Southall Memories

A Memory of Southall.

My parents, who came to England from India in 1955, when I was 3 months old, moved to Southall in 1959, from Whitton, when I was 4. I remember Southall Broadway at that time-there was actually a saddlery business there! C. Quinion, Saddlery! Hard to imagine such a thing today, but at that time I assume Southall was “in the sticks” and people could go riding. Mum and Dad first rented the upstairs at 43 Abbotts Road from a Punjabi landlady, so I started school aged 4 at Beaconsfield Rd Junior School, just round the corner. My memories of “Beaky’s” are among my happiest! I am still in touch with 2 friends from that time and would love to reconnect with others!

“Beaky’s” was a good school. I remember my first day. I had to sign the register with my full name and I remember doing it-Sandya Narayanswami-so I knew how to write my very long name by age 4. I remember kindergarten before this. The Headmistress when I started was Miss Webster. She once told me that when she was a child, there were no zip fasteners, and clothes had only buttons or hooks. She was succeeded by Mrs Goodall. I liked them both and I liked my teachers: Mrs Swift, Miss Farr, Mr Hancock, Miss Sealy, Mrs Sturman, and others. Miss Sealy was a bit grim. Both my brother and sister came to the school after me. My favorite “Dinner Lady” was Mrs. Parks. Another, Mrs Peck, gave us a kitten-our cat, “Kitty”. The third, Mrs Hicks, was not as friendly. I loved school lunches. These were sit-down lunches at hexagonal wooden tables with proper cooked food. I got to try out meat, which was a bit of an adventure as we were strictly vegetarian at home. We just didn’t say anything about it at home.

The pupils were very mixed: English, Indian, Anglo-Indian, Afro-Caribbean, Jewish, Christian, Sikh, Hindu, everything. Consequently, I don’t recall any racism and I became a very proactive, smart, creative kid-very much a class leader and usually Top of The Class. Our family, the Narayanswami family, is South Indian, so we were a bit of an anomaly as Southall evolved into a largely Punjabi community. However, both we and my parents had friends of many races and faiths.

I was in charge of my siblings during our walks to school and back, as I was the eldest, and I thought that a chore at the time. I remember the sweet shop next to the school, where I bought too many sweets, after which I had a couple of extractions of my first teeth. That cured me permanently of my sugar addiction. Frankly, it was a terrible custom, given the appalling dentistry of the time, to locate sweet shops next to junior schools. I remember many fun school trips: to Cheddar Gorge, the Royal Observatory in Greenwich where we saw the Prime Meridian, the Cutty Sark and so on. I also remember, aged 8, when Mrs Swift read The Hobbit out loud to us over a period of weeks after class was over. We were completely mesmerized and I have been a Tolkien fan ever since! I joined Osterley Park Library when I was 8, and went every Saturday, first with my Dad and then with my brother, which introduced me to a lifetime of good reading. The Martinware Collection upstairs was a wonderful highlight of library visits, an amazing collection of pottery-we were so sad when it was stolen.

In 1961 or 2, my parents bought 64 Northcote Ave, so it was a longer walk to school. I still dream about it and of taking the 207 bus to Ealing Broadway…. We kids played in the alleyways behind the gardens and I still dream about those too, my visual memories being those of an 8-year-old. Our next-door neighbours, the Nannery and Butcher families, who shared a house, were English, and we grew up with their kids, Stephen Nannery and Susan Butcher. We lived at Northcote Ave until 1977, when my parents moved to the Staines area. My Mum worked for BOAC/BA and my Dad was also in the aviation business, specifically air freight. I recently became a General Aviation pilot and only now with a deeper understanding of aviation, have I come to appreciate his immense contribution to the expansion of Indian airports, by enabling them to accept cargo, which until he joined Global Air Freight, had all gone to India by sea. “Jim” Swami was well known to BA flight crews as he went to India 2 weeks of every month for business!

Various memories: playing on the swings at Spikes Bridge Park, playing in Southall Park with friends who lived on Park Ave. Southall Market, which I remember when it was a beast market as well as afterwards. Going to the Dominion cinema, watching Bollywood movies, and walking over the railway bridge to the library. One couldn’t miss the gasometer and the water tower! A children’s birthday party at Lady Margaret Rd where I ate sardine sandwiches for the first time-delicious! Annual trips to India to visit family starting at age 8-flying was very different then!

After I finished at Beakys, I passed the 11+ and was assigned to Drayton Manor Grammar School. I was the only Indian kid at that school for 2 entire years and the racism I encountered was simply appalling. It lasted the entire time I was there, and its downstream effects have persisted my entire life. Nobody did a thing to help me. I had only 1 friend and I left a very different person to the one I was at Beaky’s. Like Frodo Baggins, I was broken down and rebuilt into something very different, but the Beaky’s child-smart, creative, proactive, a leader-is the person I really am. It has taken me many years to understand that.

University, however, was a life saver and allowed me to start recovering that person! I did a BS and a PhD, at the Universities of Leicester and St Andrews, respectively, and am probably the first Indian girl from Beakys to do a PhD! Indeed, I went back to tell Mrs Goodall I had got my PhD, and she was very pleased! Her son was doing his! At Leicester, I was on both University Challenge and Mastermind and was the first Indian woman on both these shows. I became a research scientist and moved to the US in 1981 and now live in Los Angeles. However, I still visit Southall when I come to London to see the family and after living in 5 countries for extended periods (India, England, Scotland, France and the US) Southall remains the only place that feels like “home”. If anyone here remembers me, please do drop me a line!