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My (very big) happy family
Her parents sacrificed everything for her – now Meera Syal has repaid them by inviting them to live with her and husband Sanjeev Bhaskar
When Meera Syal wrote her iconic novel Anita & Me – a funny, fearless book about growing up in Britain with immigrant parents – she gave the first draft to her mother and father to read, well aware that, although it was a fictional story, it was also quite obviously autobiographical. ‘I told them if there was anything they felt uncomfortable with, to let me know,’ she says. Meera was delighted when they didn’t want to change anything, and praised her for the way she’d ‘captured how it felt and what it was like’. It was perhaps the most important endorsement of her life.
Today, she’s beyond proud that the book (now on the GCSE syllabus, no less) is regarded as so influential. ‘Although,’ admits Meera, ‘it’s very weird to read the study guides going on about the themes in the first chapter. You think, “Were there themes?”
‘It’s the story of my parents. Why they came here, the rise of the National Front, the Rivers of Blood speech. I’m having all this taught in schools and it’s an incredible honour because it says, “We are here. We contributed.”’
The book, first published in 1996, went on to inspire the 2002 film of the same name, which will be shown on the BBC tonight as part of their Big British Asian Summer series. The film is preceded by a documentary, Anita & Me – And Me, where Meera, 57, goes back to Essington, the Black Country mining village in the West Midlands, where she grew up as part of the sole Asian family living there.
Her house – the only white-fronted one in the terrace (‘Oh the irony,’ she says) – has long since been demolished and the fields that surrounded the village are now filled with new developments. ‘What was astonishing is how few houses now stand in the area where we lived, where maybe 50 houses had been,’ she says. ‘It really made me realise how chock-a-block we were, but that was part of the fun as a kid.’
Clearly, it’s a very different Meera making this return trip. She’s now a household name, an acclaimed actor as well as writer, known for being part of the team that brought us Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars At No. 42. She famously married her co-star Sanjeev Bhaskar and they are regarded as a TV power couple. They’ve certainly done more than most to challenge British-Asian stereotypes, and their influence goes to the top. They attended Prince Charles’s wedding – Meera met him through her work as an ambassador for the Prince’s Trust.
All of which makes her account of feeling like an outsider in the country of her birth more compelling. There’s a difficult scene in the film where lead character Meena (she didn’t try too hard to find a different name!) encounters a woman who calls her a ‘wog’. Slurs like this, and ‘Paki’, were commonplace, not so much ‘from people we lived cheek-by-- jowl with’ but from visitors. ‘Obviously, there were dark things in the book. I don’t shy away from the challenges we faced. But I also wanted to convey what you naturally do as a kid, which is to try to find the joy. I also tried to look at the absurdity of my situation, and what many kids were going through. That’s where Goodness Gracious Me came from too – the absurdity of that cultural clash and how ridiculously funny it is sometimes.
‘My parents would crack risqué jokes with their Punjabi friends at Dad’s musical evenings. They were funny in the face of adversity, because we were all at the bottom of the social pile. These people weren’t moaners. They were strong.’ What shines through when talking to Meera is how her parents shaped her – and how much they sacrificed to give her and her brother, who is a national newspaper journalist, a very different life. Her father Surendra and mother Surrinder Syal – now in their 80s – have ‘rebel history’, as their daughter puts it. Her dad is a Hindu; her mum from a Sikh family. Both grandfathers had protested against British rule in their homeland. Her parents met at university in Delhi in the 1950s, and stood up to their families in rejecting the arranged marriages expected of them. ‘I like to think I get my rebellious side from them,’ Meera says. They married in 1958 and moved to Britain in 1960. They put great emphasis on education and Meera’s mum, a primary school teacher, taught her to read early. ‘By four or five, I was hoovering up books and writing my own stories.’ There’s a lovely scene in Anita & Me where Meena comes home having secured second place in a school test. ‘And who was first?’ demands her mum.
Her dad was the creative one. ‘He was a singer. A poet. He did a philoso-
phy degree.’ Yet he trained as an accountant here. ‘There wasn’t much call for an Indian philosopher in Britain then. Funny that,’ she says, with her trademark skill of making a serious point with humour. ‘I think he hated every minute, but did it to feed the kids. That was another reason they wanted to see me fly – because they’d had their own wings clipped.’
Meera decided her future lay in the creative arts. She studied drama at Manchester University and got her break at the Edinburgh Festival. She’s clearly made her own choices. Her first marriage, to journalist Shekhar Bhatia, foundered after three years (although it resulted in the birth of her daughter Chameli, now in her mid-20s). Then, while filming The Kumars, she fell in love with Sanjeev. Their son Shaan is now 12.
Presumably she didn’t have to face the arranged marriage issue? ‘There were discussions about it,’ she reveals. ‘But I think, ultimately, my parents fought so hard for their kids to have an education – and you can’t open their mind and then expect them to close it again to do what you want. The point of education, for them, was so that their children could discover their options and what their possibilities were. They were wonderful for that.’
Interestingly, both parents now live with Meera and Sanjeev, having moved into their north London home five years ago. ‘It’s built into our DNA, really. When you’re looking for a house, you say to yourself, “Which room are the parents going to live in?” That’s the way we were brought up, and increasingly I’m finding many English friends are living that way too.’
She’s a strong advocate for multigenerational living. ‘I’m not saying it’s easy, but there are wonderful advantages. For my kids to have continual access to their grandparents is lovely. And it gives you freedom. We’ve not had to worry about babysitting. You can say, “I fancy seeing a film tonight” and you can! It’s amazing!’
Will she expect her children to let her live with them, in time? ‘Well, I bloomin’ hope so,’ she laughs. ‘Otherwise there will be words.’