When I get really homesick here at the sight of cheese, mayonnaise and beef in the superstores, I go off to Wembley to do my Indian shopping. It has a sizeable Gujarati population. Ealing Road has scores of Indian shops and they call it mini Rajkot.The shops are all quaintly named- and you have Prashad Sweets, Popat Sarees and Meena Bazaar just like you have in India. The sight of the colourful sarees and chaniya cholis in the showrooms with “special Diwali sale” displayed prominently warmed my heart. Suddenly the sound of Hindi and other Indian languages was like music… so were the Hindi swear words that I was hearing after so long!
The shops were full of Indian stuff. While in the supermarkets I had to hunt out okra in the exotic vegetables section- here you had it all under one roof and labelled ‘bhindi’ too. So there was turai, lauki, karela, chow chow, all kinds of capsicum, methi, dil, and curry patta all available easily - coriander labelled ‘dhania’ too! It was tough not to go overboard and buy things that you didn’t actually need- the frozen parathas, farsan, pakoras, kulfi, dhokla, samosas, jalebis and the poha, imli and hazaar types of pickles and papad.
The best part is you will still find shopkeepers haggling that it is ‘bohni’ time. I spent all my time talking in Hindi. And the funny thing is that they won’t ask you whether you are Indian or Gujarati, but they will want to know if you are Jain! In a country where the sight of brown Asian skin is so comforting, and not to be universally labelled Paki by a white skinned person is unusual- it amazes me how parochial our attitudes still remain.
I visited an Indian temple one Sunday, which was more Indian than India itself- a veritable collection of gods arranged on a fake Himalaya Plaster of Paris mountain- Shiva, Ganesh, Krishna, Sheshnaag, Sai baba with Satya Sai Baba all on the same mountain! I found it amusing to see people pouring milk on the Shivling as abhishek from plastic cans labelled Sainsbury’s and Tesco’s. Like the churches have their Sunday mass they were having a Ramayan recital. But it was a strange but nice way of making their children understand their roots.
In the rest of London you won’t find beauty parlours who will do your eyebrows for less than ten pounds. But here, you can find Gujju behns who will do them for two pounds. But you won’t miss the small stuffed room with an inevitable picture of Lakshmi and Ganesh there and dirty towels stuffed under the table. And you won’t forget too soon, their sharp comments on ‘Where you did your eyebrows before? They look funny. Come next time to me, and if you are regular customer and get facial done, main discount degi.’
So that’s Wembley for you- noisy, crowded, colourful and bustling with sarees and salwar kameezes. A place where the poor goras are outnumbered and their culture is replaced by the immigrants.
Last week on the train, I passed Southall. And the most astonishing thing was that the sign posts on the platform were in only two languages- English, and cross your heart- Punjabi! I really felt proud that the Punjabis had managed to make such a place in the heart of London. But I did hear rumblings that these posts would be removed as they were discriminatory to people of other languages. Now Southall is on my list of must see places- another weekend, perhaps.
(oops)!!! does in the movies. That was the ultimate nail in Harshit’s coffin. He could never come back to his earlier self again. He later on admitted this but in a hidden manner.
