ShoutYourHeadOff

Author: Anil J

  • Datchet to Windsor — A Walk to Gain Clarity

    Datchet to Windsor — A Walk to Gain Clarity

    This Datchet to Windsor walk is one I return to when my head needs clearing. On September 21st, I was feeling out of sorts. A heaviness had settled in my head — not a headache exactly, but a light heaviness that would not shift. My thinking was erratic. My blogging had taken second place, and getting the words out had become difficult. It has taken me more than two weeks to write this down.

    I had seen my doctor about a possible new development with my health. Nothing was confirmed, but I wished I had not gone. Now it was going to play on my mind. Daily. And then there were the children, who were going through their own difficulties. I am a father. I cannot help but worry. It is in my nature, my system. It is everything that I am. A concerned parent lost in a pool of murky water.

    So I did what I do when my head needs clearing. I went for a walk.

    The walk from Datchet to Windsor via Eton playing fields is one of my favourites. I discovered it by chance in 2021, during my fitness recovery after Covid, and I come back two or three times a year. I visit during school days, when the pupils are in class and the fields are empty. No crowds, no boys playing, not many walkers — just the occasional cyclist using the path as a shortcut to Windsor or Slough. That quietness is the reason I keep coming back.

    I took the number 5 bus from near my house and got off at The Myrke in Datchet. From there, a path crosses a small bridge over a stream, then a larger bridge over the Jubilee River, and opens out onto the first of two enormous Eton College sports fields.

    I stood on the Jubilee River bridge for about fifteen minutes, watching the water flow and the sun reflecting off the surface. There is a memorial there to someone who drowned, reminding you of the dangers of swimming in the river. It made me think about my own weaknesses, and why I was actually here.

    I walked on into the first field. As always, I took my phone out and started taking photographs — a habit I have developed over the past five or six years, snapping anything that pleases my eye. The path was lined with huge trees, the field stretching away to the right. A lone cyclist approached and passed. I carried on, lost in my thoughts.

    The beauty of this place seems to change on every visit. More greenery this time, despite the hottest summer on record, which surprised me. The Jubilee River meandered to my left. I was taking my time, trying to let the surroundings do their work. But I kept holding my head the way people do when they have a headache. I did not have a headache. I just had that weight.

    At one point I noticed a wooden bench near the river. I was not in the mood to sit down, so I walked past it. I knew I would regret that later.

    I crossed a road and entered the second field, equally vast. To my left, the river again. Huge trees scattered across the grass. As I turned to walk towards Eton College, I noticed a young man sitting under a massive oak tree. He looked up and said hello. I felt envious of his spot — the shade, the stillness, the peace of it. I could have done with something like that. But I had already passed the bench, and now the oak tree. More regrets.

    I carried on and found another bench further along. I sat down, took out my water bottle and a book I had been carrying. A lone person sat on a bench nearby. A few crows were picking at the ground, looking for morsels. I tried to read but could not concentrate. I put the book away. I sipped some water and just sat there. A large sports field in front of me, a pavilion behind me, and otherwise deserted.

    I could feel how much I was distracting myself from the reason I had come. Photographs, architecture, the beauty of the fields — all of it real, all of it welcome, and all of it avoidance. I had convinced myself I would feel better once I reached Eton Bridge.

    Eton High Street has some beautiful architecture, and I let it distract me again. More photographs. Then I made my way to the bridge, as I have done before, snapping pictures of the Thames.

    But now it was crowded. I helped a couple take a photograph of themselves together. And that was when it hit me.

    I was missing my wife.

    Where the Datchet to Windsor Walk Took Me

    Harsha and I had spent many hours here, just sitting. She could not get around without a wheelchair by then, but we would come and sit at a small café by the river. I would go and feed the swans and the ducks and the pigeons while she watched me. She loved bringing the grandchildren here and buying them ice cream.

    The crowd felt larger now, and for the first time that day, I felt constricted. The quiet I had walked all this way to find was suddenly gone, replaced by something sharper.

    I did not feel I had achieved what I came for. But I had enjoyed the day out, in spite of everything.

    I walked away from the bridge towards Windsor Castle. As I climbed the hill, I noticed my bus. I decided to go for it.

    I went home thinking that this Datchet to Windsor walk had given me beauty, but clarity would have to wait for another day.

