The Bolton I can truly call my home

I used to walk in that park when I first came to Bolton. And sometimes I would sit there in the evening, wondering if I should put an end to my life.

Now I can look back on the young man I used to be, from the vantage point of the years. I am married now and settled in this town. My children now are older than that young man. But then he was only 19 and he was a stranger here and he could not see a future for himself. His life till then had seemed a long road of misfortune and sorrows.

I had been born in Kenya, my father having travelled from India to work on the railways. Later he returned home to Gujarat, but he left me behind, and I grew up in the care of my stepmother in a tiny room with mud walls. We were very poor and there was little food in our home.

At the age of nine, I was travelling to Uganda in an estate car, when the car overturned, and I was thrown out through the windscreen and under the vehicle. For two weeks I was in a coma. I lost my right eye, and my hearing was damaged, my jaw broken and my right hand crushed.

I had many reasons to feel sorry for myself as I grew up into my teens.

It was a time also of unrest in Kenya. I wanted to return to my father in Gujarat, but his smallholding could not support another son and he was not very welcoming to me, and so I decided to travel to England where I had a relative -- a married sister who had settled in Bolton.

When I finally arrived in Bolton, I found my sister and her husband living in Washington Street, in a two-up two-down which has now been demolished. I found the cold of the English winter so ferocious I took to sleeping not just under the blankets but under the mattress also. And still I was shivering.

At first I imagined I would have little difficulty finding a job. Back in Kenya I had been a good student. I had obtained 11 Cambridge Overseas 0-Levels, and had even taught for seven months, and though Gujarati was the language we spoke at home, I could speak some English also, because our lessons had been taught in that language. And so, in my search for employment in Bolton, my first thought was to try to become a teacher, but I was soon disillusioned to discover that my language was deemed not good enough.

And so I became a labourer. I worked on the night shift, dragging heavy bundles of cloth and lifting them onto carts, but my disability denied me the strength for proper lifting, and so I would contrive to lift the burden somehow, using my knee to support its weight, but in the process I only managed to damage my knee as well.

The job in the mill entailed long hours with few breaks, and most of my Asian workmates were uneducated and could speak no English.

There was an atmosphere of fear among them -- the fear of losing their jobs if they did not do everything they were told to do, even when the demands made on them by their bosses were exploitative. I became involved in negotiations to convert three work-shifts into four, and we were successful and won better terms for the workers, but even then many were afraid they would lose their jobs if they signed the new agreement.

I used to help them write letters to sort out problems, and I would accompany them to the Social Security or the Tax Office, to interpret for them and to assist in any way I could. They would be grateful and call me "Master" or "Teacher".

It seemed that I could help my community, but I did not seem able to help myself.

Finally I applied for a job at the DHSS in Bolton. I applied as a clerical assistant, although my qualifications might have fitted me to apply for an officer's position. The interview lasted 15 minutes. They scanned my job-search record and asked me why I thought I had been unsuccessful in more than 20 job applications. I decided to be honest with them.

I told them I believed there were several factors, and one of them perhaps was racial discrimination. At the end of the interview I went outside in my borrowed suit and I told a friend I had certainly not got this job.

In fact I was wrong. Maybe it was honesty that got me the job. Maybe it was luck -- my luck turning at last. They offered me a job -- but not, as it turned out, in the DHSS, but in the Inland Revenue.

It is certainly not a job that will endear me to the world at large, I know this -- I'm afraid to say, I work as a tax inspector. Not the most popular job in the world, but I enjoy it.

At last I am able to say I enjoy my work. I am the only Asian tax inspector in Bolton.

Nowadays when I walk in Queen's Park in the evening, my thoughts are more contented than those of the young man I used to be -- the young man of 19, the outsider.

Now I am the governor of a primary school, the secretary of my Hindu temple, the chairman of the Bolton Hindu Forum which encompasses all 22 Hindu communities in the town, the president of the Bolton Interfaith Group. And I have been a magistrate for 18 years.

I have seen the Asian community become more settled over the years, more respected and integrated. I have seen barriers come down, and doors open to opportunities I once could only dream of.

I belong more to Bolton now than to India. The main part of my life I have lived in this town. Now when I sit on the park bench in the evening, in this new century, I can feel at home.