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Finally, justice for George Floyd. Is it though?

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Finally, justice for George Floyd. Is it though? Does it really indicate a change in the system? For me though I have to ask these questions as I’m dubious. Sorry. Would the police officer have been found guilty had it not got so much press coverage and society being rebellious? Going from my own personal experience of how my brother Arvind died, I believe not. Had we not got press coverage, the hospital wouldn’t have been found guilty and that took us three years. But ultimately has justice been done? Well, no as my brother can’t come back. Why did it take my brother’s death for the hospital to supposedly learn lessons? So why did it take George Floyd death for everyone to come together and make a noise when we all know it has been happening for decades? Social media of course. For me personally I feel nothing has changed and won’t change unless it stops happening. How many of these ‘incidents’ that have happened, but we have not heard about. For change to happen the systems have
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It’s your fault as you are lady.

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This week has been a sad but thought-provoking week due to the murder of Sarah Everard, which gave way to a taboo subject. I always think though why something like this has to happen for people to talk about it and will it just be everyone jumping on the bandwagon, sharing the same image/ phrases until it’s forgotten. I say this as the Me-Too Movement is hardly talked about now and the cover up of the BBC paedophiles in powerful places and establishments attempts to cover up their actions. Change can only come about if we, individually, as well as collectively, challenge or make a change in our own actions, challenging friends or change our language in how we perceive a woman based on their clothes. Sarah Everard was NOT in the wrong place at the wrong time. This takes away the wrongdoing of the culprit. All she was doing was getting exercise in while walking home. Does this mean she shouldn’t have walked home because SHE is a WOMAN? I’ve r
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My personal experiences and thoughts on Racism

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Lately the whole world seems to have woken up to racism, yet for me, it has been there ever since I leant what it meant. Why? I guess because I am not obviously ‘English’ due to the colour of my skin. My concerns regarding the demostrations at the moment, is that for many (English people) it’s was let’s jump on the bandwagon. Change can only happen if it is continuous, not a one-day fad. We don’t call Asians brown or English people white when describing someone, so I have always wondered why we say black people and they are not even black. When I was in primary school, there were only three Asian children in my class including me. I remember being called a ‘Paki’ and being told to “go back to your own country” so many times. The first time I heard it, I went home and asked my mum what Paki meant. She said let’s look it up in the dictionary. So, we did, and the definition says, ‘not white.’ I told my mum that is true as I am not white. From that day on, and even today, if someone we
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People who have a Disability or Special Needs have no Quality of Life!

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Last year COVID brought to the forefront how society views people who have a disability or special needs- that their life is deemed less important than a person who has no disability or special needs. Why do I say this? Well, there was a lot of talk about priority of beds if the hospitals became full and the Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) orders. If a person was ‘fit and well’, they would get priority over my daughter due to her Special Needs and Cystic Fibrosis and a DNR order due to her CF. It has been brought back into the spotlight due to Jo Whiley tweeting that her sister with learning disability had to wait as she came under No6 in the priority list, yet Jo had been offered it. Her sister is now in hospital with COVID, fighting for her life. So, who then assesses quality of life and what determines quality of life? Let’ first look at what quality of life means- in the English dictionary it states the degree to which an individual is healthy, comfortable, and able to participate in
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How I feel people see me as a British Asian.

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Society has so many connotations about India and Indian people due to what they see/hear/ read through the media as well as the British Asian people living here. The question people ask me is “Where are you from?” I say London. I mean come on; how can they miss the cockney accent! They then say, “but where are you originally from?” I want to say “why don’t you ask me directly, which country I belong to because I am brown,” but I don’t. I say I was born here but my parents are from India. This then leads to more questions. Growing up, I always felt I didn’t belong to any country because the UK never accepted me as I had brown skin and India never accepted me because I was born and raised in London. Now I don’t care. I know who I am and that’s all that matters. People get confused between religion and culture. This is what it means to me. I feel religion is a belief and devotion to a particular God. Yet when I say I have no religion, people, especially Indians believe
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It's a Sin- HIV/ AIDS pandemic

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Some programmes have a lasting effect on you and It’s a Sin was one of those. Why? Because I was born in the 80s and to me that seems recent and yet I have been completely ignorant to how it was for people who were Gay and had AIDS in the 80s. I know it has been so raw and painful for some of friends having to relieve those memories as the programme has triggered this. I often wonder who choses what we study in schools and why. I never learnt about the British Raj, how Wales became part of the U.K. or the pandemic of AIDS. It’s part of the things that the U.K. got ‘wrong’ yet instead of teaching it in schools it’s been buried under the carpet. How are we ever meant to learn from those mistakes if we don’t revisit history? Watching It’s a Sin echoed what is happening now with COVID, the only difference, is that it was seen as the gay plague, men who had to quarantine against their will and for no reason. If AID
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F amily and Framilies- What it means to me I find it interesting when I hear people's thoughts of what family means to them. When I tell people, I adopted my daughter or when I was going to have my hysterectomy, the reaction was don't you want your own children, or having your own child is different to looking after someone else's child even though Layla was part of our family for over four years. That's that person's prerogative but don't dismiss my motherly love for my child or think I could love a 'biological' child more as I KNOW I couldn’t. It did make me think though that when their children marry, what kind of pressure would be put on them to have their 'biological' children but may not be able to due to whatever reasons. I am questioned by many how come my daughter calls me mom but why wouldn't she. She’s only known me as her mum and not her birth mum. I always think wh
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