She was born in a small village called Nadiad in Gujarat State, India in 1948 and after a day or so she and her mother made the journey straight to Delhi as her father was already working there. She has two older brothers and a younger sister and did have two other older brothers before all the siblings were born but they died through illness. "I have great memories of living in Delhi. Back then it was amazing. We had a great life there and it was a lot easier. We spent a lot of time going out, we didn't have a TV, and so we spent time with friends. We used to go to our neighbour's house to watch TV sometimes, but then my eldest brother ended up buying us a TV so we didn't have to keep going there. I also remember that there was a time slot to get water for our house between about 6 am until 9 pm as at that time there were water shortages and our apartment was on the top floor. So, we had to go to the first floor and bring up the water in a tub to fill the large drum beside their apartment so they could continue to use water".
Her father worked for a life insurance company, and her mother was a housewife, however, she was also the group secretary for the Gujarati society and every year presented her speech to an audience of notable people. Since she was part of the committee, she had an opportunity through an invitation, to go to the then Prime Minister - Jawaharlal Nehru’s residence to tie a rakhi (where sisters of all ages tie an amulet in the form of a piece of string, around the wrists of their brother for their protection, and in return receiving a gift – the celebration is called Rakshabandan).
When she was thirteen or so her father sent her to boarding school in Jaipur for better learning opportunities and to experience new things. She only managed to stay there for three months, as she hated being away from her family and missed them a lot, she was very close to her dad as he was to her "I was always in tears most nights. My father used to come and visit me now and again, after a while, he realised how upset I was as I used to tell him to take me home all the time, then finally, one day he took me back home, which was great, but all the money was wasted". She then started a private school in Delhi for four or five years, but then her dad wasn't able to continue to pay the fees for her and her sister anymore, so they both moved to a state school. She finally went to Punjab University in Delhi and studied Economics, Sociology and English. Then in 1968 when she was twenty years old her dad died from a heart attack, and she could no longer concentrate on her studies properly, she missed him terribly as she was very close to him. She ended up failing her exams twice and then finally graduated when she was twenty-three. "In Delhi, a lot of girls were being educated, this happened mainly in the big cities, if I was still in the villages, it might have been different as it is for a lot of girls". After this, she spent some time taking care of the family and started a keypunching course at twenty-five. "In those days there weren't many women working even though they were highly educated, there were a lot of restrictions for girls". Delhi was more progressive for that generation, and their family was quite progressive in terms of education, but in contrast, the ideas of women's roles were still behind in many respects. "I wasn't allowed to go out to see a movie without my brothers etc. But then again, I was also not married - typically in that generation women were married by eighteen. In the Gujarati tradition, you can only marry someone from your caste i.e. another Patel... "I'm a Patel from Sojitra, one of the six villages (Cha Gham - Bhadran, Dharmaj, Karamsad, Nadiad, Sojitra, and Vaso), and you can only marry from those six apart from your own".
When she was aged twenty-three years, her mum and uncle started looking for a husband for her. But they had to keep travelling to Gujarat to meet them, which was a problem as she had to stay two to three months in Gujarat at her uncle's house every time because Delhi and Gujarat are about 14 hours apart by train. "I didn't want to marry until later and I was fussy with whom I married and I didn't like the men who I was presented with so I kept saying no, I also wanted to find someone who was from another country as I wanted to travel". Eventually, at twenty-seven she agreed to marry and so did her future husband from Karamsad. "It was quite Orthodox in those days, we had to pay a dowry, you couldn't have a divorce as there was too much shame you can bring to the family and so many other things".
And so, she was married on 28th April 1974. Her husband was an Engineer from the village Karamsad, but he was already working and living in Mwanza, Tanzania. After fifteen days of marriage, he went back to Tanzania to work, but she didn't go with him and continued to live in Karamsad with her in-laws - who had come back in 1970/71 from many years of living and working in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya - "It was too complicated for me to move to Tanzania with my husband...I just got on with it, in those days you just did whatever was expected of a wife or daughter". And so, her longing to travel slowly disappeared.
After about four or five months her in-laws decided to move to London, UK. She then moved back to Delhi to live with her mum for a while and after two years, in February 1976 her husband came to Delhi to take her to London, they then left on 10th March 1976 for a flight to London. The dream of travelling came back although...
