🔗 Share this article A Vacation During Which I Felt Noticeable for the First Time. When I turned 24, I journeyed to Ireland for the first time. It was the autumn after finishing university, and a close companion who had received an award for her thesis used her winnings to lease a seaside cabin on the island of Valentia, with the aim that we could devote seven days focusing on our novels. The rocky cottage was perched right next to the coast on the far western point of Ireland, overlooking the vast gray-blue expanse of the Atlantic. The island possessed a untamed aesthetic – cliff edges, a verdant jungle, chilly, foaming waves. It took our breath away. As did the tranquillity. It was just what we had come in search of. When we stepped away from our work, my friend took us on drives so we could see the island and the mainland, venturing through Killarney and down to Derrynane beach where we went horseback riding along the powdery golden coast. After a week of doing this, it dawned on me that we had yet to see another non-white person. We were in such proximity to England that I had arrived anticipating the multicultural mix I was accustomed to at home. One afternoon, I stopped off at a small shop. When the young woman behind the counter glanced up and saw me, the astonishment in her eyes suggested that I was maybe the first person of colour she had ever seen in person. I got what I needed and left, but later I found myself thinking about that brief interaction. It was the very first occasion in my life where I had truly felt as though I was visibly different. I grew up in Leicester – one of the first extremely multicultural cities in England where minorities constitute the majority. My yearbook pictures show a multitude of faces like mine, and for many years I thought Leicester to be a accurate representation of England, perhaps even the wider world. My identity was, whether correct or not, strong. And yet my upbringing also lacked real diversity, because I was mostly surrounded by people who were from a like socioeconomic and racial background. Back at the seaside cabin, I was led to imagine what it might have been like for a person akin to my grandfather, who moved to England from Africa in the 1950s. At that time, he would have been one of only a handful of people of colour living in Leicester. Or my mother, who arrived from India in the early 60s. In the years that came after, a large number of Indians would settle in the city and attempt to make it their home, drawn by the quickly expanding community. Had they felt invisible? Had they felt as though they stood out? By comparison, the feeling of difference I had encountered on my trip felt temporary. I went back to the comfortable environment of my old routine. Or so I thought. In the years that followed, I began to envision people as balloons, their self-awareness expanding or contracting depending on their circumstances and where they were in the world. I came to see I had spent my early life in the secure, validating state of inflating, thinking, a little naively, that I was a part of the mainstream. My experience on that holiday forced me to contract, and I suddenly felt alarm at my own insignificance – the way a king might feel upon discovering that his castle was just a small room inside a giant structure. I left Leicester to go to university in Hertfordshire, finally settling in London. It was in these new environments that I found people from all over the world living and working together; there that, rather than grow or shrink, I felt I could simply exist in the steady state. Since then, I have travelled more widely – and found the world to be a throbbing landscape of people who are unlike me in all ways. But rather than feel intimidated – as I did at 24 – I approach these worlds with self-assurance and compassion. After that trip, I was better equipped to see things from new angles. In the past few years especially, with events like the disturbances of 2024 as well as last year’s “unite the kingdom” rally, I came to see how a person’s sense of self might have diminished so greatly as to become shattered. Underneath the shouting and banners and violence, I saw the anxiety, however misplaced, that seemed to drive the crowds of people gathered – the fear of losing their footing in the place they considered home. I identified with that fear: it dwells within the very being of every immigrant. Being raised in Leicester gave me the strength to recognise my power and privilege and to assert it, while that week-long holiday in my 20s offered me a insight into my own insignificance. The more I live, the more I find that, in order to find purpose, one needs to know both.
When I turned 24, I journeyed to Ireland for the first time. It was the autumn after finishing university, and a close companion who had received an award for her thesis used her winnings to lease a seaside cabin on the island of Valentia, with the aim that we could devote seven days focusing on our novels. The rocky cottage was perched right next to the coast on the far western point of Ireland, overlooking the vast gray-blue expanse of the Atlantic. The island possessed a untamed aesthetic – cliff edges, a verdant jungle, chilly, foaming waves. It took our breath away. As did the tranquillity. It was just what we had come in search of. When we stepped away from our work, my friend took us on drives so we could see the island and the mainland, venturing through Killarney and down to Derrynane beach where we went horseback riding along the powdery golden coast. After a week of doing this, it dawned on me that we had yet to see another non-white person. We were in such proximity to England that I had arrived anticipating the multicultural mix I was accustomed to at home. One afternoon, I stopped off at a small shop. When the young woman behind the counter glanced up and saw me, the astonishment in her eyes suggested that I was maybe the first person of colour she had ever seen in person. I got what I needed and left, but later I found myself thinking about that brief interaction. It was the very first occasion in my life where I had truly felt as though I was visibly different. I grew up in Leicester – one of the first extremely multicultural cities in England where minorities constitute the majority. My yearbook pictures show a multitude of faces like mine, and for many years I thought Leicester to be a accurate representation of England, perhaps even the wider world. My identity was, whether correct or not, strong. And yet my upbringing also lacked real diversity, because I was mostly surrounded by people who were from a like socioeconomic and racial background. Back at the seaside cabin, I was led to imagine what it might have been like for a person akin to my grandfather, who moved to England from Africa in the 1950s. At that time, he would have been one of only a handful of people of colour living in Leicester. Or my mother, who arrived from India in the early 60s. In the years that came after, a large number of Indians would settle in the city and attempt to make it their home, drawn by the quickly expanding community. Had they felt invisible? Had they felt as though they stood out? By comparison, the feeling of difference I had encountered on my trip felt temporary. I went back to the comfortable environment of my old routine. Or so I thought. In the years that followed, I began to envision people as balloons, their self-awareness expanding or contracting depending on their circumstances and where they were in the world. I came to see I had spent my early life in the secure, validating state of inflating, thinking, a little naively, that I was a part of the mainstream. My experience on that holiday forced me to contract, and I suddenly felt alarm at my own insignificance – the way a king might feel upon discovering that his castle was just a small room inside a giant structure. I left Leicester to go to university in Hertfordshire, finally settling in London. It was in these new environments that I found people from all over the world living and working together; there that, rather than grow or shrink, I felt I could simply exist in the steady state. Since then, I have travelled more widely – and found the world to be a throbbing landscape of people who are unlike me in all ways. But rather than feel intimidated – as I did at 24 – I approach these worlds with self-assurance and compassion. After that trip, I was better equipped to see things from new angles. In the past few years especially, with events like the disturbances of 2024 as well as last year’s “unite the kingdom” rally, I came to see how a person’s sense of self might have diminished so greatly as to become shattered. Underneath the shouting and banners and violence, I saw the anxiety, however misplaced, that seemed to drive the crowds of people gathered – the fear of losing their footing in the place they considered home. I identified with that fear: it dwells within the very being of every immigrant. Being raised in Leicester gave me the strength to recognise my power and privilege and to assert it, while that week-long holiday in my 20s offered me a insight into my own insignificance. The more I live, the more I find that, in order to find purpose, one needs to know both.