  • My Mum Was My Super Hero — A Son’s Eulogy for Harsha

    My Mum Was My Super Hero — A Son’s Eulogy for Harsha

    Harsha passed away on 5th August 2019. She was my wife, and the heart of our family. At her funeral, our son Mitesh stood up and spoke. What follows are his words — a son’s tribute to the woman he called his Super Hero

    The following is adapted from the eulogy delivered by Mitesh at his mother Harsha’s funeral on 5th August 2019. It has been reshaped for this blog with his permission. These are his words.

    I never imagined I would be standing here speaking on behalf of my family about my mum passing away. My mum was my Super Hero.

    She was born on 4th March 1958, brought into this world by her mother, my Ba, the great Nirmalaben Jani, and her father, my Bapuji, the all-mighty Labshanker bhai Jani. She grew up in the early years in Africa with her two sisters Anju and Vina, and twin brothers Ajay and Vijay. Like many of the families from that generation, the United Kingdom was written in their footsteps as the next journey in their lives. Having settled in Nottingham, they grew close together as a tight family and adapted to their new surroundings.

    I remember being told when I was growing up of how beautiful and gentle and caring my mother was. She always looked after her parents, never said no, and always went beyond the call to make sure everyone was happy.

    My mother met my father at the age of 21 and they were married on 6th October 1979. I was born a year later, on 9th September 1980. We lived in Southall for one year in a one-bedroom studio flat, and after hard work my dad bought us our first home — 202 Humber Way, Langley, Slough.

    In 1986 my sister Rakhi was born. I remember it like it was yesterday. My mum handed my sister into my arms and said, “This is your sister Rakhi. You must look after her forever and protect her.”

    We lived such a great childhood, full of fun and laughter, good food, and so much music and dancing.

    My mum was creative and imaginative in ways that surprised everyone around her. She started a group called the Karishma Arts Group. She had no formal training in dance, but she had pure imagination and the influence of her sister Vina, who she always looked up to. The group entered the Brahmin Society North London Annual Cultural Show every year, competing for trophies. She taught so many students dancing, and the group became a huge success.

    The biggest and most loved performance was “Mere Desh Ki Dharti.” It started one day when her brother Ajay was gardening in the back, using a shovel. The song was playing, and mum was watching his movements from the window. She ran outside with joy, saying “do that again, do that again!” He was confused, but he did it anyway. That moment sparked a stage performance that was performed for many years. She took it to another level and performed it at Brent Town Hall in front of the Mayor.

    Another super power my mum had was the ability to cook. Everyone says their mum’s cooking is the best, but everyone who came to our house got to taste mum’s cooking. If you came, you always ate. You were always offered freshly cooked food, and she was so good at it. While I was working nights at British Airways, she would call me at 2am and say, “Are you on your break? Do you want some food?” Luckily we lived close. I would come home, and to my surprise, even in her illness years, I would find her cooking up something fresh. On these breaks it would be curry and rotli — fresh. Nothing would taste anywhere near as good. She even made me samosa’s with beans in them. I’m a big lad for a reason — I got to taste the best cuisine in town.

    Mum always embraced opportunity. She started a job as a personal chef at Pinewood Studios, cooking for many actors on different films. I remember my mum introducing me to John Lennon’s son. I met John Goodman. My mum cooked for Felicity Kendal, who had a connection with the Kapoors in India. Felicity said to my mum, “If you’re ever in India, go to RK Studio and tell Shashi Kapoor that I sent you.” Did she do this? OH YES SHE DID.

    My mum and my Ba went to India, knocked on Dharminder’s door, and somehow they were inside his house, having a cup of tea and pictures taken. They went on a tour of his house. He played tennis with me. We also met Jitendra, Hema Malini, and Amitabh Bachchan and his son and wife. My mum had a gift of confidence. From suddenly being in actors’ houses, we got to the RK Studio, where Shashi Kapoor embraced my mum’s presence and welcomed us in. We watched Amitabh in the making of his movie Ajooba. This was one of my most amazing memories with my mum.

    And a famous one at that. When we were about to leave, Shashi Kapoor said to my mum, “Leave this 10-year-old boy with me! I’ll make him into a super Bollywood star.” But mum just couldn’t let go of me like that, and she said no. But everything we did was fun, and magical, and full of life. If I had stayed, I wouldn’t have had my three beautiful children — which was what was written for me.

    She always asked the same questions:

    Are you ok?
    Are you safe?
    Are you happy?
    Have you eaten?
    Have you slept?

