The most exciting London writing is rooted in the city‘s fringes. Gautam Malkani‘s new novel, ’Londostani‘ is set in Hounslow, while Naomi Alderman‘s ’Disobedience‘ centres on the Orthodox Jews of Hendon.
The most exciting London writing is rooted in the city’s fringes.
Gautam Malkani’s new novel, ‘Londostani’ is set in Hounslow, while
Naomi Alderman’s ‘Disobedience’ centres on the Orthodox Jews of Hendon.
Gautam Malkani
With a plane roaring overhead every 60 seconds, it’s probably a good
thing I decided to set ‘Londonstani’ in Hounslow rather than write it
there.
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While it’s easy to exaggerate the effect of having Heathrow Airport in
your borough’s back yard, most locals learn to press a kind of
instinctive pause button during conversation and thought. Combine that
with the fact that ethnic minorities make up more than 60 per cent of
the population in some wards and the area soon gives new meaning to the
phrase ‘broken English’.
With its acres of plastic airport and concrete car parks, Hounslow was
never going to inspire the same gritty romanticism as other urban
jungles. I’m not even sure whether novels necessarily need a strong
sense of locality. (The book is called ‘Londonstani’, after all, not
‘Londonstan’.) But with its characters constantly negotiating their
emotional place in society – how they might co-exist with white
mainstream society rather than in opposition to it – the question of
physical place was unavoidable. And all roads led back to Hounslow.
This was not simply because I grew up (and researched the novel) there.
Hounslow is arguably the hub of the ‘desi’ subculture to which the
characters belong, just as Heathrow acts as a more obvious hub for
temporary diasporas.
For most of us, the airport represented one of two things: a gateway to
India conveniently located just down the Great West Road, or the
prospect of a shitty job loading other people’s luggage on to a
rotating conveyor belt. To make the escapism even more oppressive, for
some people it was the cheap flights granted to airport employees and
their relatives that made possible trips to far-flung corners of the
globe such as Delhi, Bombay and Bangalore.
Somewhere along the line, the aircraft engines were drowned out by the
sound of local kids mixing up bhangra, hip hop, R&B, Bollywood and
UK garage to create a subculture as quintessentially British as punk
rock or Britpop. Hounslow evolved into a kind of bridge between
parallel movements in the Midlands and the British ‘mainstream’
represented by central London.
‘Hounslow’s very important because the local history of this scene goes
so far back,’ says Parv Bancil, the screenwriter and playwright who has
been penning tales about local rudeboys for 20 years – first with the
pioneering Hounslow Arts Co-operative and then as co-founder of the One
Nation Under A Groove, Innit theatre company. ‘It was a hotbed of
creativity in terms of theatre, comedy and also music with the first
Asian soundsystem culture. And today’s big names in the mainstream stem
from that.’ (Names including Sanjeev Bhaskar, Jay Sean, Bobby
Friction, and Markie Mark from the Panjabi Hit Squad. It’s also no
coincidence that Gurinder Chadha set ‘Bend It Like Beckham’
there.)
While it suits the machismo of the scene for kids to fashion Hounslow
as a Bronx-style ’hood – and the borough does have its fair share of
ghettoised estates and hardcore gang culture – the airport and the
businesses it attracts also make for a comparatively healthy local
economy. The characters in ‘Londonstani’ are therefore deliberately
drawn as middle-class wannabe-hoodlums who drive around in BMWs and
stop off at their private maths tutors on the way home.
Heathrow is also important because if it weren’t for the airport’s
retail space, there’d be no local bookshops in which to buy the book.
‘Londonstani’ is published by Fourth Estate in May.
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Book special: The Night Watch
Books to watch out for this spring
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2 comments
Gautam Malkani in his novel Londonstani paints a grim picture of the realities of his protagonist Jas's existence. Despite his apparent affluent lifestyle, Jas's life is emotionally, psychologically, existentially bereft, and impoverished. He struggles daily to survive. He feels alienated from his peers, his family, and his community. He struggles to communicate, and frequently has a great deal of difficulty articulating his thoughts...Jas is an intelligent, introspective young person who struggles to belong, to be accepted for who he is and what he is. Unfortunately he is rarely successful in this endeavour. Jas is frequently marginalized in his interactions with peers, his family and his community...Jas has a multi layered view of himself, and although rationally and logically he knew himself to be equal to his peers, emotionally and that is the layer in which he is trapped; he views himself as powerless, a victim, and as a second class citizen in the society in which he lived. This was the all-encompassing society of his family, his peers, his school, his community and the world at large. Jas was in a great deal of emotional pain in his search for identity and belongingness. His family, peers, school, community and the world had failed him...Abraham Maslow in his humanistic theory tells us that human being have needs that must be satisfied in order for self-actualiztion to occur. These needs align themselves into a hierarchy of the following levels: physiological, safety and security, love and belonging, esteem and self-respect. On a day to day basis Jas struggled to have his needs for safety and security, love and belonging, esteem and self-respect met. He was frequently bullied by his peers, his parents and his community. He did not feel that he had refuge anywhere, and therefore he sought to accept the refuge that was offered when it was semingly offered by one of the very groups of his peers he had previously disdained. Personal safety was of prime importance.
Can't wait for the book but i just can't help feeling that it will not reflect "where we (the british asian youth) are coming from" to use a cliche'. For one people in Hounslow and its surrounding areas, mainly Southall where the whole process of integration between Asian (mainly Pakistani, Indian and Punjabi) culture and the English society started, feel no problem with whether they fit in or not with the mainstream white world as in these areas many feel we are protected in our own self-made safe haven. The issue of race is very rarely noticed as we feel this land is our home. The macho behaviour stems from the traditional behaviour of men within the cultures of Sikh/Muslim societies and is now turning more into traditonal British loutish behaviour. The other point of these areas being middle class is inaccurate is most people are working class, it is just that Asians (this is a very bad stereotype but stereotypes are around for a reason - namely they have a certain truth) are VERY hard working, which is why the people who drive BMW's are normally the same who work 12hours a day or just drug dealers. Yet it is definately true that these areas are far from poor (though take a look at Southall back roads and you may disagree) but we still live in an enviroment where we see powerful notorious rich drug dealers, gangs and gang violence, street crime, prostitution, drug addicts, crack-houses, kidnappings and all sorts. This is where the behaviour of youths acting like they live in The Bronx comes from. Don't believe it? Check it out yourself. To me though I am delighted a book like this has come out I feel as though Malkani is writing from the outside looking in and until someone from the inside speaks out about "where we are coming from" the voice of Asian youth will not be heard. Until someone publishes my book...