English | Indian
I'm a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London. Being a woman in Academic Science with children isn't easy as you often have to make large sacrifices either with respect to your career or your family time. Coupling that with the fact that you're a minority really does not help with career progression. I have not met with any outward discrimination throughout my career and I have found that the longer I have been in science the more people I see from diverse backgrounds coming through, which is definitely a positive thing. However, making it to the top positions in these institutions remains to be seen.
Generally, I find it easiest to talk to other mixed-race people about identity because they tend to understand your point of view, even if they're not from the same ethnic background as you. I have found that talking to either Indian or English people about identity gets almost nowhere as they're often entrenched in their own identity and can find it hard seeing it from another point of view. Being a mixed-race person from two very different cultures can be difficult as you often straddle both worlds and don't entirely fit into either. So I would say that in general my sister is the only person I can comfortably talk to about my identity as she's probably the only one who understands.
My role model is definitely my maternal Grandfather, who was English. He was quite a bit older than his wife but she died suddenly when she was in her 30s, leaving him a widower with 4 children. As well as working, he looked after all his children, single handedly. At the time when my parents met, mixed marriages weren't common. As well as marrying an Indian man, my Mum wanted to change her religion. My Mum told me she was nervous about telling her Dad about the man she wanted to marry as she didn't know what his reaction would be. In the end the only thing my Grandad said to my Mum when she told him was that colour/religion didn't matter and the most important thing was that my Dad loved her and was good to her. He embodies everything I think a decent person should be; caring, compassionate, hardworking, unbiased and loving.
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