    Her arms were always open — for us and for everybody else too. She lifted our spirits, made us feel secure and happy. Her comforting words were famous in our family: “Everything will be ok.” “I got you!” “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it — leave it with me, I’ll speak to Dad.”

    As we grew older, she never changed. Even when she became ill, in the early years she was always in denial. But there were many years of illness, and endless fighting. She was always strong, and bounced back every time — still the same, still cooking, still being that wonderful mum. Right to the very end. My sister Rakhi and Dad were always by her side to make sure all her needs were met, but still, even up to the end, she remained as independent as she could.

    I was so lucky to have met my partner Anthea, who gave me three beautiful children — Erica, Nico, and Jai — and their super-mothering-in-law. When Erica was born, my mum taught me and Anthea so many tricks. Mum fell in love with Erica instantly. As I watched Erica grow up with my mum, it sparked so many memories of what it was like for Rakhi growing up — how mum played with her, dressed her, taught her creative things like cooking and art. I would often call Erica “Rakhi” by mistake, and vice versa. I would say to Rakhi, “It’s like living with you all over again and watching history repeat itself.” Erica had also got to experience life with a super hero, and got taken into her magical world — the same journey my sister Rakhi had.

    Then, just like magic, my second child Nico arrived. Nico took to my mum very much so. It was now the Nico and Ba Show, just like the Tish and Mum show all those years ago. They had a mysterious instant connection, an electricity of love for each other. I watched first-hand exactly what it was like being my mum’s son all those years ago. And Jai, the latest addition, was in this tribe equally, and my mum loved being around my children. It made her so happy.

    I could stand here for days, for months, for years, speaking about my beautiful mother. And I will.

    I would like to conclude with this. I have told many people already, but for those who haven’t heard:

    I have a picture of my mum taken a week after I was born, which is framed and has been in my possession for many years. Around five years before she died, as her illness was getting worse, she was in hospital and she said to me, “I need to tell you something. In that framed picture of me you have — the one taken a year after you were born — I left you a note. But you can’t read this note until the day I pass away. It will help you get through this.”

    For years I looked at that picture and wondered what the note said. I never opened it. Not until Monday, the 5th of August, when she passed away. After we left the hospital, all I could think about was the note. I was crying my eyes out, and I just couldn’t wait to get to it.

    Harsha’s Final Message

    And this is what it said:

    “You are my son that shines, always on and everyday. You bring the brightness in my life. When I have gone, Remember, Bring brightness and shine on my son. You made my life fulfilled always. Love you. Mum. Hundred years ago I loved you, Today I still love you, Tomorrow I will always.”

    And on the back of the photo frame, she had written:

    “When you are mad my heart shatters. When you are happy, the world stops. To get in touch — Mumlovesyou.com. Mum.”

    When I told my best friend that my mum had passed away, he said to me, “Sorry to hear the news brother. Well, at least we all have the best guardian angel anyone could ask for now. Love you mum.”

    Copy that over and out.

  • What’s one thing you wish you had started doing earlier in life?

    What’s one thing you wish you had started doing earlier in life?

    The Small Things a Journal Would Have Kept

    I wish I had kept a journal from the time I was able to read and write, especially from Jinja, Bugerere and Iganga, but especially Kampala. Journalling seemed like such a small thing then, something I was asked to do at school. But it was the habit that mattered.

    I have always loved reading and writing, encouraged by my maternal uncle. He’s the main reason I learnt to read and write, which I did copying articles from The Readers Digest. There’s so much that happened to me at the beginning. A journal would have brought my earlier years back with a very vivid memory.

    I and other pupils of my class had been asked to keep a daily journal when we had finally settled in Kampala around 1965.

    I had kept a detailed journal of everything that happened then. Every day. I must have filled in about 2 or 3 exercise books. I remember it was silly things like earning a few shillings washing a neighbour’s car. Or if I played outside, or gone on an adventurous walkabout. After school, and homework, I was always out of the house.

    I lived in an area of the town of Kololo, just off the Kira Road. Our area was known as Gokudiu, a name taken from Gokul the place where Lord Krishna spent his formative years. And it felt like that too, as the sixteen families that lived here were very close indeed.

    I don’t know what became of those exercise books. When we left Uganda in August 1972, there was no time to think about things like that. We took what we could carry. The journals, the school books, the small records of ordinary days stayed behind.

