I have always had Indian friends. It’s not something I actively sought out; it just the familiarity i drifted towards.. However, there is definitely a split between the ‘good’ Indian girls and the ‘other’ Indian girls. I was definitely in the ‘other’ bucket.
My family was the only one I knew that an interracial marriage in the mix, whilst growing up. There were definetly whispers in the community, but all the offenders disappeared from sight and lips.. If anyone asked, my family told a rehearsed (very) abridged version of the truth. When my nieces and nephews came along, it became harder to placate them with the version we were willing to share.
To my parents’ credit, they took it very much with an “and what?” approach. Unfortunately, they did not replicate this with their actions. They swallowed a lot of judgement and were the subject of gossip. A cautionary tale of what not to do. Extended family would whisper about how they would have handled things differently, how their daughters would have been banished from the house.
At a family function, my aunt once stated, “If any of my children married outside Sikhism, I would chuck them out of the house. I would never let them back in.”
She stole glances at my mum as she spoke.
My mum looked at her and said, in Punjabi “Shaid tuhāḍe bacce sitān vāle ha.” (perhaps your children are disposable.)
BOOM! That was one of the first times I heard her turn it up. I see you lady.
Plot twist one of them did, everyone attended the wedding.
At school my eclectic group of friends and I were a bunch of misfits. We were really out there, pushing at our boundaries. We were all on the spectrum of the ‘other’ bucket. Each of us had a version of the traditions we wanted to squash. We were not going to be a ‘good girl’. We were going to break the cultural chains. We were going to change the world.
Girls support girls!
When I got to university, things were different. They were a completely different version of Indian girls—ones I had never encountered before.
Daddy’s little princesses.
They had mobile phones—this was the late 1990s, mind you. They called home every day. They went to the hairdressers regularly and shopped at French Connection. I was more Topshop sale section.
The first thing I did when I got my grant cheque was go down to an army surplus store. I bought my first pair of DMs (burgundy), a pair of red, white, and blue chequered golfing trousers, and an age 2-3 Winnie the Pooh cropped t-shirt.
These girls wore the uniform—black culottes, a patterned top, a black cardigan, and black ankle boots with a block heel. They had straight hair past their shoulder. Next to them, in my get-up, I looked like a curly haired clown.
Their daddies were paying for tuition, including room and board. My parents barely knew what degree I was doing. I mean, I was supposed to be at a different uni and different course. I got in through clearing.
I had fucked my A-levels right in the bund (arse) .
My first choice had been to do Marketing in a seaside town. My parents and I never discussed my university choices—no one did, really. I just picked some courses that I thought sounded alright. I didn’t even know the difference between a BA (Hons) and a BSc. I hadn’t a fucking Scooby-Doo. I just knew I wanted to be close to the sea (and out of the house).
One evening, while watching EastEnders, my mum nervously turned to me and asked, “What is Marketing?”
I told her in the best way I knew how. I used the word business a lot, mentioned planning, and gave her examples of adverts I knew she’d seen.
She nodded. “Oh, that’s good, that’s good.”
Then she pointed at the TV screen, where the scene had changed to Kathy and Pete at their market stall.
“I thought it was this,” she said.
She genuinely thought I was going to university to study how to become a market seller. And she said nothing to me.
What I felt in that moment was trust. She trusted me to make good choices. Or maybe it was just the number-five-child nonchalance.
Turned out I didn’t even get the grades.
I flew back to the UK on the day my A-level results came out. My dad picked me up from the airport with an envelope containing my results. It was unopened. He handed it over to me, and I told him I needed to go to the bathroom.
I made a dash for it before he could ask any questions. I ran into the ladies’ toilets, found an empty cubicle, and slammed the door behind me. I felt sick. I had to go to university. I couldn’t be the family fuck-up. Fuck!
I ripped open the letter. I needed a B, B, C. I got a C, D, E.
I stood there, my back against the door, jet-lagged and exhausted from the flight.
Okay, okay, okay—get it together.
