Author: PURNA

Dear Britain,

24 years ago, my 18-year-old self strode purposefully into a government office building in South Delhi. In trying to match the long, confident strides of the man I accompanied, I over-extended each step beyond its reach, which had the unintended effect of slowing me down, which in turn had the slightly comical effect of having me scurry rapidly and ungracefully every fourth step in an attempt to catch up. Dressed in a two-piece suit and tie, briefcase in one hand, features relaxed yet set, the man next to me commanded attention. Walking beside him, I felt like I was part of his aura. Like I exuded power just like him. This man was my father and we were in the Regional Transport Office (RTO) in Delhi close to where we lived back then. 

I remember being ushered through busy corridors, chock full of men, into a quiet office. A large, white ceiling fan hung low over our heads. A man pulled two chairs for us to sit on. “Sir, Madam, please sit.” I glowed inside. I was a “Madam”! I felt important. For the first time in my 18 years, I felt like an adult. 

The man started talking to my father –  “Lahiri Sir…”

 Meanwhile, someone came and served my father and me a cup of chai each. If you’ve ever had chai in India, you will be familiar with that dark brown membrane that coalesces from the fat in the milk and floats to the top. Drinking from such a cup often involves some coordination if you want to avoid getting the fat on your lips or worse, in your mouth. I blew a gentle puff of air at the tea and watched as the thin film of fat made its way to the other end of the cup. And there was my split-second window! I quickly brought the liquid to my lips and slurped a small quantity of the sugary steaming hot liquid. Sans membrane. Mission accomplished. I sat back in the chair with a smug expression on my face. 

A third man came with a sheaf of papers and placed them in front of me. I watched the papers flail and flap desperately under the paperweight, mirroring the strands of hair that had escaped the shackles of my ponytail and were intent on breaking my moment of grown-up elegance. I tucked them behind my ear and took the pen the man was handing over to me. 

I glanced at my father and caught his eye. He had that characteristic twinkle in his eye, his mouth tilted with the slightest hint of a smile, almost a smirk but with no derision, only indulgence. I beamed at him, grinned widely and turned my attention to the man who was pointing at tick boxes on the paper. 

Idhar. (Here)

Idhar. (Here)

Idhar. (Here)

He rattled on mechanically.

In 30 seconds, we were done with the theory test. Full marks. And I hadn’t even looked at the questions.

“Now Madam, your autograph please,” he said, smiling at me cheekily like we shared a dirty secret. He pointed a long, grimy fingernail at a box on another sheet. 

Somehow, his words and knowing smile broke the spell of self-importance. I scowled a little and signed the boxes he pointed at. I was then ushered into another room to have my photograph taken and escorted back to my father. We had no smart phones in 2002, so I sat next to my Dad, who was on work calls, and I people-watched. Another boy, probably about my age, had come in with a woman I presumed was his mother. The man who had been chatting with my father fawned over the woman he addressed as “Doctor Sehgal”. I watched it all play out again – the tea, the tick boxes, the “autograph” request. While the boy went out to get  photographed, we had someone enter the room and hand my father a plastic card. My driver’s licence! 

I pored over it as my father and I walked out of the office. The photo made me squirm. A halo, made entirely of frizzy hair, had pride of place around my head. Those darn ceiling fans! Thankfully, the image was tiny and low resolution. I clasped the card in one hand and slipped my other hand into my Dad’s large, always-warm hand. He gave my hand a gentle squeeze and said – 

“Now all we have to do is teach you how to drive.”

And so, in the months following, I got lessons from ‘Bacchu Bhai’, the man who used to drive my father to work and back. I barely recall a time when my dad didn’t have a chauffeur. He was always on the job in the back of the car, on calls, writing furiously in his large executive notepad. His hours were very long and he could be unreachable for extended periods. Bacchu Bhai could always be counted on to let my mother and us know as to where he was and when he was likely to come home. The word chauffeur, though,  feels too stuffy to describe a man whose name literally translates to younger brother. That wasn’t his actual name, of course. It was just what we called him. It felt universal – like something everyone could use to address him – the adults and the children alike.

Bacchu Bhai was part of the family. He had watched us, my brother and me, grow up. He was part of the celebrations – my brother’s admission into the best business school in India, my admission into the best law school in India. He was also part of the admonitions – the shame-faced pick-ups from pubs when we were still too young to visit them and hadn’t quite worked out how to break the rules without the parents finding out.  Bacchu Bhai had driven me to my wedding. And Bacchu Bhai taught me how to drive. 