    That is what I think about now. Not the big things — those I remember. But the small ones. The names of the families on our street. The way the neighbour called out to my mother from her balcony. What we talked about, my friends and I, on those long Kampala evenings. A journal would have kept all of that. These moments shape our emotional lives.

    Why Journalling Matters More Than I Realised

    I did eventually start keeping a journal again, years later, once we had settled in England. But there was a long gap. I wish I had started sooner — not just in Kampala, but after we arrived too. Those first years in Leicester, when everything felt strange and temporary, were worth recording as well.

    I still keep a journal — journalling has become a quiet, regular practice. It is not a daily habit, but a regular one. I write down what has happened, and what I saw and heard. I turn to it when I want to remember. I just wish I had understood its use earlier.

    Journalling is the work of sitting down and writing what you know. It does not require eloquence or grand reflections. It is simply the act of noticing, and then recording. The everyday details that seem unremarkable at the time become exactly what you want to hold onto later. The names of people. The colour of the light. The words someone used. When you look back at what you have written, it brings those moments back. Not in a grand way. Just back. That is enough.

  • Inside the Ostrich Inn — 920 Years and Still Standing

    Inside the Ostrich Inn — 920 Years and Still Standing

    I have driven past the Ostrich Inn for more than thirty years without stopping. It was just an old building on the High Street, and I never gave it much thought. It was not until I started walking around Colnbrook properly, rediscovering the village I thought I already knew, that I realised what I had been driving past all that time. A pub founded in 1106. Over nine hundred years old, and still standing.

    My first visit was not planned as anything more than a quick look. I had been writing about Colnbrook’s history and wanted to see the inside of the building I had described. I asked permission to film and take photographs, and spent the visit recording what I could. It was useful, but it was rushed. I saw the beams, the pictures on the walls, the information boards, but I did not sit down. I did not stop long enough to feel anything.

    So I went back.

    The second time, I went with no camera and no plan. I bought a non-alcoholic Guinness and sat by the window. The pub was not busy. My side of the room was separated from the other guests by a low wooden partition, and for a while I had the space almost to myself.

    Sitting With Nine Hundred Years

    That was when the building started to open up.

    The first thing I noticed properly was the silence. Not complete silence — there were voices from the other side of the partition, the odd creak from above — but a quietness that felt older than the noise around it. The beams overhead were dark and heavy, more than nine hundred years old. A large fireplace sat in one corner, unlit but still warm-looking, the kind of hearth that must have drawn people to it for centuries. The walls in places looked slightly crooked, as though the building had settled into its own shape over the years and decided that straight lines were not worth the trouble.

    I sat there and tried to imagine the people who had sat where I was sitting. Not the tourists or the Sunday lunch crowd, but the travellers from centuries ago — the ones who had ridden seventeen miles from London and stopped here because Colnbrook was as far as a day’s journey would take them. Coaching inn guests, merchants, highwaymen. I thought about how the village must have looked then, how small it must have been compared to this huge inn. There may have been very few buildings at all. The Ostrich would have dominated everything around it.

    The Darkest Story in the Building

    And then there was the other history. The one that makes the Ostrich unlike any other pub in the country.

    In the seventeenth century, a landlord named Jarman built a mechanical trapdoor in the Blue Room upstairs. Wealthy guests would be placed in a bed rigged above the kitchen. In the night, the bed would tip, dropping the guest into a boiling cauldron below. Jarman would take their money and dispose of the body. His final victim, a man named Thomas Cole, is said to still haunt the building. I was not allowed into any of the guest rooms on my visit, which was disappointing, but perhaps understandable. The Blue Room is part of the inn’s story that most visitors come to hear about, and standing in the corridor outside it, with the old floorboards creaking under my feet and the walls leaning slightly inward, it was not difficult to believe that something of that story still lingers.

    I walked along the corridor and up a set of rickety wooden stairs that felt as though they might give way at any moment. The rooms stood on either side, including the main suite, known as the King Suite. Some of the old character had been softened by modernisation and safety requirements, but the bones of the building were still visible. The wooden beams, the uneven floors, the low ceilings — all of it reminded me that this was not a building pretending to be old. It simply was.

    Being daytime, I did not feel anything that I could call a ghost. But I kept returning to the same thought: nine hundred years. Nine hundred years of feet on these stairs, voices against these walls, lives passing through these rooms. I have always been drawn to old buildings, and the Ostrich is the oldest I have ever been inside. If I could spend a night here, I would. Whether or not the ghosts are real, the atmosphere earns the reputation.

