British | Indian - Senior Research Software Engineer @ The Alan Turing Institute
My Father is British, my Mother was Indian, although she moved to the UK as a child. They went to different constituent parts of the University of London and met there through mutual friends. My Mother lived in the UK from when she was seven and spent a lot of her childhood living apart from her parents (who both had complicated work schedules). Culturally I think she identified more with the UK than with India, my exposure to Indian culture came through my Grandparents.
I was proud of my mixed-race heritage growing up and I still am. As my Indian Grandparents moved to the UK when my Mother was still a child, all of my close family have always been in the UK. However, there aren't many traditions that I or the Indian side of my family follow apart from a universal interest in cricket. I have visited India once, but only for a week and as it was a work trip I only saw Mumbai. I’d like to go back but I think it would essentially be as a tourist since I don’t think there are many family members who remember anything about my Grandparents or my Mother and aunts beyond their names.
I've had the chance to enjoy food from both sides. My Mother’s family were culturally & religiously vegetarian and always cooked traditional Tamil/Keralan food. Lots of dhals and sambars, but I especially enjoyed the traditional sweets like gulab jamun or mysore pak.
I feel like I blend in whenever I visit Mediterranean countries. I think the places I’ve visited where I stood out most were India and Madagascar.
I was one of the few non-White students at my school and so whenever I was insulted or bullied (which was rare) it was usually on the basis of my skin colour. I don't think I've ever been labelled in a way that was specific to being mixed-race, people normally assume that I'm one or the other.
Being mixed-race lets you define your own identity as whatever mixture of your heritages you choose. This can be a very liberating situation. Never deliberately, but many people assume that I am White-British and I usually don't make the effort to correct them. I suppose it’s because I don’t want to make people feel awkward about having their assumptions challenged.
I think my organisation has quite a few mixed-race people (although I wouldn't be able to put a definite number on it). I don't think many of my colleagues or senior staff are aware of my specific heritage in the same way that I am not aware of theirs. I think my workplace generally does a good job of making space for people to discuss their heritage. I heard about Mixedracefaces through them. I don’t think being White-passing has any direct effect on my work or how I’m treated by my colleagues. However, my job frequently involves meeting new people from other organisations and fitting into a ‘default’ pigeonhole can sometimes make things easier.