So when I came to you, dear Britain, I had both, a valid driver’s licence – albeit obtained thanks to my father’s connections – and, more than a decade’s practice of driving on Indian roads. Both countries were right-hand drive. The road to a driver’s licence in Britain had to be simple. Learn the new rules. Pass the two tests. Done. Easy, right?

Wrong.

In reality, I had to unspool my life’s driving experience. Unlearn the rules. Undo all the habits. Like the fact that in India, lanes are mere suggestions mostly ignored. Traffic lights are optional. Honking is mandatory. Cows have right of way.

You can stop anywhere. Indicate. Or not. Entirely your discretion. You could also stick a hand out to wildly gesticulate your intention. 

Road traffic is a heaving, headless and endless mass of cycles, scooters, autorickshaws, cars, buses, lorries, pedestrians, dogs, all close enough for it to turn into a melee, but somehow, miraculously not turning into one. 

If you try to execute the ‘Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre’, you are unlikely to be able to manoeuvre for hours. 

And so, dear Britain, I had to write off my entire driving experience like a depreciated asset. Break old habits. Build new ones. At 37, none of that comes easy. My tragically comic driving lessons in Britain can probably best be described by my driving instructor who, on multiple occasions, was known to exclaim, “Purna! I will open this door and jump out of the car!”

But that, dear Britain, is a story for the next letter. Until then.

With love,

Purna

Dear Britain,

I am an immigrant. It’s not an easy label to wear and embrace. Especially today when people are able to spew their unfiltered thoughts onto social media walls. When politicians are using it to swing the sentiment of the people. When the hate is so open, so accessible and so prolific, I often find myself scouring social media comments only to find that one person who feels differently.

The husband and I live in a little town called Whitefield in North Manchester with our dog and two cats – Zorro the Cockapoo, Ziggy the Ragdoll and Zen the Silver Bengal. When we moved to the area in 2022, I did what I suspect most people do. I joined some local community groups on Facebook. They’ve been very useful. Alerting us to neighbourhood activities. Finding plumbers, gardeners, cleaners. Restaurant reviews and recommendations. Even reports of crime and incidents. Of late however, I’ve observed a trend of relating every antisocial report to immigration and race . 

Doctors and engineers again?

Usual suspects?

Deport them!!

Amazing how colour is brought into the headlines when someone is white but not when they are any other colour!

Our town was also one of the first in Manchester to publicly display the national flags in 2025. They were all just magically there one morning, hanging from the lampposts in a neat array. I remember noticing them while on my morning run with Zorro. Other than finding the abruptness of their appearance a little odd, I quite liked the pops of blue and red, sometimes white and red, catching the morning sun purposefully. Having recently acquired my citizenship by naturalisation, I asked myself what it meant. How did I feel seeing them? There were no childhood memories for me other than seeing the flags in my geography textbooks in India. Other than linking it to the period of colonialism. The British Raj. No, this was a new memory for me. There was no deep association. The association, dear Britain, was much more with your land, your people, your textures and your moods, than your flag. And then I chanced upon an article linking their appearance to far-right extremism. I started seeing them more frequently, in people’s houses, hanging from balconies and plastered on windows. I asked myself how I felt then. I was unsure. I tried to connect all the people I met on the road with all the symbolism I saw. The friendly faces, the warm eyes. The smiles, the nods, the hellos. We were all bonded by routine. We crossed each other at the same time every day. In the gym early in the morning. Or when I was out running with Zorro. It was hard not to smile at my honey-hazel-eyed friend as he ran, long ears flopping and flying, pink tongue lolling. I could see even the sternest eyes softening as they saw him bounding along the pavement by my side. It felt like I knew them – these people whose daily paths crossed with mine. Like they knew me without knowing anything about me. So when I learnt about the deeper meaning behind the flags, I found myself wondering if some of them had flags hanging from the windows in their houses and what it meant to them. What was I to them? An outsider? An immigrant? Someone emblematic of a change they didn’t want?

