Mad merrriment: The Scottish Assamese community boogie on down in my dad’s old psychiatric hospital. Bihu enjoyed many such unusual venues

It may come as a surprise to many (although not to all who know me) that, as a child, I used to celebrate Bihu within the confines of a psychiatric hospital. This can easily be explained. My father worked as a psychiatrist, resulting in him being permitted to use the premises of one of his workplaces for such functions. Being Assamese in Scotland (so frugal by nurture as well as by nature), our community didn’t see any need to organise lavish affairs in grand town halls or swanky hotels. A day centre for the insane suited us perfectly well when it came to marking our own cultural date on the calendar.

Bihu celebrations occur annually across the UK. There’s usually a big bash down in London plus quite a few others in more central locations in England like Birmingham, Bradford and Sunderland – although, to my knowledge, none has ever been staged in a setting quite like the Scottish Bihu. Of course, we wouldn’t hold all our get-togethers in the madhouse. That would be, well, mad. In the past, summer barbecues were organised in a country park. And then, in recent times the parents have all been chipping in for their own special ‘hogmanay’ hootenanny to ring in the New Year.

Our community has had the advantage of being small in number and close in distance. With the exception of one family based way up north in Aberdeen, each of us lives within a 20-mile radius of Glasgow — so there’s rarely an excuse not to pay visits. Over the course of every year, every family would have hosted every other family over several dinner parties/Sunday lunches/just pop round for cups of tea etc. (with every family knowing how to cook really well!). In addition, scarcely a week passes by without at least one telephone conversation with one of the other families.

Fair to say, then, that our closeness in proximity has resulted in a closeness of ties (though not quite in the Sicilian Mafia sense). The age gap among the parents is not too great, with them all settling into the country at roughly the same time, most as newly-weds or with very young children. They now find themselves retired/reaching retirement, so their shared experience is lengthy. Despite originating in different parts of the Northeast, belonging to different strands of the social strata and even holding different faiths, they have lived in each other’s company for at least half of their lives and have seen each other’s children progress from crawling to crawling into adulthood.

In turn, the children all grew up in one another’s company. Although none of us lives at home any longer, each of us knows what everyone else is doing. Unfortunately, we are quite scattered now —geographically, so the only opportunities we have to meet up are at weddings (yes, some of us have reached that stage now, though, thankfully, I’m not one of them) where we habitually remind each other of embarrassing occasions. (My getting too drunk for my age resulting in being violently sick at a wedding and my getting lost in the woods during one summer barbecue are usually the first: “Remember the time when …” conversations.)

Whenever relatives of ours come over from Assam they are often quick to remark that the small community we find ourselves in acts as a surrogate family. As children we were taught to refer to each other’s parents as ‘Auntie & Uncle’, despite bearing no relation to them. In the few instances where there is a family connection, we were taught to use the correct Assamese address: Jethai; Mamma et al; just as we would do with other kindred back in Assam.

This alternating of languages has fostered the sense of inheritance superseding location. Or, in plain English, your family’s your family no matter where you might find yourselves. Besides, the English language is vastly inferior to Assamese when it comes to distinguishing members of one’s family. (Mind you, Assamese must be that rarity among languages to have the exact same word for ‘foot’, ‘knee’ or ‘leg’, thus making medical examinations considerably easier for doctors but more beguiling for patients.)

A bit crowded in here: The Assamese in England need little excuse to meet and celebrate. The throng pictured belong to their early days here

The Assamese language was the first I learned, and also the first I forgot. Although I would speak my mother-tongue to my parents at home, it didn’t take long for my knowledge of the language to wither as I grew older. Whilst being able to provide erudite discourses on the finer points of the works of Jyoti Prasad Agarwala at the age of three (okay, a slight exaggeration there), everything I learned effectively vanished when I started school at the age of five. It didn’t take me long to realise that speaking to your classmates in Assamese — when you’re in Scotland — doesn’t get you very far.

The presence of the tongue has never vanished from our house, for my parents have always conversed together in Assamese (leading outsiders to believe that they are both called ‘Hera’), so it didn’t take long for me to re-learn it after making a concerted effort in my early teens. I also found the memory flooding back whenever we visited Assam as a family. Although, it has to be noted that my ability has hardly progressed beyond that of an 11-year-old’s. Having said that, whatever miniscule amounts of Assamese I had stored in my cerebrum I utilised whenever I had friends round. It proved handy to talk about them behind their backs. At the same time, this intrigued some of my friends who quickly developed an interest in the curious sounds. Before long, I began teaching them all the rude words. We were boys, after all.