I needed a phone. There was information about clearing in the letter. I couldn’t use the home phone—then everyone would know. I needed a payphone. Right. I’d go to the local library.
I ripped up my results letter and flushed it down the toilet. Washed the tears off my face, and went back to my dad. He never asked me about my results—I never told him.
As soon as we got home, I got changed and said I had to go to school to sort out my university place. I headed to the bus stop and took the bus to the high street. Ran up the stairs to the library, hoping and praying there wasn’t a queue for the payphone. There wasn’t. I pulled all the change I had from my pocket and started with 50p.
I phoned my first-choice university to see if I had got in. They told me no.
Right. No time to panic.
I called my second choice through clearing. They confirmed I’d got in and that they were sending my acceptance letter. I asked them to confirm it again—so my anxiety could hear it. They read out my name, my UCAS number, and my confirmed place at the university.
I stood there, holding the phone in the library lobby, surrounded by people—and cried.
I’d done it. I was going to university. Now I just had to go home and explain the course and university change.
When I told my mum and dad, my mum said the new course was easier to remember. Much better than Marketing for her friends at the Gurdwara. It helped the new course was one of the top five professions preferred by immigrant parents.
I never really fit in with the good Indian girls. They looked like me (kind of), but they didn’t act like me. All of these girls had brothers, which, in my experience, made Indian girls more likely to be more traditional. They were cliquey—like they all belonged to a secret sect.
And outsiders? They spotted them immediately.
They talked about drab things—cooking, cuddly toys, and their lifestyle. They name-dropped. They did fancy things. I wasn’t really about that. I liked to sit by the sea and chill, play computer games, and just be.
I could tell they thought I was brash, opinionated, and uncultured. Maybe I scared them. In their minds, I was what rebelling looked like. They might have been warned to stay away from girls like me.
Everything conversation was surrounded by little subtle digs and nuances.
One girl, in particular, got under my skin.
She told me that she and her boyfriend had been talking about my relationship.
Apparently, her boyfriend had said he “would never want to be in a relationship with me”. As I didn’t cook and sometimes the way I talked to my boyfriend (his friend) “was not very nice.”
Immediately, my brain shouted, Bitch, you think I care?
At the same time, my ears were hyper-alert for every word she was saying. My brain was on stand-by to hyper focus on her comments.
This is what my brain came up with:
FACT ONE: Your boyfriend asked me out just weeks before you two became an item.
FACT TWO: He actually asked me out every day for three weeks.
FACT THREE: There were occasions when he was late meeting you or cancelled dates. He was actually picking me up from places after telling me he had no plans.
FACT FOUR: After an argument with my boyfriend, he told me I should just leave him—said he was nothing more than a dog on heat.
(And honestly? I liked liked that.)
FACT FIVE: He went with my boyfriend to Ann Summers to help pick out lingerie for Valentines day. He bought you a three-foot Warner Bros cuddly toy.
FACT SIX: Given all the evidence above, maybe he actually likes a girl who’s “not very nice.” Try it you might like it.
But I didn’t.
I just left the room.
What was the point? If i went in i was going to really get involved. This girl was not prepared for the kind of fights i get involved in.
After uni, out of the five couples that lived in our student house, four of them ended up getting married.
At one of the meet-ups, a wedding, one of the girls piped up:
“I think out of all the weddings, mine was the most expensive. Then it was yours,” she pointed at me, “and then it was hers.”
We were at ‘hers’ wedding, surrounded by her friends and family. I thought – this is exactly why i couldn’t be friends with these girls. I said, “Okay!” and got up to go to the bar.
For the record, I had the cheapest wedding. Hands down.
I never actively stayed in touch with this friendship group. The girls still meet up for dinners and cocktails. Thankfully, I’m not invited.
The last time we met, I was so anxious. I drank way too much and ended up vomiting all the way home.
If I want to be judged, I would rather it be hanging out with my own family. Thank you very much.
I am not a daddies princess, I am mummies warrior!
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