Oh, is it time for my rant again?

I think it is very easy to be bitter and twisted when things do not go your way in a foreign country, when you feel that there is no one who understands your POV, but it does not explain or justify what was done by the doctors (some of them Indian) in Glasgow and London.

However, in the case of Dr Haneef, I think he has just been caught in the crossfire, with circumstantial evidence and understandable hysteria fuelling the official Australian response. The two acts that he is accused of - providing a SIM card to a relative/friend and taking a one way ticket back home - are not necessarily criminal actions.

The ‘SIM card hand over’ is almost tradition when you have friends or juniors from your medical school who are struggling to get a foothold in the NHS. Whether in the present instance he did this with an intention to help a terrorist cause is difficult to know or prove.

In the past, I have gone home taking whatever flight was available when my mother needed fairly urgent surgery - that was a one way ticket, which was obviously more expensive by comparison, but then it was a desperate time.

Does that then make me a terrorist suspect, along with the fact that I have a lot of Muslim friends, some of whom happen to be very orthodox?

A lot of people I know from medical school have stayed in my house in Liverpool (oooh!) over the years. Many of them were Muslims, some have moved on to other countries (including Australia) and some of them still have their personal belongings somewhere in my garage.

I also know that some of my Muslim friends who are all NHS doctors have exclusively Muslim family 'days out' and barbecues.

Does all this add up to enough evidence to incriminate me and round up all my friends?

I can fully understand the concerns about the threat to the way of life in this country. There are things I like about the 'British way' and things I do not fully agree with. I am sure that will be the case anywhere you go in the world. Everyone who is British has a right to feel insecure about losing what people are used to in this country (not just cultural, religious or ethnic habits - but the feeling of security and stability in one's country, the feeling of being safe when you are in bed at night, the trust you have in your neighbour and the man sitting opposite to you on the tube) and I can at least partly understand the response (which may seem over the top to an outsider) from the authorities.

However, if the current state continues, i.e., all immigrants hug their point of view and all British eye the former with suspicion, things will never get any better.

The gut response to news of a terror attack in Britain varies from person to person according to who they are. From anecdotal evidence based on personal experience, this may be:

‘All these bloody immigrants’ – xenophobic British (white or otherwise)
‘All these Muslim immigrants’ – xenophobic British (white or otherwise) who think a step further
'I am more British that White British and hate all immigrants, see' – insecure xenophobic Asian British
‘All these Muslim idiots are ruining our chances’ – non-Muslim immigrants
‘Oh no, not again!’ – moderate Muslims (British/immigrants)
‘Serves them bloody right, now they will know how we suffer’ – fanatical Muslims (British/immigrants – including the vast majority of fanatics who have never personally ‘suffered’ from any British atrocities!)

We see what we want to see and draw conclusions that we are comfortable with. The danger in all this is that of polarisation and isolation. Somehow we have to think beyond the gut response and try to see the other person’s way of thinking (not necessarily agree with them, but think of an alternative version – of events, of perceptions, of the news)

I can only speak for myself, but maybe I can hazard an extrapolation. People from the Indian subcontinent have a lot of emotional baggage and are touchy about a range of issues including our colonial history, our accent, our culture and our ‘way of life’ (I include myself in this sweeping generalisation). Most of us are very competitive and tuned to detect minor xenophobic or racist disturbances in the air around us. The response may vary in details but usually it boils down to self preservation. Hence the hurling of abuse at people who disagree, the ganging up on ‘troublemakers’, the tendency to distance yourself from a group you maybe mistaken for (I am guilty of pointedly buying bacon sandwiches on the tube, for instance).

I cannot tell the British how they should react to what is happening in their country, but maybe I can ask (without being patronising) fellow competent, sensitive, intelligent Indians to think rationally. By all means disagree vehemently and be opinionated. But the reflex response of finding someone else to blame may need to be curbed.

Otherwise in the foreseeable future, Britain will be a clump of insular communities with a tendency to withdraw into themselves, championing their own agenda (‘we have rights too’ vs ‘the boats go both ways, mate’) and blaming the other for not being inclusive. Surely that is not going to be in anyone’s best interests.

Stop rant

Off my pet giraffe

Back to being pipette monkey

My firstborn

When he was born, I was not around, but I remember it was in the middle of the night. I remember looking down at him, in the hospital cradle and thinking 'hmm...interesting'.

His mother was taking a bath, having entrusted me with the responsibility of looking after him, sleeping peacefully in the middle of the double bed. Five minutes later, he was awake and crawling to the edge of the bed. By the time I rushed to him, he had slipped over the edge and was hanging in the blue nylon mosquito net tucked under the mattress. All I could do was support him, like a little fish caught in a net, till his mother came back. He blinked at me the whole time.

It was tedious at times, reading aloud to him. He wanted books with pictures and he would lie in the crook of my arm as I read. Sometimes he would turn the pages, helpfully. If it was in English, I had to translate in my head and 'read' aloud in Malayalam. I am glad those days are over.

He wanted to learn how to cycle - I really didn't have the time or the patience. He still does not know how to (although he may disagree).

He had two little plastic bunny rabbits, an inch and a half in height, with little mustard seed eyeballs that moved when you shook them. They had little ridged cylinders of smelly eraser inside. It was my job to think up escapades and adventures, featuring the two little mischevious bunny rabbits. They are still there, in his room, 20 years later. The pink one is missing an eye, the yellow one has lost an ear and the erasers are long gone.

I cannot remember how well he did at school. I seemed so busy with my own life. I do remember his admission to REC Suratkal. I went along and got him settled into his new campus life.

My life was picking up speed and I had places to go. We kept in touch, but he was growing up fast. There were still the odd precious glimpses of the little boy I used to make spaceships out of seat cushions for, the little boy who had a favourite T shrit when he was two - the one with vertical blue and white stripes down the front with a smattering of little brown teddy bears, the little boy I had to visit in school and open his flask full of chocolate milk for (because he was too tiny to do it himself) - I love and treasure these memories.

He is now taller than me, lean as a lamp post and has a deep, manly, slightly dopey voice. Lately I have started annoying him.

Officially he is my younger brother, with a gap of five years between us. Why then, does it feel like he is my son, I wonder. At the age of twenty five, he is starting his first job tommorrow. I feel proud, I feel scared, I feel happy and strangely enough a bit sad as well.

I want him to do well, I want him to be very happy, I want him to fall in love with his work and his life boldly and unconditionally. I want him to be polite and decent to everyone irrespective of rank.

Oh, and I want him to remember always that he has the best parents in the world and a very proud older brother.