“You’re not worth being friends with”
Name: Raiyyan Ismail
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Cultural background: Mother from Bihar, India. Father from Karachi, Pakistan.
Family’s religion: Muslim
“I don’t know why I’m different, but I am”
Name: Mekhola Roychowdhury
Age: 23
Occupation: Master’s student
Cultural background: Born in Kolkata, India. Mother from Jamshedpur, India. Father from Kolkata, India.
Family’s religion: Hindu
When I’m with friends, I talk freely. I love giving my opinion about everything, like religion, as I don’t particularly identify with any. I could never discuss this matter with my parents since they’re pretty religious, but I respect that.
I drink socially with my friends, like any other person. I don’t have different habits because my parents are Muslim.
Essentially, I’m truly myself in front of my friends.
With my parents, I’m a different Rai because I have to watch what I say and act more religious: I have to pray, read Qur’an, and attend religious speeches and classes.
What bothers me the most is that I can’t let my parents know about my female friends. In our culture, male and female friendships don’t exist outside of marriage and so, when I was younger, they wouldn’t allow me to be friends with girls.
One day, when my mother was trying to convince me not to talk to girls, she said: “They wouldn’t want you to anyways because they would think you’re not worth being friends with.” This was a long time ago and I’m sure she said it in the heat of the moment, but it did stick with me.
Once, I was meeting up a friend and I texted her to know where she was. When I got home, my mom saw the texts while I was in the shower and confronted me about it. She was angry: took my phone away, found my social media accounts, and, to stop me from communicating with people out of her control, set up parental controls on my laptop. This happened when I was 14, but the punishment stayed in place for a couple years.
I also had to hide all my relationships from my parents.
However, they found out about one. They looked through my texts and took my phone, so I couldn’t communicate with her besides in person. This made it difficult to organise meet ups, so we were forced to break up.
She was also a British Pakistani, but that didn’t matter because my parents are against me dating in general. In their opinion, I have to go straight into marriage. I think it’s a possibility for my parents to try arranging marriage for me, but I definitely wouldn’t want that to happen.
Now I’m an adult and I have more freedom to do things, but I’m still wary about what I tell my parents, I don’t know how they’d react.
In my parents’ perspective, they are doing the right thing, their actions come from a good place, but unfortunately they just don’t fit with what I believe.
It’s a shame my parents restrict me in so many ways because of their beliefs, but it’s a part of my life I accept, and it doesn’t stop us from enjoying great time together playing board games or going on trips.
I’m really open with my mother, the kind of daughter who doesn’t lie about anything, even if it is unacceptable by our culture. After I moved to England 15 years ago, I barely had friends and neither did she, meaning we were together all the time. My parents’ relationship isn’t great either, so I am the only one she has.
However, there are still some topics I will only talk about if she outright asks about it, like drinking and smoking.
Regarding relationships, I’ve had a 4-year long one with an English boy and told my parents about it since it was serious.
My mother tried to accept it, but she always said we weren’t a ‘good match’ because of how much of my culture was ‘in me’. She knew it wouldn’t work in the long-term and, to be honest, she was right.
My dad was extremely dramatic and refused to speak to my ex the entire time we were together. One day, when we were alone at my house, my dad showed up and completely ignored him. He only said he would “speak to me about this later” in Hindi so my ex wouldn’t understand.
Most British South-Asian young adults change themselves to please their friends and family. From not being accepted by their parents to being bullied because of their skin colour, Rai and Mekhola share the struggles they face by identifying as a ‘mixed breed’.