I’ve always feared that my daughters, growing up in Bristol, won’t feel any connection to my entire family back in the capital. I often find myself feeling homesick for my London family.
There’s a song from the Bollywood film Queen that I play on repeat when I’m feeling homesick. It’s called London Thumakda and takes place in the opening scenes of the film, at protagonist Rani’s mehndi night. Her family crowds into a room and dances and performs for her while she has her wedding mehndi done.
The rest of the film results in her being jilted, going on her honeymoon by herself and going on a voyage of self-discovery across Europe. That opening scene reminds me of every family wedding I’ve been to. It’s warm, chaotic and suffocating all at once. And the song is a joyous slice of film that brings tears to my eyes.
I live in Bristol, away from my family, and so the majority of times I get to see everyone it is literally everyone, crammed into a room, performing, joking, laughing, singing and sometimes dancing.
The video to the song reminds me of my own family gatherings, the times when I was present and we were together, my mother and my grandfather and my aunt were in attendance, too, we were all crammed on to two sofas, being a family, bellies full of samosas and dhal bhatt shaak rotli, Hindi songs throbbing from the television, that is always on, and everyone laughing.
The bit that always breaks me in the film is when the sedentary ba is finally convinced to get up and dance with all the aunties and sisters. The look of utter abandon on her face, it could be my mum. It could be my family.
My three-year-old daughter also loves the video. Occasionally she’ll request it. And when she does, it’s usually just after a FaceTime with my sister or dad, back in London. And my daughter will get that same pang of missing a significant part of her family, the same way I do. Also, because she associates London with the brown part of her family, it’s become an anchor for her.
It feels significant because my biggest fear in raising my children in Bristol was that they would only ever see my family at these large and intense events, the ones with everyone jammed into a room. My children would never have the mundane pop-in, the spontaneous visit, the quiet Sunday. It would only ever be FaceTime and mass family gatherings.
Lying there next to my daughter, watching the video, I get the sense that she feels the same way about the film that I do. It conjures up exactly the chaotic family atmosphere that we both miss when it’s not there and that is almost too intense to cope with when you are there.
I tried so many things to ensure my children felt a connection to my family in London. I spoke to them only in Gujarati in their early days, but increasingly found myself limited by my lack of vocabulary, a failure that has come about through non-usage. I bought Gujarati alphabet books. After bath time, I sang them my favourite song from the classic film Sholay, the one about friendship. I even had my daughter giving me the brown high five where we smack together the backs of our hands instead of our palms. None of them gave her that connection as much as a YouTube video of a song from a film I saw years ago.
It gives me hope that much as we try to force connections or enforce memories or patterns or language or behaviours, it’ll be the small things where my kids will find their connections to that side of my family. And it’ll be through self-discovery rather than my policing, because at the next family wedding, we will all be crammed into a room, and we’ll be performing, joking, laughing, singing and sometimes dancing – and my daughter will have that feeling of recognition, and she’ll know she’s exactly where she needs to be, and that London’s not that far away.