    What I Nearly Missed

    Back downstairs, I finished my drink by the window and watched people walk past on the High Street. I wondered how many of them knew what they were walking past. I had driven past it myself for thirty years without stopping. It took slowing down, sitting still, and actually looking to understand what was there.

    The Ostrich did not change anything for me. But it reminded me of something I keep learning on these walks: the places you think you know are often the ones hiding the most. You just have to stop long enough to notice.

  • The Decline of Colnbrook — And Why I’m Starting to Let Go

    The Decline of Colnbrook — And Why I’m Starting to Let Go

    I recently wrote about the history of my village of Colnbrook, and what I discovered filled me with pride. Nine hundred years of coaching inns, royal visits, a pub founded in 1106, and my own wife cooking in a kitchen next door to a medieval palace. That history is real, and it is part of why I have lived here for more than thirty years.

    But lately I have started to see something else. Not the history, but what is happening to the place now. And it has become one of the reasons I am seriously thinking about leaving.

    It did not happen all at once. That is what makes it so hard to pin down. The changes crept in slowly, and one day I looked around and realised the village I remembered had become harder to recognise.

    There is a route I used to walk regularly, just around the corner from my doorstep, leading to Pippins Park. I do not walk that way as often now. The park is named after the Pippins apple that once grew here in the orchards, long before the houses came. My own home stands on land that was once part of that orchard. Knowing that makes everything I see around me feel more personal than it probably should.

    I remember when the kerbs were clean and the roads did not feel like car parks. The council could actually reach the kerbsides to clean them. Now, empty cans, bottles, vapes and rubbish sit along the roads as though nobody notices or nobody cares. Bins overflow. Fly tipping appears and stays. It is not dramatic, and saying it out loud makes it sound like a small thing. But when you have lived somewhere for three decades and watched the slow slide, it is not small. It is exhausting.

    The change that has affected Colnbrook most, though, is not the litter. It is the homes. Many houses in Colnbrook and the parish of Poyle have been converted into HMOs — homes of multiple occupation. Where one family once lived, four or more may now be under the same roof. The pressure that puts on parking, noise, waste, and the feel of a street is something you do not understand until you live next to it. Gardens that were once kept with pride are now paved over or left to grow wild. The sense of a community looking after its own patch has thinned, and in some corners it has gone altogether.

    I do not blame the people living in those houses. Most of them are just trying to get by, the same as anyone. But the landlords who pack them in, and the systems that allow it, have changed the character of this village in ways that cannot easily be undone.

    And here is the thing I have only recently been able to admit to myself. I have stopped fighting it. For years I walked these streets and felt proud of where I lived. I noticed the history, the beauty, the quiet. I still see it — it has not all gone. But the balance has tipped. The pride I felt is now mixed with something heavier, and I am tired of carrying both.

    That is part of why Leicester has started calling me home. When I visited Jitu last month and walked along Belgrave Road, I felt something I do not feel here any more. I felt like I belonged. The language around me was Gujarati. The temples were full. People my age had places to go and things to do. Nobody was rushing past, and nobody was dumping a mattress on the pavement.

    I know Leicester is not perfect. No place is. And I know that if I moved there I would probably find things to complain about within a month. But the difference is this: Leicester feels like somewhere that is growing towards something. Colnbrook feels like somewhere that is slowly losing what it had.

    I still love this village. That is why its decline hurts. You do not grieve for a place you never cared about. But love is not always enough to make you stay. Sometimes you have to accept that the place you remember is not the place you live in any more, and that the version of it you are holding on to exists mostly in your own head.

    I have not made my decision yet. But every overflowing bin, every paved-over garden, every house split into four makes the question a little easier to answer.

    Could I really leave Colnbrook? A year ago I would have said no. Now I am not so sure. And that, more than anything, tells me how much has changed.

  • Could I Really Leave? — Why Leicester Is Calling Me Home

    Could I Really Leave? — Why Leicester Is Calling Me Home

    I would leave where I’m living now within a heartbeat. That is the honest answer, and it surprised me how quickly it came.

    After my recent trip to Leicester, the question stopped being hypothetical. I have visited Leicester many times over the years, but this last trip felt different. There was no wedding pulling me back, no funeral, no obligation. I went because I wanted to, and while I was there I found myself thinking not about the past, but about the future. Could I live here again?

