English | Indian
My Mother was born into a working-class family in Shepherds Bush, London and my Father in Zanzibar in Africa. Being a hearing child born to Deaf parents, I was always hyper aware of being ‘different’ and having a foot in two worlds, Deaf and Hearing. But this also made me consider my race identities quite early on. I recall being in primary school and being gathered around with the other children in class. The teacher wanted to talk about difference and colour. She referred to one of the boys and said he was what we called ‘white’. He referred to one of the girls and said she was what we called ‘Black’ and then referred to me and called me ‘Yellow’. It was one of the first times I scratched my head and pondered who and what I was. When courting, my Mother moved to Pakistan for a few years. She wanted to experience the culture and my Father’s family. It was there she would learn to truly cook like, as they used to say, ‘an Asian woman’. When growing up in the U.K, my Mother and Father would always take us to Canada to see our Indian side of the family, we attended weddings and it was at those weddings that I had my first experience in Bollywood dance. Little did we know, this would be the first step in becoming an actor. I have always wanted to learn Gujarati, my native family’s language, but I never had access to this. My mother tongue was Sign Language and I am extremely proud of that but when I was with my Asian family, I very quickly always felt ostracised because I could never speak it. I recall my Father asking me to interpret what some of his family members were saying, so I had to very quickly self-teach myself. I would manage to piece together words to come up with some kind of interpretation, but I never managed to become fluent. If I had the opportunity to be reborn I wouldn’t come back any different. I am proud of my mix and the older I get, the more I realise how exciting my story is and how much I really want to tell it. I read somewhere once that one-day, most people will be mixed- race. This sounds like the most exciting thing in the world!
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