I hesitated before writing about The Boy with the Topknot because for most of the time I was reading it my reaction was distinctly unfriendly. All’s well that ends well however & I now feel more kindly towards both book & author.
It was the misogyny wot done it – glancingly recognised by the author sometimes. And the two books with which I kept comparing it – ER Braithwaite’s To Sir With Love & Naipaul’s Half A Life, neither of which was written in the style of a modern misery memoir.
It was something of a shock to realise that Naipaul & Braithwaite experienced the life of a young male 20-something ‘New Commonwealth’ resident of Britain over half a century ago. Both share with Sanghera the privilege of an Oxbridge education, but the similarity ends there – for one thing of course neither was born here or had family in this country.
Back to what I see as misogyny. Although there is much about his agonising over keeping secret from his family the relationship with the girl he calls Laura, there is nothing – except the ‘inevitable end’ – about what this may have been like for her, nor whether he had been introduced to her family. I found myself reading most of the rest of the book from the point of view of the prospective bride, & also saying at many points – It’s not just Punjabi Sikhs who have problems you know.
For example I knew one couple in the 70s who were in a very similar predicament, needing to hide the precise nature of their relationship from the girl’s parents. In this case however their backgrounds could hardly be more alike – white, English, middle class, same university. Still they needed to employ subterfuge to disguise the fact that they were living together, complete with joint mortgage; the clash a generational one, modern free versus old fuddy duddies for whom this was Living In Sin.
I am also reminded of one of my student flatmates who returned from a date spitting nails, incandescent with rage. [I should explain that in those days a date, certainly a first one, was usually, though of course by no means always, an extremely chaste affair, the most difficult problem whether to stick to the old way of letting the boy pay for everything, or insist on going Dutch].
Do you know, he explained to me that he would never be able to marry me because I am not Jewish. WHAT DOES HE THINK I AM? We only went to the pictures, for heaven’s sake. Why ever should I think of marrying him?
Towards the end of the book – when it finally sank in that I am even older than his mother, & had carried out something like her journey in reverse by the time she arrived in Wolverhampton, I started wondering how I might react to the idea that his mother might be my granddaughter’s mother in law. With a certain concern, I think, but more about my prospective grandson in law, who still does not seem entirely to have rid himself of the idea that a girl is lost to her own family when she marries.
I was also taken aback by the journalistic arrogance with which he approached the attempt to get hold of his father’s health & criminal records. I know it is all too easy to ascribe such reaction to a kind of racism – because it does happen so often – but to expect neatly typed NHS records going back to the 1960s – that’s just doctors for you, and not just Indian ones either. He should see mine – or better still, the racks of them in the old NHS Central Registry. Just look how long it took for any of us to acquire the right to see them.
And misogyny is there again in his encounter with a ‘less slim, less friendly, & less young colleague, with the charm of a wet dishcloth’. He also seems to fail to realise that the explanation for her mistake about when the Wolverhampton Crown Court came into existence is given a few lines above from his own memory – friendliness & charm work two ways, if only he had tried to steer her into thinking about that.
One other tangential thought which struck me. What an intriguing coincidence that Wolverhampton, the focus for Enoch Powell’s infamous speech on immigration in 1968, should in its multicultural way, have produced, instead of rivers of blood, streams of ink from two writers for the Top Peoples Paper of today. Caitlin Moran refers often to her experience of life in Wolverhampton during that same period, as the eldest of a large catholic family. She has also written about her own experience of what the city had to offer by way of education – very different from what it gave to the boy with the topknot.
Every marriage affects many more than just the two people directly involved. Although social, cultural, religious & racial differences can add to the difficulties of adjustment & compromise needed, in the end it is our own personality & effort which make the difference.
