My experiences in the UK.....

A page from my past: My personal experiences of living in the UK…..

Hello! My name is Gaggan Sabherwal and I am 25 years and I want to be a television journalist. I am basically from India but I have been living in Nottingham, in the UK for the last 2 years. I left India in 2005 and have just returned home for a brief visit only to find a new India, with zillion news channels and radio stations and with an unforgettable UK experience that transformed a fickle minded college girl like me into a worldly wise and a much stronger wanna be television journalist.

Studying abroad in top universities is what most Indian students’ dream of. So did I. Coming from an extended family of 18 it was something not many in my family had dreamt of doing. And hence it was anything but easy to convince my family. Forget UK. I had never even gone to Mumbai alone. But then the television journalism madness was so great that regardless of what people said I just wanted to go to the UK and study television journalism. But then with great persistence, fighting and arguing I got my way and within a few hours of getting my visa I flew to the UK, to a new and an unknown land with a bag full of hopes and dreams.

When I landed at the Heathrow airport in London on September 2005, I was thrilled, nervous and anxious. My eyes were full of dreams, it was the passion for journalism, which drove me to a foreign and an unknown land, which was socially as well as culturally very different from India. My destination was my university at Nottingham, where I was going to spend two precious years of my life. The city of Nottingham was popular for two things in the past- Robin Hood and the Sherwood Forest but after spending some weeks there, I realized that this historical city was fighting hard against the label of being one of UK’s top gun crime affected cities.

I was all excited about university- about meeting many new people, about making new friends and above all fitting in and settling down. My first few days at university were spent at the orientation session where international students met and got to know each other. I was among a population that was multi in diversity, in culture, in clothes, in accent and in terms of the skin color. I got to meet and make some great friends. In spite of being so different, we had one thing in common – we were all foreigners and were in the UK for the very first time. I found all of us calling back home with tears in our eyes. We all missed home and wanted to go back. I still remember those orientation days when I would call home crying, wanting to go back, hating every bit of my time in the UK. Never did I once think that Britain would be very different from India. Ignorant and young that I was…..I still smile when I think about my initial views and ideas about the UK, but then when I think about my first experience among a crowd of white people and very, very few Asians like me, I still feel xenophobic.

I was very excited when I entered my department building. I was looking forward to my course and to meeting my new class mates but very soon I realized that life at the university wasn’t going to be easy. I just could not fit in! I found it so hard to mingle, to mix. I don’t know why? But there was always a strange feeling that lingered in my mind. The feeling of regret for being brown and for being an Asian. I still ask myself why did all that happen? Why did my classmates hate me? Why did they treat me so badly? Why did I go through such a painful university experience? The more I tried to fit in, the more I cried. The more I ignored my class mate’s painful taunts and comments, the more it broke my heart. Suddenly I realized that I was facing RACISM. A term that I had only read in books but had never experienced before till this point. For the very first time in my life, I regretted being brown and my initial xenophobic attacks did not make it any easier for me. Once I had a classmate of mine shout at me, tell me to F*** off to the country I belonged to, as his country, Great Britain, did not want people like me. There were times when I also got to hear taunts regarding my skin color. The cruel and mean jokes that my class mates cracked not only broke my heart but it also crushed my spirit and shattered my confidence.

The whole class and I had such hatred towards each other that till date, I do not understand why? I hated being in class, I hated sitting among such ignorant people, I hated the thought that we all were future journalists with such high levels of ignorance and egoism. If journalism was filled with such people with such narrow thinking, I decided I had enough. I decided to come back home and forget journalism as I thought it was a sham. But at the same time I felt a bit relieved, when I saw my other Asian and Indian friends going through the similar emotional outbursts. The cold stares that I got just like the other Asians when I entered a tram or bus filled with white people, the verbal abuses that I encountered as I walked up and down the streets of Nottingham, the various mean comments that I got to hear at university made life a living hell for me in the UK. I did not like what I saw and experienced and had plans of quitting my course and returning back home for good.

In December 2005 I had literally packed my bags deciding to come back home. But then at that time, one of my British -Indian professors supported me and made me stay back. He said I should learn to deal with such issues, fight back and also kept telling me that UK was not all that bad a place to live in. It’s just a few ignorant people, who made this country look like a racist country. Initially I laughed at him because I thought he was ignorant and that he never went through, what I did. The names people called me, such as ‘Paki’ was something that became a common label that I was given just like the rest of the Asians and Indians living there. Later on as the days went by, I learnt that even my Indian professor went through all this but then he learnt to deal with it and move on instead of giving up on his dreams.

