My friend in Greenwich

The wild child who escaped to London found her roots here

Puja Awasthi

Sometimes the only roads that lead home are the ones that lead away from it.

Binita Rana, my old school friend, set out on one such road seven years ago.

Rana, a Nepalese schooled in India, started out as the proverbial wild child, who was most interested in Bollywood and boys and a cause of grief to parents and worry to friends who were convinced she would turn out all wrong.

After college, Rana trained to be an airhostess, another alarming choice for her parents.  They were rather proud of their royal roots and could not understand why their daughter would want to wait upon strangers. The other growing parental concern was that she would never find the “right” Nepalese boy to marry.

When the groom hunting started, Rana, then 23 escaped to London, determined to have her freedom. But the going away never happened. Within the first year Rana had married a fellow Nepalese, whom she met at her college in Kentish town, with the right caste and educational credentials. Two children and small jobs followed, till she found herself in a regular job and settled in a cosy home in Greenwich. Last weekend, it was there that I met my childhood friend, after a decade.

“I ended up exactly as my parents would have wanted”, she chuckles as she rustles up a vegetarian meal in her neat kitchen. Besides the vegetarianism, the Hindu motifs in her life are hard to miss. A welcome string on the main doorway guarded by a large idol of Ganesha, the Hindu God of well-being and wisdom, Shiva figurines, Vedic chants and the scent of incense sticks are all over her home and her car.

There is a prayer room into which she steps every dawn and every evening. Even her skin care products are home made, the kind her grandmother would have suggested. The kids, aged seven and five, speak fluent Nepalese and dutifully fold their hands in the prayer corner before school. And while they might have been given English names, Pasquvale and Sebastian, to better blend into the world of their peers, their favourite outings remain the monthly ones to temples. Another interesting point is Rana’s job.

She works in the betting industry for a bookmaker despite belonging to a religion which proscribes gambling except on ceremonial occasions. Yet the conflict has been neatly ironed out in Rana’s mind.

Her explanations flow from the Bhagvad Gita. “The material world is illusory. We need to do our duty with detachment and not judge what is right and wrong”, she says. She also speaks of fears about the children not turning out “right” in an alien culture and the need to hold on to one’s roots. I listen, open-mouthed.

Over the years, Rana has brought her brother and sister into the country, helped them find jobs and homes. Her parents visit twice a year. Despite the pull of home, she has no plans to return. Specially not now she stands on the verge of acquiring British citizenship. Rana does not gloss over the hardships but is determined to make a success of her chosen life. Her husband, a software engineer, has been unable to find employment and does two shifts as a waiter, often coming home long after the family has gone to sleep. 

Greenwich, she tells me, forms the perfect backdrop to her story. For by standing with one foot one either side of the Prime Meridian, it is quite possible to stand in two hemispheres at the same time, just as it is to live two lives in one.

This Sunday I visited a Hindu temple in Tooting. I had spent just two weeks in London and was already seeking home in a very tangible symbol, one that I hadn’t been too enthusiastic about in India. As I bowed my head in prayer, I asked for a journey back home that would neither be as long nor as difficult as that of my friend in Greenwich.