Who Am I: Being Bri’esh

*Goes to job interview*

Dave: So, tell me more about yourself? Where are you really from?

Have you ever met a Dave or Tracy in your life? The ones who ask the stupidest questions. Like why is it that I’m being judged for the person that I am? Why am I being judged for being different? Well, I wanted to dive in deeper to develop my self-conscious and figure out who I really am. Who Am I: Being Bri’esh is a project, which was created to give me the chance to explore myself as a person and also to learn more about the person I wanted to be. As a photographer, I really felt my passion laid in the direction of fashion photography, but I never took that turn into illustrating the meaning behind a photograph, until it came to the moment that I knew what I wanted to capture. But now was the time to change that perspective and search for a way to bring the people of the South Asian community together.

Through my life, living as a brown person in a white world, I had no sense in understanding what it even meant to be South Asian. I felt lost and confused as to who I was. I never fitted in with the white kids and I never fitted in with the brown kids either, but yet I had friends who were of different races; Asian, White, and Black. All I saw was that I was a westerner that belongs to a family from a third world country. But the history of how my family came to the UK is no different to how any ‘foreigner’ appeared in the UK. Attacked by the White British and yet told to go back to where we came from? Our families never backed down. They fought and fought until we were given our rights to stay in this country.

As time passed, people's biased thoughts started to change, but we still experienced racism. But why is it that racism still exists? It exists because not everyone perceives change. We are grateful that our families have fought for our right to live and work in UK and given us the freedom to live a life away from the disasters that had occurred in our third world countries.

As well as my confusion, I led my research based on the ideas that were flowing around my head. At first, I felt like I first belonged as a British Indian, as I have based many of my previous projects on my British Indian nationality but had never been around the word ‘South Asian’, so I never really understood the meaning behind it. After exploring further into what it meant to be a South Asian, then I began to climb the ladder and connect with others of the British South Asian community. Through my research, I had to think about what I really wanted to create as part of my project.

At this point it was 3 months into the beginning of my project, and I was still clueless and looking for a fashion designer to work with. Having searched the entire web and my social media, God gave me a sign and showed the work of a highly talented fashion designer whose work I fell in love with, the moment I saw their page. Who is this person and how have I never met them before? Sapna Patel, the founder of by.sapna is a 22 year old fashion designer from London who inspires to connect with her heritage as a British South Asian with her vision to shed her light on the underground music scene, where fusion music and fusion fashion are seen to come together to create an indo-western environment. With both of our connections, we were in progress of creating a fabulous project.

This project was initially set to show who I am as a British South Asian, but it showed more than that, it created a way for me us to make our way into the creative industries and break the stereotypes that have been applied on us as South Asians. Through this collaboration, I have been able to connect with so many people who understand what it is like to live as creative British South Asian. A life where we get to live our dream instead of what we were “destined” to be since childhood. Who am I: Being Bri’esh is shown as a statement to capture what it means to be a British South Asian. The word ‘Bri’esh’ created to combine my dual identity, ‘Bri’ coming from the word British and ‘Esh’ coming from the word Desh which translates to country in Hindi. The word creates a slang for those who pronounce words such as British as ‘Bri’ish’ or Bottle of Water as ‘Bo’h’ol o’ wa’er’ incorrectly, but yet it makes us as British people to be unique from the rest of the world. This project has been something that has given my identity a new look as well as taught me more about my culture and given me the chance to be different rather than being seen the same as everyone else.

Through this collaborative creation, I had met other creatives such as Shivani Patel, Vinay Jobanputra, Rianka Gill, Amana and Parin Suchak, who had participated in aiding with the vision of Sapna's garments and worked alongside remarkable poets including Dillon Parmar, Nikita Chada, Jagjeet Doheley, Yasmeen Fathima Thantrey, Priyanka Moorjani, Sanjana Narayanan, Anonymous D and Prerana Kumar, as well as illustrator Abinaya Kamalanathan who had shared their work based on their thoughts and lived experiences as British South Asian diasporans. Having this connection, I felt immensely close to my culture and heritage, and it gave me the confidence in who I am as a person of colour in a British society.