On the subject of immigration, dear Britain, here’s an interesting fact. My father’s family was from a region in undivided India, now known as Bangladesh. When the few in power decided to divide people and draw imaginary lines on a piece of paper, his family fled as refugees to the land contained within the boundaries of the ‘new India’. I suppose that makes my father a second-generation immigrant to post-partition India. And me – aside from being a first-generation immigrant to the UK – also a third-generation immigrant to India. Religion is why my father’s family fled their land. As Hindus, they had no choice. They were stripped of their land, their titles, and their wealth. To survive, they sought refuge in what was quickly becoming ‘Hindu’ India. 

Unlike my father’s family, my move to the UK was a conscious choice. Staying on in India would have been the easier, less disruptive option. It would be a natural continuation. Leveraging my three decades of insights on the Indian target market in my decade-long career in marketing. Experiencing the joys of having friends and family close by. Building a life with my husband in a land that wasn’t perfect, but was known and familiar. Yet, we pressed pause. And started a new script. One that began writing itself in January 2017. And is still being written today.

What does it mean then – to be Indian? To be British? To be British-Indian? 

The passport I acquired in 2024 – the one that allows me to bypass the immigration queue in a UK airport – the queue I couldn’t previously ignore. The certificate that declares I am a naturalised British citizen. The forms I fill where I tick my ethnicity as British Asian or British Indian. Do these make me British-Indian? 

Where are you from? No matter how many times I get asked the question, it always takes me by surprise. I always take a moment more than I should to respond. The heart blurts out first –  from here! But the mind takes over. Does the question and the ensuing response make me less British? 

Summers laden with the sweet, thick fragrance of Alphonso mangoes. Rain – reserved for a brief but vigorous season known as monsoon – heralded by petrichor wafting up through the cracks in the arid earth being sealed by water. Bengali, the language of my first babble as a toddler. Hindi, the second language I learnt, and English, the third. Do these childhood memories and experiences make me Indian?

I don’t have a neat label for my identity, dear Britain. My sense of belonging is derived from a state of constant osmosis between a veritable smorgasbord of experiences and memories from different lands, people and cultures. Unlike on a map, there are no clear boundaries here. It is complex and subtle, requiring nuance in thinking, understanding and hopefully, embracing. 

I look at my long-eared friend napping by my side on the sofa, as I type this letter, dear Britain. His paws move vigorously in his sleep. A soft, excited sound escapes the land of his dreams and makes its way into our reality. I smile. He is probably bounding by my side on a typical morning in Whitefield. A familiar face is probably smiling and nodding at us. And my musings get taken over by a moment of clarity. A quiet realization descends. Whatever the passport says, whatever the tick box says, whatever the flags mean – this is simply, undeniably, home.

Let me take you somewhere today, dear Britain. Somewhere far from your green hills, grassy moors and grey skies. To a balmy summer evening in 2014. We are in Gurugram – India’s ‘millennium city’. The husband and I have just walked out of the building that happens to house both our workplaces. A simple coincidence that allows our lives to be perfectly in sync on most days, giving us the time to do simple, everyday things together. Like sharing our day over dinner. Like just then, sharing a comfortable silence while walking together to the parking lot. 

Workdays in India are long. It’s just past 9 pm and the long hours hang heavy like the work backpack that clings off my drooping shoulders. It’s just like any other day. We walk past the little ramshackle food stalls and cigarette shops. There are people milling about. Officegoers like us. Shopkeepers. People on foot. People on bicycles. People in autorickshaws. The night is murky. Tinged with a mixture of the characteristic Gurgaon smog, dust, wispy cigarette smoke and steam from hot cauldrons of over-boiled, sugary chai – India’s version of ‘builder’s tea’. In the distance, you can see lights from high-rises blurring the horizon. These are Indian subsidiaries of large multi-national corporations that had set up shop in the country lending the city its new name. Hard to imagine that a couple of decades ago, this same space was large swathes of dusty farmland and sleepy villages. Private real estate developers came in first, fast followed by industry. Luxury apartments and tech hubs mushroomed everywhere. Landowning farmers, previously dependent on a good harvest for their livelihoods, sold their lands and became super wealthy overnight. The rapid development had caused a curious commingling of people who usually lived in silos, away from each other. For the most part though, it worked. Peacefully.

