Why I have the desire to do this...

I said months ago that I would write an introduction to what draws me to want to chart my dad's journey to the UK in all its documentary minutiae.

Firstly, I think I want to add to the knowledge base of the South Asian diaspora. My friend Usma would like that - she's hoping to do a Masters with SAOS looking at this topic with anthropology.

Secondly; now, I am not an academic, I'm not a sociologist or have any distinguishing qualification to do with studies of this realm of history, ethnicity or economics. What I am, is a daughter who has always heard about the stories, the wistful memories, the hardships, the changes and adaptations that her parents punctuated their family gatherings with. My mother's many sorrowful but spirited personal histories of her kin or the wealth of the land they lost, or the punishing monsoon rain, or being the eldest son's wife in a large brood for whom she was responsible from about the age of 12 or 13, are the stories that I am desperate to identify with.

Thirdly, this was my father's journey - his soul aim to get away from being a farmer's son, the implications of which have probably been an unforeseen factor in the loss of personal wealth and aspiration for many Bengali families of Sylheti origin. This is purely anecdotal and this work does not intend to set out numerical or statistical proof for personal observations. I'll try to use already gathered data to address certain areas but this book is not aiming to be a text book. I will at least try to discuss some of these implications and the evidence in a later chapter - just to reconcile whether the anecdotal bears any relation to the reality. I suppose, I would consider this my father's diary - had he thought to write one - and just to lay out the facts of what happened from A to B. It may serve as some kind of legacy to me, a new set of myths and heroic journeys to re-tell my children and my children's children. Maybe I'd like to embrace all those men and women who came to the UK (and elsewhere) with new respect for their odyssey, to say "Yes, it was worth it. You made the sacrifices and the next generation recognises wholeheartedly your effort, your need to find a better life. And you gave us a better life and so in turn, we will work hard and flourish and preserve your memory."

Who knows, in 30 or 40 years time, they will be considered as legends?

Finally, and this is the most obvious and cliched of the reasons for turning my attention to this work - my identity. I'm not so sure I know exactly what or who I am and what or who is meant to be the person my children will perceive. I've lived in the UK since I was a toddler, little more than perhaps 18 month's old. I've been to Bangladesh just once, when I was nine from November 1984 to August 1985. I have to say, the experience didn't do me much good - both physically or psychologically. I lost weight, I got ill, my education fell back at least a year and I didn't quite understand the point of it all. I wish the experience had been different and that I had come away with a wonderful, romantic, rose-tinted view of the country, my extended family and everything in between. But, I didn't.

All I know is that I spent a great deal of my formative years moulding a "third" culture for myself. I've borrowed this term from someone, I'll fill in the references later...but what I mean by that is I knew I wasn't a white, English person but I knew I didn't really understand or care enough about being a Bengali person. I kind of grew my own culture - it's not even half way between the two - I sort of rejected both - but it gave me a chameleon like ability to shift into mimicking one or the other depending on my personal goals at the time.

What's most imperative for me, now I've had a daughter, is to make sure I know exactly how to deal with her questions about her personal culture - not the one that society foists on her or the one her grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles will inevitably want to infuse into her but the one she will build for herself. And she is bound to because her father, my husband, is white, English.
I might get to the end of this work and consider myself completely and utterly Bengali - for which there are implications or I might consider myself British Asian - now, I'm sure I'll have to build a personal definition of what I think that even means. Or I might decide, I'm just British or that I'm just a writer or a poet or a photographer or a communist. It's whether we want to all consider a different way of indexing "identity". Maybe it's nothing to do with Race or culture at all.