A journey balancing integration and individuality

I have been working as an anaesthetist since 1988, when I entered specialty training in India, about 35 years ago. I came to the UK after a full career in India in 2013. I completed my CESR while in India and came to the UK as a Consultant. I had prior UK experience as I had spent 1 year in the UK on a sabbatical in 1999. I have been working at Leighton Hospital in Crewe since 2014.

I was born in India but would consider that I had a somewhat privileged upbringing as I studied at a public school that was originally set up by the Church of England in 1869 and followed a lot of the old British public-school culture even when I joined in 1969. My father was an officer in the Indian Army and my holidays were spent in the military cantonment environment. Ethnically, we were a Bengali Hindu family with deep roots in what is now Bangladesh and was significantly impacted by the Partition of India. In the east, the partition was a much milder process but no less disruptive in socio-economic terms. My family roots go back to the erstwhile Princely State of Shushong in Mymensingh District, where my great-grandfather was the youngest sibling of the then Maharaja. Most of my relatives had to seek security in government jobs following the Partition and suffered substantially because of it.

We were well entrenched in our ethnicity despite being in an environment that included people from all corners of the country and having a keen sense of family and home. Holidaying at my Nan’s place in a small town, Santiniketan, I came in close contact with family life and people in Bengal. Santiniketan is a university town and houses the Viswa Bharati University, established by the great Indian litterateur and Nobel Prize winner, Rabindranath Tagore. My grandfather, who unfortunately passed before my birth, had been the Vice Chancellor of the University and an academic of substantial standing with a PhD from Sorbonne.

I was a senior anaesthetist in the Indian Army. I came to the UK, first on a short sabbatical of a year in 1999, and then in 2013 as a consultant, initially in locum posts, then finally in my current substantive post in 2014. Coming to the UK was a huge step in terms of my personal life and stability. The visa rules can be quite hostile and my immediate family members (wife and sons) were refused visas multiple times to even visit me, despite my good standing in the NHS. My sons are adults with significant psychological issues and were looking to get into university here as mature learners. I had to go to the Immigration Tribunal to get my elder son to visit me. He is now doing his Master’s in International Development, following his graduation in the UK.

On a personal front, my schooling and military background made me very adaptable and resilient. My colleagues and the Trust were extremely supportive and helped me on this long and tedious journey dealing with an adversarial immigration system. Apart from that, the social interactions within the department were quite different from my experiences in the military, as we were used to behaving like a big family that pretty much took over all aspects of life, from social interactions to support in times of difficulty. Initially, it took a little while to get used to the isolation. Now with my family and dogs for company, I do not really miss it. With time the social interactions in the workplace have become more informal.

As a consultant one can function as an individual professionally and even outside the working environment in one's personal life there is no external social pressure to conform. Coming to the UK made me interested in the place, the life, and the culture here and I travelled the length and breadth of the country and even on one occasion attended the Midnight Mass at Christmas. I have never expected people here to accommodate me and have engaged with expatriate Indians to stay connected with my cultural and ethnic roots. We have a strong student association from my medical school, and we tend to meet up annually. The journey here has been one balanced between integration and individuality. Ten years ago, Crewe did not have a South Asian store and it was difficult to manage ingredients for our cuisine but now there are several shops, and shopping Indian has become commonplace. Getting to the UK has meant understanding the way of life here and the values that bind it together. They are quite different from my past experiences. There is a degree of compartmentalisation – one version of me maintains its Indian identity (I have retained my Indian nationality) and another is British. I would like to think that the former is intact, while I understand the British system well.

I can credit the NHS for its approach to integrating us - there is no overt pressure or disengagement due to my ethnicity, even from patients. There have been moments, very few though, where all has not been well. These have been only undercurrents and difficult to pin down. The one episode in 1999, where I was moved from a list at a patient's request because the patient wanted a doctor of British ethnicity, will fortunately never happen today, I am sure. I still see the pressures International Medical Graduates face the lack of protection and job security and having to deal with an immigration system that does little to really value their contributions. I have tried to help in whatever I could do by taking on the post of SAS Tutor in the Trust for 3 years and being a Mentor to SAS colleagues. It is a long journey and once all is done here, we hope to return home to India, circumstances permitting.

You can read more stories celebrating South Asian heritage here.