Seetal Kaur

SK: Yeah, my teenage years were very turbulent in terms of coming to terms with my culture. And it was just a lot of rebelling going on. I didn't really want to be brown, I didn't really want to have anything to do with my family, etc. So yeah, it was quite a turbulent time.

AM: Yeah. So, like quite…yeah, like you said, very wholesome memories with family, but also as you got older, it's a turbulent coming of age?

SK: Yeah.

AM: So being like a visibly brown person in the UK, it's very understandable. Can you talk a bit more about the kind of places that you would spend your time then? So like you mentioned, you did like kind of summer schools, kind of classical music and dance. Were these places that you kind of considered safe spaces?

SK: Yeah, definitely. It's mainly because I had peers and friends there that we'd hang out together during the summer schools. So yeah, I think that was a big part of my upbringing and my childhood. And the organization was Leeds Centre for Indian Music and Dance at the time, and they're now called South Asian Arts UK, they're based in Leeds. And my mum actually ended up running the organization, she has now, for I think a good ten-plus years. So yeah, so it was mainly those kind of places during the summer. But I guess, you know, being a brown person, you don't have a lot of places to hang out. You're not really allowed to kind of go out too much. So it would be my friends’ houses, you know, that would be a kind of safe place, my mum assumed, you know, would be okay. And then just, we'd always like go to town, so Leeds city centre. There's a particular place called the Corn Exchange in Leeds where...I was into a lot of like grunge and metal music back then. So that was kind of like the cultural hub for moshers, as we were called back then, emos and moshers and goths and all that. So we used to hang out at the Corn Exchange. And then, yeah, just parks and stuff like that. I don't think we had many particular places we could go.

AM: That leads on actually really well to kind of my next question, which was going to be like would you say you were part of any subcultures? And what were the kind of significant ones that you knew growing up? And we'll look at this from like a digital angle as well shortly.

SK: Yeah.

AM: Like, just in general, like you've mentioned kind of this aspect as well of like loving metal music, like moshing.

SK: Yeah.

AM: That like a really big subculture you were involved in. Were there kind of any others?

SK: Yeah, I think that was the main one for sure. Like, in terms of the music I would listen to and the way I would dress, it definitely was kind of, yeah, grunge. Nirvana was like my favourite band and all of that. So that was definitely a culture...subculture I belonged to in my teenage years, I would say. But then when I started getting into college, so sixth form, maybe like 17, 18, that was when I shifted to more like hip hop. I think, yeah, music was a big, big thing in my life. And when I came across M.I.A., she's a rapper and a musician, artist, kind of was quite big in, I think, the early 2000s, if I'm not wrong. So when I came across M.I.A., she really like bridged a lot of things for me. So, I was in this kind of rebellious vibe, and she really fit that. She had this rebellious attitude to her. But she also...it totally embraced and shouted about her Sri Lankan heritage, and her even political, you know, heritage and background. So I just really connected with M.I.A. Like, I even dyed my hair a bit blonde like her, like I started trying to dress like her with the same prints and stuff. And then I moved on to like hip hop and everything in sixth form. So yeah, I think M.I.A. got me out of that really more kind of darker phase of my life, and she really made me realize, oh my God, like there's a way to be proud of your culture and question it. And yeah, she really was a big role model for me.

SK: So yeah, it really evolved into Tumblr. And then what Amina and I ended up finding while we were at university was other brown girls, like other similar age, you know, in their 20s or, you know, early 20s, South Asian young women creating these profiles on Tumblr. But in such a like expressive way that they were proud of their culture, and they were using South Asian culture, maybe the way they dress or even food or any parts of their culture, and they were...the way they were dressing was fusing...you know, they were wearing South Asian jewellery with like western clothes or whatever. And they just started expressing this kind of middle ground where you can actually be cool and be proud to be brown. Because at the time it was very frowned upon, and seen as kind of shameful to be proud of your culture. We were called like, you know, freshies, or, you know, if you smelt like curry or tarka, like, if you smelt like the food of your culture, it was like a bad thing. And there was just a lot of embarrassment and like making fun of South Asian culture when we were at university, we found. And a lot of people wanted to be more like white people. Like, we went to Indian Society socials and, you know, we're all brown there. It might as well be like a gathering of white people. So Amina and I, we just found it was really, really refreshing, and definitely vibed with us in terms of promoting this idea that you can be proud of your culture and you can question it and it's cool, it's cool to do so. You can do it in a cool and creative way. So we found a lot of other South Asian women online doing the same thing, and we connected with them, we started messaging them. We started uploading our own content. And it was also quite political as well, like they'd share, you know, political questions and feminist ideas and views. So we really connected with the community online creatively, culturally and also like intellectually, for sure.

AM: No, thank you so much for answering that so eloquently as well. That's...no, as someone who's like a Pakistani young woman, I can really identify with that, because I think because university, and you meet people from your community who you don't really identify with. Like, I remember when I went to university, it was very middle-class South Asian who'd clearly grown up with like a lot of white people. Versus like, I grew up in a very working-class area in London where everyone looked like me. There was never really ever felt very ashamed of my identity. And then I started going to uni, I was like, this feels a little bit...this is confusing, this feels off. And that's where I think digital and social media really kind of steps in. And you touched upon this as well. Like, do you think, like you said, like, especially like a political aspect, do you think kind of digital cultures and social media had a really big influence on you in that area?

SK: Yeah, massive. It was huge. And it was just something that Amina and I really, really connected with. If you meet us...like, I think it was from my, you know, training in South Asian music and dance that I had this idea of, you know, being proud of my culture. Like, I was...I did love it. Like, I loved aspects of it. I loved to explore it and display it in a lot of ways. And then Amina, similarly, she'd always go to India every year, and she was very connected to her language and Islam. And so both of us definitely felt like, hey, we're like really interested in South Asian culture and really proud of it in some ways and want to shout about it, and, you know, talk about it. But the only space we can do that is online with all of these other kind of cool girls. But when we try and talk about it with our peers at university or, like I said, you know, Indian Soc or whatever, it's just people are not really vibing with it because they...you know, like you said, they're more interested in perhaps doing more things that white people would do. I remember introducing myself as Seetal, and then they were like...this girl was like, 'I like how you say your name all fresh'. Like, the proper way to pronounce my name was like a fresh way of saying it. So yeah, we just definitely found that we wanted a space to talk and discuss and be proud. And we just didn't find that in real life. We're...the only place we could find that was online. And a lot of other women and girls found the same thing, and we got...as soon as we started blogging on twobrowngirls.com, we started, you know, we’re sharing content and sharing what we're doing and what we're into, we got so many messages from girls from different parts of the world, America, Canada, Australia, even Pakistan and India, but mainly in these countries where Indian, South Asian communities were the minority. So, I remember one message from a girl in Australia, and she was like, 'Thank you so much for your blog, because you've helped me to find, you know, pride and curiosity for my culture, and not be ashamed of it in'...growing up in a white neighbourhood, where she was one of the only white...brown girls in her class. So, we definitely just wanted this message that it's cool to be proud of your culture, it's not something to be ashamed of. But then at the same time we had this, you know, a critical angle on it where we wanted to discuss the issues that we were facing as well, being part of two cultures.

Entry credit

Anya Amlani