshit’, mean and frustrated teacher type. He makes it clear that the teens are not to leave the library in any circumstances at all. He sets them an essay to write ‘who he/she thinks they are’ of course being teens they don’t exactly set out to write it!

They begin the detention as strangers but I think by the end they have learnt so much about themselves as well as each other. In a way they get the opportunity to see themselves through another person’s perspective. They’re all very different but they gradually discover in some way or the other they could all relate to each other.

‘We’re all pretty bizarre some of us are just better at hiding it that’s all’– The Breakfast club

The big question though is what will happen come Monday morning? I think the director has cleverly left it to the audience to decide. But it is definite that they are not the same as they were at the beginning of the day. Each of them will clearly see it is an unforgettable day. It’s a touching and inspiring movie with a sprinkle of charm. The characters are portrayed well making it easy for us as the audience to be able to relate with them.

The question that remains is will they return to their comfort zones on Monday or be brave and face their cliques and dent the ‘silent’ high school status quo.

  ‘You see us as you want to see us- in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions…

each one of us is a brain…

 an athlete…

 a basket case…

 a princess…

and a criminal…”

– The Breakfast club

A message through the madness.

At 9am today I suddenly woke up. Its a saturday and i was knackered from sleeping quite late the night before. Anyone who knows me well will know that its unusual for me to be up at this time especially on the weekend! It was all down to a dream, that I was up so early.

Before reading this remember not everything makes sense as it was just a dream after all.

****I’m in a big hall with my brother and sister and this guy comes along and starts shooting at people. We all drop to the ground to try and keep ourselves safe from the gunman. But he’s making his way round the hall, suddenly this Arab guy (which I will refer to as Mr A) comes along and somehow helps my siblings to escape but the gunman moves closer so me and Mr A cant risk getting caught.

The gunman reaches us and Mr A quickly throws himself as a shield around me, to protect me from being shot. The gunman shoots Mr A in the neck and by some miracle leaves me. I’m not sure what happens to the gunman but he just sort of dissolves into my dream. Mr A is bleeding heavily after having saved my life. I become frantic in trying to help the man who has just saved my life. Somehow Mr A’s mum appears and she joins me in the frantic quest to get him medical help. We both try calling the ambulance services but the phone lines are engaged. We try asking others around us but to no avail as they drift away.

Me and Mr A’s mum are becoming helpless. Suddenly his mum gets through to the ambulance service but she doesn’t have great English, so I quickly grab the phone off her and speak to the operator. The operator ‘slowly’ asks for all the details and I give them and frantically tell her to please send help urgently, Mr A is dying. She responds by telling me that before she can send help I have to answer correctly a serious of quiz like questions. I struggle with the questions. It feels as though the operator in a sadistic way is doing whatever she can to make it difficult.

It feels like forever that I’m trying to answer the ridiculous irrelevant questions. His mum is crouched beside Mr A and is sobbing. I’m becoming frustrated with the operator’s lack of empathy and thus decide to put the phone down. So me and Mr A’s mum are left helpless but we’re surrounded by people getting on with their lives. The world around us carries on the same. My cousin appears and tries telling me about some boy issues or something. Whilst I’m trying to get Mr A to the hospital. Doesn’t she realise he was dying? perhaps breathing his last?****

After waking up I had a thought; my preoccupied cousin represents me, perhaps you, the world. We are so obsessed with our own lives, even though we are aware of the atrocities happening in the world we sometimes just put it to the back of our minds.

****Just at the end of it all I tell Mr A’s mum we have no choice but to try to find a driver that can take us to the hospital. I bend down to Mr A to check he’s still breathing, he is, but i know we need to get him some help fast if he is to survive at all****

Those of you who have read this far are thinking WTH it’s just some chicks random, weird dream. but after waking up I suddenly remembered a film I had watched a while back. It was as if I had lived through the film, just for a tiny fraction of the time. It really made me stop and think how would it feel to be that frustrated being left helpless in trying to keep someone alive. I have attached the short film at the bottom.

For me it was all just a dream but for others it’s a living nightmare everyday