With Open Mouths, Southall Speaks...

Sharan Hunjan: teacher and poet, at the release of her debut book 'Open Mouths' with Rough Trade Books. Join us as I explore her poetry through the themes of love, language, food and home.

There is something about being from Southall that connects you, it’s like a secret club or a badge of honour. To meet a fellow Southallian outside of Southall is an opportunity to scurry off to the corner of the room and share stories of people with common surnames or local road names in hope you find a connection- you will. This is what happened with Sharan and I.

I also knew that Sharan would be the first person I wrote about for Southall Speaks. Mid-way through our teaching careers we find ourselves at a secondary school in the Heart of Hackney. My ears perked up and my left eyebrow slightly raised upon hearing that Sharan Hunjan, the new English Teacher will be starting. ‘Oh she’s Panjabi!’.

Once the formalities were over, it didn’t take us very long to establish we both grew up in Southall. Sharan in ‘old’ Southall by Featherstone, and me in ‘new’ Southall by Allenby. I text my parents that evening, ‘Do we know any Hunjans’ in Southall?!’

Fast forward almost 7 years, a few jobs and a few kids (hers not mine) later we meet for our monthly cup of cha and walk around Vicky Park. ‘Atz I think we might look at houses in Berkshire, it’s only a 30 min drive from my Mums’. ‘Shaz I think I wanna get closer to home too; maybe by the time I’m 40’.

This made me wonder: as second or third generation immigrants born here- where is home? To my Mum she says its Kenya not India. When her and her brothers came to Barking in the 60s she was doodling Kenyan flags all over her school stationary. I definitely didn’t doodle the Union Jack, so what will Sharan’s kids be doodling as reminders of ‘home’ if they leave East for the ‘burbs beyond West London? Maybe they’ll be drawing the beautiful flag of Palestine they see daily, proudly waving on every other lamppost in the area.

In 2018 Sharan embarked on a journey with poetry collective 4 BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE. With a joint book, a pamphlet in a series, panel chats at the Southbank and an Edinburgh Fridge Festival to boot, Sharan is stage-left about to perform for the launch for her first solo book: Open Mouths.

One of the first poems she performed on her book launch night was Scrambled Eggs. On the page I found bits of it funny, I know Kiki so I can totally imagine her fussing over roti and going for eggs and toast instead. When I heard her perform it though, I could feel the sense of frustration and sadness that Sharan feels around passing on her culture to her children and the worry that it will get lost. In the days after the book launch we ruminated over further cups of cha and I asked Sharan ‘could that be one of the reasons you want to get closer to home?’ Passing on the love of Panjabi food and the Panjabi language to future generations is important to Sharan; and they both require Open Mouths.

Food and Language are important features in Sharan’s poetry. Fan favourite Pariah made an un-planned feature at the end of the night. It explores the ‘English’ language upon the discovery that a lot of English words were actually taken (stolen) from Desi languages such as Panjabi, Hindi and Urdu. As if pillaging and looting our resources weren’t enough, our languages were up for grabs too. CHITTIS with chit-chat and punch recipes with PANJ ingredients remind us that although language and culture is forever changing and updating, it could easily be lost under the guise of ‘moving with the times’. Maybe we’re also dealing with the left-over anxiety of our ancestors, that everything is about to be lost (taken, stolen). We have to hold on to our own words, and our recipes. The poem ends with a tongue-in-cheek ‘NAM-AS-TEY’, to me it read like a confident decision has been made. Although Panjabi identity and language is merging and dissolving into British life, that we as adult British-Panjabis tasked with raising the next lot, are walking the knife’s edge between fitting in to society and embracing our cultures and are deciding against assimilation with a simple statement: ‘Nah, I’ma stay’.

A couple of weeks before the book launch we were doing that thing that a lot of millennials do: having two separate conversations on two different media platforms. We were discussing our respective days ahead over whatsapp when ‘ping’ a insta DM appears: ‘Look at what Southall has now!!!’ with a link to ‘Southall Coffee House’ on Seva Drive. ‘That’s the new gentrified part by the water tower Shaz, there’s a cool shop there that I want to go to too, the owners are Panjabi and they’re actually from Southall’ and I send her a link to the ‘House of AEIOU’ instagram page. ‘I can’t believe what Southall is now’ she replied. Were we excited or nervous? Our special little town had done an excellent job of avoiding the first wave of gentrification in London, was it now going to drastically change?

I believe the next generation of Southallians are ready to steer Southall Culture in the direction we want it to go but I can’t help but worry. Is our ‘home’ going to start losing its anchor? Are the roots our parents and grandparents planted slowly being pulled out of the grounds and parks we used to roam around during our summer holidays? Will the last of our parents left in Southall all finally leave and follow their sons and daughters to Berkshire and beyond? I hope not, I hope we all return home- but where is home, really?

In Do Not Open Your Mouths Sharan explores the role of Panjabi daughters growing up in their homes. She says they:

‘aren’t allowed out at night but sons are.
bring shame onto families, hide it in their bellies.
cannot date.’

Maybe that’s why we left. To discover ourselves, to we find out who we were as women independent of our families. And maybe that’s why we’re ready to return; maybe home is a place we return to when we have discovered who we are.