My friends soon understood that there was no fixed ‘Indian’ identity. That not all the men wore turbans and possessed big, long beards. That there existed a complex myriad of peoples, cultures, languages, creeds and ethnicities. That it wasn’t referred to as the ‘sub-continent’ without reason. That the food dished up in the restaurants was nothing like what most people ate, which varied from the tenga anjas and khars of the Northeast to the vindaloos and ‘Madras curries’ of the south. Furthermore, they learned that the nation couldn’t produce great fast bowlers like its neighbour, Pakistan, because they were much lazier, with me being the case in point.

Language was not the sole way our family preserved their ‘Assameseness’. Traditional/folk music has always blared out from our house: first on vinyl; then cassette; and nowadays on CD. Enter our front door and you are greeted with the sight of zapis on the wall and bell metal botas, sorais and sortas as ornaments in various rooms. A picture of a kohl player with a young woman dancing adorns one of our walls while the gamosas are laid out on special occasions. My mother owns a number of mekhela shadors while an Assam football shirt obtained from one of the players during the 2001 Santosh Trophy remains one of my most prized possessions. Tenga anjas are regularly cooked in kerahis, while jolpan and boradhan is greedily consumed along with lashings of Assam tea. As a family, we would visit relatives in Assam on an average every three or four years — mainly during the school Easter holidays in April — or for important family occasions. Now that my sisters and I are fairly grown up and no longer living at home, my mother returns every year to escape the harsh Scottish winters with my father accompanying her most times.

My mother has also in recent years organised an annual cultural show in our home town. This has showcased the dance, music, fashion plus food of our region to our locals to immense popularity. (So much so, that I’m tempted to make the opposite cross-cultural journey and set up a Burns’ Night in Guwahati.) Guests have arrived and performed from the all parts of the Northeast, as well as from within the UK Assamese community. Distinguished guests from Assam — notably Bhupen Hazarika — have also attended and even performed at some of the big Bihu celebrations down in England over the years.

Needless to say, however, that specific knowledge of Assam amongst Scots at large is virtually limited to tea-drinkers and the odd seasoned traveller. Though the Asian population in the country is sizeable, it is dominated — as in the rest of the UK — by Bangladeshis, Bengalis, Gujaratis, Pakistanis and Punjabis; and public perceptions by and large are based on these dominant groups. That’s not to say, however, that the Assamese community does not interact with the other groups. It would be churlish not to. People from all parts of the subcontinent intermingle in each other’s homes and in the Hindu/Sikh temples and mosques, while festivals like Diwali and Durga Puja are massive cultural events, not only for the communities but also for the general Scottish public. Glasgow’s Lord Mayor always attends these events as well as a few MPs.

After the party: London Assamese boys getting ready for a night out after the day’s Bihu festivities in 2004. The merrymaking never ends

I have nevertheless found it over-simplistic that everyone is collectively categorised as ‘Asian’ given the differences that exist within one nation let alone a whole continent. Especially when Scots themselves take great pains to differentiate themselves from other peoples of the UK, despite being part of the same state. (It is also baffling that, unlike in the USA, the British Chinese tend not to be referred to as ‘Asian’ while the Arab community, much of which is North African in origin, often is!)

A lot of first-generation immigrants — whatever their background and wherever their upbringing — have commented on how awkward they find their positions to be. I have to admit to holding a contrary view, that it has never been a case of either/or. Throughout my upbringing and early adult life, I have been comfortable holding on to both strands of my make-up without feeling torn towards one over the other. I spent three years as a student in England (Leeds) and then two years living and working in India (Mumbai and Calcutta). I felt completely at ease explaining that I co-existed as Scottish and Assamese, British and Indian, and didn’t feel like a ‘foreigner’ in any of these settings.

Despite being a ‘foreigner’ for all intents and purposes for the past year — when I lived and worked in Dublin and now find myself in Dubai — my feelings and viewpoints remain unaltered. Besides, anyone who has spent any reasonable period of time in either the land of my parents, or the land of my birth, knows that there’s nothing unusual about a brown-skinned Brit or an Indian who speaks almost entirely in English. (Though I have to admit that, despite owning a mild Scottish accent, I find it [hypocritically] unnerving to see someone of Indian origin speak with an American accent.

Some have suggested however that this pick ‘n’ mix identity means that I have been taking on a bit of a ‘split persona’. But then again, I can always point out that I used to celebrate Bihu in a Scottish psychiatric hospital!