Multicultural Diaries: Part II

bbkindred on 27th September 2017

Multicultural Diaries

Part II

My maternal grandfather, a seriously smart man, had to leave school at the age of fourteen.  I have a testimonial from his headmaster for prospective employers.  “Please Sir,” it says, “I beg you to do anything you can for this exceptional boy.”  Many years later, during World War Two, the exceptional boy, now a Sergeant, would ride a motorbike for sixty miles through enemy territory to deliver a message that couldn’t be sent by radio.  The message was about the German surrender.  Technically speaking, my granddad ended the war and was awarded the Oak Leaves for his bravery.  After the war, he joined the local bus company and again, rose through the ranks, but never had a position befitting his ability.

In 1939, his daughter, my mother, mercurially bright, qualified for the local grammar school, but my grandparents were so poverty stricken by the years of economic depression, they couldn’t afford the uniform.  As an adult, she took her expected role as wife and mother and generally worked part-time in shops.

When I was a child, I’d never met anyone who had a degree.  I remember my mother saying hello to someone in the street and then saying to me, “Her son went to university.”  She said it in a hushed, awed tone that let me know it wasn’t for the likes of us, but for a whole other species of human.

I wanted to go to grammar school, but my father had other plans for me and sent me to the local comprehensive across the valley.  Its main function was to produce adequate factory fodder.

At the age of twelve, on the cusp of the 1970’s, I first encountered the sixteen-year-old Lala – Lalarukh.  For reasons long forgotten, I was moved from my usual school dinner table.  There was a bowl of cheese in front of me and I helped myself to some.

“Nooo!”  Shrieked one of the girls.  “You’ve taken Lala’s cheese!  You’ve taken Lala’s cheese!  She doesn’t eat meat.”

I was terrified, left in no doubt that I’d committed a major crime…against someone four years older than me.  I expected nothing less than brutality.  Even making eye contact with a significantly older girl could result in a kicking.

I can still feel my face burning red when I think of Lala sitting down at the table.  She picked up the bowl, looking bemused.  One of the girls tilted her head in my direction.

I waited for the threat, but Lala smiled.  “Little Mouse, eating all my cheese.”  She said.  She had a Pakistani accent, but her English was impeccable, her tone always assertive.  “You can sit here every day, Little Mouse, I hate it.”

I loved her from that moment on.

Poor Lala, served cheese every day.  Don’t see this as evidence of cultural ignorance or racial abuse.  She was treated with the same culinary contempt as the rest of us.

 

There wasn’t much in the way of role model at the school I attended, unless you fancied teenage pregnancy or working in the mill.  Lala was truly a gift from the Gods.  She was about to enter the sixth form, a rare occurrence for a girl.  She was Captain of the town hockey team, she played clarinet, she was on the road to a Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award.  Lala was going to university.  I’d sometimes see her thundering down the corridors of the school in her trademark long tunic, waistcoat and trousers, a halfway house between traditional Pakistani dress and school uniform.  Lala always had somewhere to be, but she’d make the effort to stop and talk, offering words of encouragement.

I once went for tea at her family home after a school hockey match.  Lala lived with her mother and three sisters, there was no evidence of a father.  They were the most kind and hospitable people I’d ever met and I say that as a northerner.  There were no other Asian people in the area where they lived and they’d made every effort to integrate into the community, even making Christmas dinner for elderly neighbours.  I never remember anyone referring to Lala as anything but Lala.

It can be hard for those from a more educated or prosperous background to understand the importance of people like Lala.  Personal engagement with someone who’s achieved, engenders a belief that you can do it, too.  For those who grow up surrounded by graduates and professionals, it’s taken for granted; all these worlds are open to you.  It seeps into your consciousness without question.  There were a thousand things I didn’t know I could be when I was twelve, but knowing Lala planted the seeds of possibility within.  If her family hadn’t made that long journey from Pakistan and been so willing to open their arms to the people around them, I might never have known what I could be.  I would be twenty-six before I started my degree course, but I got there just before my granddad died knowing that one of us had finally made it.