I had never seen a white person before arriving from Kenya to England – and the culture shock was palpable.

It was January 1969 and I was just weeks away from turning 10 when my parents, four sisters, brother and I touched down at Gatwick Airport in London.

Our migration would be the start of a deluge of racism I’d experience throughout my life.

I was born into the British protectorate of East Africa and had spent all of my early childhood there, in the coastal city of Mombasa.

I have memories of – during monsoon season – walking barefoot through calf-high water while carrying newly-polished shoes to get to school. My friends and I would also look for nails on the ground to give to the metal collector for money so we could buy roasted peanuts or a cube of milky ice as treats.

When my parents told me that we’d be moving to the UK for better opportunities, I was sad to be leaving this idyllic life.

We travelled via Benghazi in Libya mere months before (unbeknownst to us) the 1969 coup d’etat, in which Muammar Gaddafi and his supporters overthrew King Idris I.

At the airport, while we waited for the plane to be readied, I remember being scared of the tall military men with guns. I had never seen real guns in my life.

Back in Kenya, we had a large South Asian community around us (Picture: Bhagwati Bhat)

The flight to London was nerve-wracking to the point that I recall throwing up violently upon landing – I was so anxious and everything had suddenly become very real. The thought of having left my warm familiar surroundings made me feel as if I’d arrived on another planet.

It was a cold and gloomy winter afternoon in the capital and we were certainly not dressed for the British weather. In preparation for our journey, we had been advised to purchase cold weather clothes like scarves and gloves.

We were so naive, and with my parents having only lived in the warmer climates of India and Kenya, we had mistakenly bought satin ballroom gloves! With white gloves up to our elbows and racing hearts, we took a two-hour long, £5 taxi ride all the way to our new home in Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire.

This county town was majority-white in the 1960s and so we instantly felt like the odd ones out.

Back in Kenya – where we had a large South Asian community around us, as well as the majority-Black population – we didn’t really feel out of place. As a child, I couldn’t understand that my parents had made the decision to move to the UK.

It wasn’t long before myself and my siblings were enrolled into local schools, which were co-ed. This was yet another culture shock because I had only attended an all girls’ school, as was the norm in Kenya at the time.

Not only were we expected to share classes with boys (shock, horror!), but also to participate in country dancing with them as part of the PE curriculum. Before this, I had limited interaction with boys that I was not related to, and so I felt mortified by the thought of dancing with one.

Our PE teacher partnered me with a young boy, who was outspoken and brash. I remember the first lesson where he exclaimed, ‘I’m not dancing with her!’

Throughout my teen years, I just wanted to belong (Picture: Bhagwati Bhat)

I didn’t realise at the time that this was the first of many encounters I would have with racism growing up. Despite his objections, we were made to dance together for the rest of the term. I felt as though I was the one being punished.

I ended up moving schools three times in the year that we arrived. Local landlords were not keen to rent to an Indian family due to their own prejudice and misconceptions.

Every school I was sent to made the assumption that I could not speak English, despite it being taught as a core subject during my early childhood in Kenya. For this reason, myself and my siblings were often underestimated and pigeon-holed into remedial classes.

School dinners were no better than my classes. Because we came from a low income background, with both my parents working in factories, our family received free school meals.

Growing up Hindu, I had never eaten meat or even eggs. It was 1969, there were no vegetarian options available and so we were forced to conform. None of us wanted to stand out any more or cause a fuss, out of fear of alienation.

I so missed the fresh and colourful produce available to us in Kenya; it seemed like we had traded it all in for beef ravioli and pork faggots, both of which I despised for their taste and smell.

Throughout my teen years, I just wanted to belong and – above all – be accepted by my peers. For that reason, in order to be as ‘white’ as possible, we spent so much of our lives running from our heritage.

My older sister refused to go shopping at our local Sainsbury’s with my mother, who proudly donned a colourful sari everyday. If we did not assimilate, locals stared at us as if we were a new species in the zoo.

We were made to feel ashamed of our colour by being called ‘dirty darkies’ or be asked how long it took to grow our hair so long. More often than not, we were also constantly told to repeat what we had said, as if we were speaking another language – even though we only had slight accents.

I resigned myself to being the quiet one – tired of fighting to prove myself as being ‘normal’.

Boys at school would often shout racial slurs at us across corridors, teasing each other with the idea that one of us might fancy them (we didn’t!).

In sixth form, I even gained the not-so-endearing nickname ‘Smartie’, as I wore colourful clothes but was ‘brown on the inside’. I was just happy to finally fit in. I remember thinking to myself that the nickname was easier to explain than having to correct those who mispronounced my name, which was almost everybody.

Fortunately, my youth was not all doom and gloom, and we had our moments of joy among the prejudice and discrimination.

I have fond memories of inviting our English school friends along to a traditional Hindu festival, where we dressed the girls up in saris and danced the night away with the cute older boys, who were all my brother’s friends.

We also felt brave to face the judgement of our own already small and insular community head on; we knew that many of the elders thought of us as loose women for having male friends. I often felt stuck between two worlds: that of tradition and loyalty to my heritage, and the other full of new and exciting possibilities.

This feeling is still there today, although I’ve learned to better mediate between the two over time. I still worry that I will not be perceived as either ‘Indian’ or ‘British’ enough.

I now stand tall and proud of where I came from and who I am today (Picture: Bhagwati Bhat)

As an adult, the racism hasn’t stopped. While visiting my home town to see old school friends recently, a kid – no more than 10 years old – shouted: ‘Go back, you P**i’. I almost told him I’ve been here longer than him – by more than 50 odd years! – however, I was aware there was a parent with him who did not bat an eyelid to his child’s racist outcry.

These prejudices have left lasting scars, only remedied when I reflect on how far myself and my siblings have come.

We left our hometown behind many years ago, and have all led successful careers and had children of our own. There are three teachers, one engineer, three nurses and a fashion designer among us.

I’m also very proud to say that my daughter, Tara, is a model and singer-songwriter (with an incredible EP out now!)

I now stand tall and proud of where I came from and who I am today. I hope the future looks better for my children when it comes to the colour of their skin.

Having been born in Wembley – the heart of football in this country – I hope they won’t be racially abused as often as I was growing up. Living in London, with its diverse community languages and cultures, has definitely been less scary for my children.

You still get the occasional racist insult, but I hope things get better for racial minorities outside of big cities.

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When I came to this country as a child, my siblings and I were made to feel ashamed of our skin colour by being called ‘dirty darkies’.