Feeling quite bitter. I am trying my best to separate my ego from the whole issue, but it is easier said than done. Two things happened last week that has brought back the sense of unease I used to have a year or so ago.
1 AM on tuesday in Liverpool. My wife is on-call. There is a difficult case and she asks for senior help. One of her senior paediatric surgical colleagues, an Indian who also happens to be our friend is on his way to assist her. He stops at a traffic light when a police car pulls up beside him. The lady officer asks him to pull over and step out of the car. He complies and shows her his NHS ID card and explains that he is going to the children's hospital for an emergency surgery. Her only response is 'I am glad you are not operating on me'. He asks her why she wanted him to stop. She says it is because she saw that his car was beginning to move forward when the light was amber, a few seconds before it turned green. He apologizes and says that he did not do this intentionally. She starts walking around the car as if inspecting it. He offers to bring his car into the station the next day and reminds her that he is on his way to help in this surgery. At some point in the conversation he addresses her as 'madam' and she latches on to this. She says 'in my language madam is someone who runs a brothel'. He recognizes then that this whole incident has racial undertones. Quietly he apologizes again and says 'I am sorry I do not know your language as well as you do and I am sorry if I caused offence without intending to' (he has only been in the UK for about 12 years, so I guess he is still only starting to pick up this strange language). After about 45 minutes of this he is finally let off. He asks for a receipt as a record of the 'offence' he is supposed to have committed, but he is simply asked to go. In the meanwhile, my wife has asked one of her other senior colleagues (English) to help her who arrives in a few minutes and they finish the case. He says he was stopped on the way for speeding in a 30 mph zone, but was waved on when he flashed his NHS ID. After they finish the surgery, my wife meets her Indian colleague in the doctors' room when he tells her what happened and why he could not be there to help her. It is ironic that all of them were trying to help a two year old child (need I say English) survive.
The next day I am making my way from Liverpool to Leicester. It is a two hour train journey. From the station, I get on the hospital shuttle that takes me to my place of work free of charge (provided I have my NHS ID card). I have two pieces of luggage with me, my shoulder bag and another bigger one with all my laundry and my food (long story - I work in Leicester, but I have a house in Liverpool, which means I get to see my wife and do my laundry and do the cooking for the working week over the two days I spend at home in Liverpool). Anyway, the bus is packed, so I pop the big bag in the luggage rack and stand leaning on a nearby pole till the next stop. People get off and I get a place to sit, so I take my small bag with me and sit down, till I get to my hospital. As I make my way to the front of the bus to get down, I notice the commotion at the front. I hear a lady frantically point to my bag and say 'I saw this asian get on the bus with two bags from the station. He got off at the next stop, but only took one of the bags with him. This other one is here and it all looks very suspicious'. The driver (an Indian) tries to reassure her saying that he is positive that the 'asian' in question has not run off without taking his bag. The lady does not listen. She repeats 'I am telling you, I saw this guy get off without taking his bag. This is all very suspicious'. While this is going on, I quietly take my bag from the luggage rack and slip off the bus without turning back. My immediate response (not verbal, but in my mind): 'go on b****, judge everyone everywhere based on their skin colour'. Then I think more rationally and I accept the fact that I cannot blame her for being suspicious. After all, 'asians' have not been at their best behaviour recently in the UK. Nonetheless, how convenient that asians are the new bad guys, for it helps people to develop and nurture their latent racism. I wish people would think from a slightly different perspective. To an Indian in India, a German and an Irishman and an Englishman all look the same, so how would the Englishman feel if he is blamed for the Nazis and the IRA? What if someone walks up to him and says 'when will you apologize to us for the CIA torture centres and Guantanamo?' I can see him seething self righteously and saying: 'I am not American or Irish or German, can't you see I am English?'. Well, how does he expect the Indian in India to differentiate between them? They all look white!
The only difference is, the Englishman's story is hypothetical, where as the Indian's story is real. I hate terrorists even more than the English, because I am as likely to die if a bomb goes off (strangely enough explosives tend not to discriminate on skin colour) and the rest of the time, I am a suspect. How I wish there were non asian terrorists so that people understand that it is not just asians who are the bad guys. Really, I do sometimes dream of white terrorists.
1 comment:
Dude....
I work with Shiban and Dhanya. This a cretainly a true story. Did u not consider saying something to the lady on the bus?
MIKE
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