Gradually, I too learnt to tackle these things. I learnt how to continue my studies and follow my culture with dignity and pride. But there was support for me from other corners too. I met and made some great British and international mates who felt my pain, who supported me during these dark days and life slowly started becoming beautiful and worth living. I was determined to stay there and complete my course and fulfill my dream of becoming a television journalist and serve humanity with a purpose. Soon the bland English food, the roads, the trams, everything became a part of my life and slowly I became a lot more independent and stronger and started settling down, started fitting in.

During my studies, I had an opportunity to work with some of the big channels in the UK like CNN, BBC, ITV and it was during these days that I met some of the best television journalists who not only inspired me but also made me realize that one needs to be very strong and should never allow anything or anyone to upset you or crush your spirit and take away your dreams.
Then came the very famous Shilpa Shetty episode that rocked the world and this whole Big Brother row was something that I could associate with. When I watched Shilpa cry, fight and survive, it brought back painful memories. Memories of my past. Memories that I tried hard to forget but was unsuccessful. And the day I watched Shilpa win the Big Brother contest it made me feel very proud. Proud to be a woman! Proud to be an Indian!

I still however wonder whether what ever Shilpa had faced inside the Big Brother house was a form of racism or was it just a matter of sheer ignorance. Well if it was racism, then why did so many British Nationals vote for her and make her win the contest? And what about my own personal experiences in the UK? Were the behaviors of my class mates at the university racist in nature or was it their sheer ignorance? Is there a thin line between ignorance and in one’s thinking, beliefs and convictions? So many questions still linger in my mind…..

At the moment I am in India spending time with my family and friends and within a few weeks I will be going back to the UK, but only this time with a lot more dreams, with more aspirations and with a small ray of hope. A hope of finding a job as a television journalist so that I can not only learn from the British media but also share my culture and diversity in the UK among my media colleagues and also create a link between India and the UK in terms of journalism.

It’s been nearly two years since I have graduated as a Television Journalist and I still haven’t found a job as a journalist in the UK. I never once imagined or thought that it would be so difficult for an international student like me to find a job in my own stream in the UK. I always thought that with 2 master degrees, some top notch work experiences and my determination, persistence and passion for journalism I could find a job the minute I graduate from this British University. Well at least this is what my professors told me before I decided to join their university in the UK. I still remember my professor telling me that after graduating from this British University most of the students find their first jobs in the media i.e. in my case it was television. But then the reality was something else. Forget getting a job, people cannot even get a few days of unpaid work experience in the UK . The competition and the fact that there are very few media stations makes it more difficult to break into the industry. Besides this being an international student we already have other disadvantages to our credit such as visa restrictions, accent issues, limited knowledge about the region and country…..the list goes on and on.

I have realized that getting a job in the UK is anything but easy and sometimes I sit and wonder if it was really worth it i.e. whether it was really worth fighting with my family of 18 to go to the UK, whether it was worth taking an enormous amount of loan for studying in the UK and above all whether it is worth studying in the UK only to come back to India unemployed and heart broken as one cannot find a job there? It is truly very hard for an international person to find a job in the UK due to the zillion visa restrictions and with terrorism hang around it’s become a lot harder for Asians like me to get visas and also to renew our visas now. I wish I too had thought about all this or that at least someone could have been honest with me and had told me all this before I decided to go to the UK. I am sure that I would have thought twice about going to another country if I knew all this but I guess I was destined to go out of India and experience all this and learn from my experiences and grow into a more matured and wise woman.

My trip to the UK was truly an expensive and emotional affair and now I am going back to the UK with a hope of finding a job as a journalist in the UK only this time I am a lot more determined, focused and above all a lot more aware about the country that I am going into and about the job prospects for someone like me there. I want to try one last time and give it my best shot in finding the job of my dreams and if I too fail like million other students then I will do what they all did. Come back home and fulfill my dreams. At least there is one comforting factor in my story and that is, the fact that no matter what happens, India will always be there to welcome people like me. I still have a home to come back to and I am sure even if I fail in my attempts my country people will be there to motivate and support me. With this belief I am off in search of my destiny and also to succeed after all the struggles and hardships.

After all this one thing I have learnt and that is the fact that India rocks no matter what people say and I feel proud to be an Indian living in a multicultural country like the UK, and like the others even I am trying to find my own place and I hope I too can make my country proud and also be a brand ambassador for India as well as the UK which truly has become a home away from home for me. And I am slowly settling down, just like my professor. It is undoubtedly very hard to settle down in a foreign land among foreigners but if Shilpa Shetty can fight against all odds survive and succeed at the end then, so can I. But the struggle and the hardships are inevitable and just like me everyone planning to go abroad to study or work should be ready to face such hardships and also fight with dignity and self respect against such issues till they succeed, just like what Shilpa did.