We walk on, only a few metres away from the turn into the parking lot when in the distance, I spot a cloud of dust followed by the sound of an approaching vehicle. A few seconds later, the car is in sight. A white SUV. It is closing in on us quicker than I like for a road that narrow, but nothing is out of the ordinary. The husband and I move closer to the edge of the road. The car mirrors our movements. I can hear the engine now. It sounds angry. And just like that, everything feels out of sync. It’s as if the universe has kicked into the wrong gear. My mind is sputtering. It spews a series of eventualities. Will it crash into us? Is this a friend playing a joke? Can we run back? Meanwhile, the car continues hurtling straight at us. We were past all the eateries now. All we had on either side of the road was a concrete wall.

“They’re going to crash into us,” I think, as the vehicle skids to a halt. I look down at the car’s massive bumper, barely an inch away from my knee. I look up. My head moves slow. Impossibly slow as my gaze lands inside the car. It’s dark but I can see four men inside the vehicle. Two in the back, two in the front. The three men other than the driver appear as nothing but sinister dark silhouettes to me. The driver pokes his head out. His arm rests on the window frame. The yellow of the streetlights reveals a big, bearded face. It leers at me. His T-shirt is rolled up and my face is close to his bicep. The dirty fabric strains against a tumescent arm. Veins run in turgid, engorged rivers across the length of it. His skin is leathery and slick, as if coated in oil. I am transfixed. Trying to process what is happening. Is this meant to happen? Is this all a mistake? And then, I hear the man speak.  

Daaru peeke chal rahi hai kya? (Are you walking drunk?)

His voice, that tone. It’s a whiplash. My head jerks back. There is no confusion. No doubt at all that it is happening. And it is directed at me. He addresses me as if he knows me. A dark familiarity underlying the absolute contempt in his voice. The language is casual, condescending. Usually reserved for when speaking to someone very young. In this instance, it is meant to be deeply disrespectful.

My husband pushes me behind him, but I see the men and I know there is nothing either of us can do. I take a quick look around the street and see some people looking our way. No one comes to our aid. I make a quick decision. I spin around, my backpack follows a second later, awkwardly slamming against my side and back. And I do what I do very well. I run. Fast. Back towards my office. My heavy office backpack sways from side to side as I run, its contents shuffling as frantically as my own gait. I cannot outrun the car. But I can get myself closer to the nearest safe space – my office.

The blood roars in my ears. I can hear my husband calling out to me.

Purna!

Purnaa!

But I don’t stop. My feet pound the road ungracefully, my jeans not allowing me to fully extend my stride. Each step cut short by the straining denim.

Watching me run, the four men laugh raucously. I can hear them. I can see them in my peripheral vision. But I do not turn my head.

One of them yells – Madarchod! (Motherfucker!) It’s like a slap across my face.

I try not to think about what will happen. But the questions race through my head.

Will they stop the car? Will they pull me in?

Will they…

They drive the car alongside me for a while. I am nearing the bend to the office building. I can see its lights. I see the watchman!  A few more seconds, I think to myself.

Just then, I hear the driver shout –

Ghabraa mat, aaj tujhe jaane dete hain. (Don’t worry, we will let you go today.)

With that, the car accelerates and disappears from my view.

I reach the office building. My husband is not far behind. I sit for a while on the steps leading up to my office. I am shaking. But I quickly compose myself and we head upstairs to my office to alert the authorities. For a few weeks, I am allocated a parking spot inside the gated building to ensure the men could not get to me – just in case.

Soon however, it is forgotten. And within a few weeks of no incident, we go back to walking the same road to the parking every night.

But if we went back to walking the same road, we did not go back to being the same people. This wasn’t the first time something like this happened. But we were determined to do everything possible to make it our last. Something had shifted, quietly and permanently, in both of us. The kind of shift you don’t announce. You just find yourself, weeks later, having conversations you hadn’t planned to have. About variables. About the ones within your control. About what it might mean to change them.

Dear Britain, I think you already know where those conversations led.

With love, Purna

Dear Britain,

It is late January 2017, and I am in the back of a cab on a motorway I do not yet know the name of. Outside, the sporadically placed lamps cast a bleak yellow light upon dark grey tarmac, glistening under a fine layer of moisture. The cars move steadily around us. Everything is quiet in the way that only winter nights in unfamiliar places can be — not peaceful exactly, but hushed, as if the world is holding its breath.

I am holding mine too.