    Leicester was my home for seven years after we arrived from Uganda in 1972. My parents lived there. My brother Jitu still lives there. I have family, old friends, and connections that go back more than fifty years. Whenever I go, I feel something I do not feel in Colnbrook. I feel like I am home.

    I have lived in Colnbrook for over thirty years. It has been a good place in many ways, and I have written about its history and walked its streets more carefully than most people who live here. But something has shifted in me. After more than fifty years of working, from the age of seventeen to retirement at sixty-five, and after seven years of being alone since Harsha passed, I have reached a point where my own space matters more than anything else.

    I sit every day on the seat that used to be Harsha’s. She would sit there and paint. Now I sit there alone. Alone in my heart, alone in my head, alone in a house that sometimes feels too full of other people’s lives and not enough of my own.

    I am not looking to run away. I am looking to find something. Somewhere quieter. Somewhere I can spend a whole day without the noise and interruptions that seem to follow me here. Somewhere I can write, walk, think, and simply be. I have spent most of my life doing everything for everyone else. Now, for however many years I have left, I want to do something for me.

    I have talked to my daughter about it. The conversation is one we have had more than once, and it never quite resolves. She does not want me to go — I can hear that clearly enough, even when she does not say it directly. Instead, she suggests that perhaps she should be the one to move. But she cannot, not with her situation as it is. And so the conversation circles, lands nowhere, and we both leave it where it sits until next time. I understand her worry. A father leaving is not a small thing, no matter how old the father is or how good his reasons are.

    Why Leicester

    But the pull is real. Leicester offers things that simply do not exist where I live now. There are walking groups I could join. Temples that serve the community in ways that go beyond worship — places where older people gather, where the language spoken is Gujarati, the language I grew up with, the language I think in. There are parks with activities suited to someone my age, restaurants serving food that tastes like home, and a social life that I do not have here.

    Most of all, there is Jitu. I walked him to school in Kampala when he was small. I bought him his first bike. I was the older brother who looked out for the youngest. Now, more than fifty years later, I find myself wanting to be near him again — not because he needs me the way he once did, but because I need the closeness. Moving to Leicester would bring that full circle, back to where it all started for both of us.

    Leicester is at the top of my list. I have thought about the countryside too, somewhere truly quiet. I have even thought about going abroad. I do not have a final answer yet. But I know that the question has stopped being “would I leave?” and become “when?”

    Something happened recently that confirmed what I already felt. I will not go into the details, but it reminded me that I am in a place where things outside my control keep pulling me into situations I did not choose and do not want. I have spent too many years being dragged into other people’s difficulties. I am trying to break that pattern before it pulls me into another spiral.

    This is not a decision I will make overnight. There are practical things to work out, people to consider, and a lifetime of roots in this part of the world that do not pull up easily. But the thought is no longer just a thought. It is becoming a plan.

    Could I really leave? Yes. I could leave tomorrow if the pieces fell into place. The harder question is whether the people around me are ready for that. And whether I am brave enough to choose myself, after a lifetime of choosing everyone else.

    I think I am getting there.

  • Just Do It

    Just Do It

    Just do it. This is my motto. Now you can’t stop as there’s so much to do and so little time to do it in, so just get on with it and don’t complain or make excuses.

    That paragraph describes who I am now. After years of servitude and taking care of the necessary needs of life. Now, more than ever, it’s my time to do all the things that make me happy. Not that I wasn’t happy before. I was living for someone else. My life was on the back burner.

    What makes me happy? Being outdoors. Writing, whenever possible. I’m still learning a lot on this final phase of my life, however long it may last.

    But the journey has to be fulfilling. I keep daydreaming of things I haven’t done or achieved any goals. Mental note made to make a daydreaming list!

    If I could send my future self one sentence, it would be this: just do it.

  • Leicester — A Homecoming

    Leicester — A Homecoming

    I have visited Leicester many times since I left at the end of 1979, but those trips had always had a reason behind them — a wedding, a birthday, an invitation, or a funeral. I never really felt I was going home. I had arrived in Leicester on 19 June 1972, after being exiled from Uganda, and spent seven years working and living there with my parents and two younger siblings. It became my second hometown after Kampala.

    This time was different. On 18 July 2026, I took a coach to spend a couple of days with my younger brother, Jitu. There was no formal occasion pulling me back, no timetable set by someone else, no family duty to fulfil. I was returning simply because Leicester mattered to me, and because I wanted to walk again through a place that had shaped a part of my life.

    But I also went with a question in my mind. Could I live here again?

    I arrived late in the evening, so Jitu, his wife and I spent the night catching up on the year that had passed since we had last met. The next day, Saturday, we visited two temples. The first was the Hanumanji Temple, which is relatively new in Leicester. Being a Saturday, an auspicious day for offering prayers to Hanumanji, the temple was packed with devotees. I was not just visiting out of curiosity. I wanted to see how it would fit into my life if I came back. The answer was clear. Many of the people there were older, like me, and the temple served them in ways that went beyond prayer. It was a place to belong.

    We then made our way to Leicester’s main Indian shopping area, Belgrave Road and Melton Road, where the shops, restaurants and gold jewellers have long been part of the city’s familiar landscape. I wanted to walk along the same road I had walked during my first seven years in Leicester. As we visited different shops, I kept looking around, amazed by how much the place had changed. The language around me was Gujarati. People were speaking the language I grew up with, the language I think in, the language that is largely absent from where I live now.

    It was a beautiful sunny day, so we walked to the Sai Temple. Along the way, I kept reliving my life in Leicester. There was the Brahm Samaj building, where I had spent many happy occasions with my family, and later with my wife, Harsha. Not far from where I had lived. I also saw a church whose name had changed, now used as a venue for events. I remembered attending my niece’s wedding there many years ago. Then a sadder memory surfaced — my maternal uncle, who had fallen and been badly hurt nearby. Happiness and sadness, side by side in the same place. Leicester has always been like that for me.

    I had once worked at a factory not far from the city centre. I saw the shortcuts that used to lead to it, though the factory had not existed for a very long time. And I thought of Abbey Park, where I used to secretly meet my first and only girlfriend. I wondered where life had taken her.

    We turned back and crossed the dual carriageway. Along the way, I deliberately took a turn towards Garfield Street, where we had owned our first home. On the way, I noticed a mural painted across a two-storey wall showing two Bollywood stars. I had to stop and take a photograph. I also took a picture of the front door and the street sign. What surprised me most was how much had disappeared. The terraced houses on the opposite side had been demolished. The small factory at the end of my old street had gone, replaced by retirement homes.

    We left Garfield Street and made our way back along Belgrave Road. I walked slowly, remembering a time when people I knew would stop to say hello, or when I could walk into a shop and chat to an owner I had known from the past. No one stopped me now. Many of the old shops no longer existed.

    On Sunday, I spent the morning with my maternal cousin at his new house. Remembering the past is always nostalgic, and somehow enjoyable too. By the time we had had some tea and talked non-stop for an hour and a half, it was time to leave. I had arranged to meet someone I had not seen in a very long time.

    A Friend From My First Days in Leicester

    Barry was the first white man to show me the ropes when I started work at the factory in 1972. He respected me for who I was — an immigrant from Uganda who did not know how anything worked in this country. That meant more than I can easily say. Over the years, I taught him and his wife to make potato curry and puri. He calls me Bhai — the Gujarati word for brother. We share a love of heavy rock music and Indian food. He is retired now, mostly, shooting vermin on farms for a part-time living. He has a family and is a grandfather.

    We met at the Woolpack pub, which I believe was his local. Apart from losing his hair and putting on a little weight, he was exactly as I remembered him. After a hug, we sat outside over a couple of beers and talked about the past, the present, and what life had brought us since those days. The curry and puri came up, of course. Forty-seven years had passed since we last sat together, and the hour we had felt far too short. Barely enough time to catch our breath.

    That hour with Barry was the happiest moment of the whole trip. I am going back for more. Next time I will meet his wife and possibly his family too.

    I had a coach to catch at 5.30 pm. Jitu picked me up, and after a short stop, he took me to St Margaret’s Bus Station. As I waited for the coach, I was not thinking about what I was leaving behind. I was thinking about what I might be coming back to.

    Leicester has walking groups, parks with activities for older people, temples that serve the community in ways that go beyond worship, and a social life that simply does not exist where I live now. Most of all, it has Jitu. Coming back would bring me closer to my youngest sibling, the brother I walked to school in Kampala.

    I am not certain yet. But standing at that bus station, I felt more sure than I have in a long time that Leicester is where my final chapter should begin.