I lean into the husband and rest my head on his shoulder. His warmth is the only thing that feels known to me right now. Behind us, somewhere over several time zones and thousands of miles of sky, is everything I have ever called home. Thirty-three years of a life. A career threaded together contact by contact over a decade. A flat in Bengaluru that overlooked a forest of untamed trees, where the impatient wind was our first visitor every morning. My parents. My brother. Friends who have known me since before I knew myself. The accumulated, invisible weight of belonging somewhere.

I have left all of it. We have left all of it.

Two bags. Two passports. One very large leap of faith.

“What are you thinking?” asks the husband softly, breaking into my reverie.

I pause. Outside, Britain continues to unspool in the dark — hedgerows, overpasses, the steady red procession of taillights ahead. I feel the question settle into me, looking for an honest answer.

“I am thinking,” I say finally, “if this land will be our new home.”

He is quiet for a moment. Then he smiles — I can feel it more than see it, there in the dark of the cab — and says, “Only if you want it to be.”

Only if you want it to be.

I turn the words over slowly, like something fragile. Such a simple thing to say. Such an enormous thing to mean. Because wanting it — truly wanting it — would require me to open my hands and release everything I had spent a lifetime holding. It would mean beginning again, at thirty-three, in a country where I knew almost no one, where my decade of professional experience counted for little, where even the rain fell differently.

And yet.

We had landed at Heathrow a little earlier, the icy air funnelling through the entries and exits of the parking lot to extend its rushed, indifferent embrace to each tired traveller. I had stood there for a moment with my bags at my feet, bracing for something — a recoil in response to the cold perhaps, or panic — and felt instead a stillness I hadn’t expected. As if some quieter, braver part of me had already decided, and was simply waiting for the rest of me to catch up.

The cab turns off the motorway. We are heading to Chigwell, a town in east London, where the husband’s aunt and uncle have opened their home to us for these first uncertain weeks. I look out at the dark streets, the lit windows of houses we pass, the ordinary, unhurried life of a country that does not yet know I have arrived.

I press closer to him. He wraps his arm around me without a word — the way he always does, the way that has always been enough.

Through the windows I see you, dear Britain, moving past in the dark. Quiet. Waiting. Unknowingly perhaps already beginning to be mine.

With love, Purna

Dear Britain,

You look and feel so different at this time of year. It’s as if the winter veil of gloom is lifted — buffeted by Christmas lights, Michael Bublé and Mariah Carey lilting through the aisles of supermarkets, the smell of roast meat and cinnamon bakes wafting through the air. There’s a spring in every step, the sparkle of much-anticipated family time in every smile, the quiet closure of another year gone by in every eye. Nothing stops the cheer. Not the weather, nor the news.

Your merriment warms my soul, dear Britain. I think of my parents, thousands of miles away in India, my brother and his family in Hong Kong. There’s no melancholy — only a flood of love as I count down the months to their annual summer visit. In the meantime, I bask happily in the universal glow that is you.

The husband and I went for a long circular walk around Bury today. The weather was akin to a glass of good white wine — crisp and dry. The streets were relatively empty, save the occasional dog walker or the family out on a Christmas stroll. We walked hand-in-hand, the steady stream of prattle characteristic of two people who have shared more than fifteen years together, broken only by the patter of our feet.

I looked down, navigating the slushy carpet of old autumn leaves that had long lost their papery crunch. The late afternoon sun was out, casting its long, loving, sleepy slant over the green of a park along which we walked. The contrast of green and gold was both captivating and soporific — as if the sun were encouraging us to wind down as it circled its way to the other side of the world. We slowed our step to admire you.

I have spent a fair few days, weeks, months and years in you now, dear Britain. I have had the grace of witnessing your beauty across many walks — over peaks and parks, streams and canals, lakes and moorlands. And still, not a day goes by when your quiet charm fails to enchant me.

Rows of cottages flanked our right as we walked, a woody area opening out to the left. The road curved upwards, seeming to swallow the rosy hues of the setting sun. Our path took us over bridges atop little streams, the sound of water skipping over stones like a musical interlude. Every now and then, I couldn’t help glancing into the windows of a home — almost always finding a family gathered for Christmas dinner, surrounded by lights and warmth.

By the time we rounded the bend to our cul-de-sac, we were both a little tired.

“Was that you?” asked the husband, as my stomach rumbled for the third time.

“Yes,” I said, laughing.

The belly was empty. But the heart was full.

With love, Purna