"When I arrived in London I was in shock, everything seemed so closed and small. We stayed in a rented three-bedroom house bordering Tooting/Streatham, together, there was six of us". They didn't have a washing machine back then and some other white goods so they were washing all the clothes by hand. "It was tough. My husband, sister-in-law and I had to look for a job, as my father-in-law was the only one supporting everyone with his job". After a few months, her mother in laws friend's wife was working on Oxford Street in Debenhams and there was a vacancy, she applied for the job immediately and had the interview but she only had an Indian passport so she was not allowed to work there. She had the same issue when she got the job offer for BHS (British Home Stores). "In the end, a relative introduced me to a vacancy at Genyk, it was a factory that made birdcages from what I remember, I went for the interview in Mitcham and got the job so I started right away". But after eight months she fell pregnant in May 1976. She was extremely ill throughout her pregnancy always sick and had lost lots of weight. But she had to keep working to bring the money in. Her husband also got a job at a factory "I think it was Corona beer, I can't remember exactly, he was an engineer there".
She had her daughter in February 1977 and after three months returned to work, her grandma (mother-in-law) looked after her whilst everyone else worked. "I was earning forty pounds per week and contributed about ten pounds per week to my father-in-law for the bills etc". But in 1977 she was made redundant, luckily Genyk helped them to get another job at a factory called Smith Meters in Streatham Vale, they made gas meters and so she started there in 1978 as a gas meter calibrator and worked Monday to Friday from 8 am to 5 pm, "it was hard work and lots of manual labour but I persevered, we had to get by". There were a lot of Indian factory workers at Smith Meters, and all the supervisors and managers were white men. She was there for twenty-two years until the factory shut down and, at that time, there wasn't anyone of colour that I knew that was in a supervisor or manager position. She felt that they were kind of held down and weren't promoted, although there wasn't any racism toward them directly or verbally. "But us labourers helped and supported each other like a community".
By then they were all working full-time and in 1978 her sister-in-law managed to buy a four-bedroom house for them all to live in and "we finally bought a washing machine! We all worked very hard together and eventually moved again". As her daughter became a toddler, her grandma would take her out quite a lot in the pushchair, and because she didn't speak any English (she was the only one in the house that couldn't speak English) and she always wore a sari she was always being called paki. "It must have horrible for her to experience that and she must have been scared. I didn't get any names called at me and didn't personally feel any racism, maybe because I was wearing western clothes...I never really wore any Indian clothes outside the house unless we were going to a wedding or Indian event. It was very racist back then and lots of Indians were being called Paki all the time. Maybe it is still as bad, but not as obvious I'm not sure".
She finally got her British passport ten years after she arrived, which meant things were easier for travelling abroad, but she couldn't go anywhere as they didn't have any money to travel, she even had to miss her sister and brother's wedding and never really saw them. They were in India and America.
Eventually, her sister-in-law and father-in-law moved to Aylesbury for work, so they sold the house and she, her husband and daughter rented a small one-bedroom flat in Tooting Bec. Eventually, they found a council flat in Streatham, Furzedown area. So, they all moved there in 1982 when their daughter was five years old. "I realised that life in London was hard, there was no time to relax or even enjoy life, we were always working just to get by, I worked so many hours and did so much overtime so that we could save as much as we could". Her husband managed to get a job at the Intercontinental Hotel on Park Lane as an engineer, "we had such a great time there and some nice parties".
"I had to wake up at 5 am every morning, make all the dinner and lunch and then drop my daughter early in the morning to the childminders who would take her to primary school, and then take a lift from my friend to work. We couldn't afford a car either or even to take any driving lessons, my father-in-law would buy my daughter clothes to help as well. I then picked her up every day from the childminders at 5.30 pm. This was my routine every day for many years. I also started working for Avon - a beauty company, in the late '70s until 2002 as a representative selling their products to everyone I knew. I did this during my free times in the evenings and weekends to earn extra money".
During this time her father-in-law was very ill in hospital and when he was discharged, he wanted to come and live with them in their flat. He knew he may not have long to live and he wanted to spend his final months with his son -this was a tradition. So, her mother-in-law would travel from North London (which is where they eventually settled) to see them and sometimes stay. But she also went back to stay with her daughter who was on her own with her son.
They managed to save enough money and borrow some from family to buy a three-bedroom house near to them and they were all going to stay there with her mother and father and law, but her father-in-law passed away in 1991 and didn't get the chance to live with them in their new house. They eventually moved to their house in October 1991 with her mother-in-law as well. "It was hard work, we had a huge mortgage and a house to run so I just kept working and working and even ended up getting a part-time weekend job at Makro, so eventually I was working seven days a week. Makro was far, I had to take three buses to get there and it took me one and a half hours each way".
But in June 1994 they had a big shock to the family, her husband died, he was only forty-eight and she was forty-six. She couldn't understand what had happened. "Everything changed, it was just me, my daughter and my mother-in-law now. I just continued to work but for only five days a week at Smith Meters". In 2001 she was eventually made redundant from Smith Meters as the factory was closing down. Luckily, she managed to get a full-time job at Makro again and did lots of weekend overtime.
"This was my life – work, work, work, I didn't do anything else for enjoyment, we had to survive and save money. My daughter went to University in London and managed to get a job so she used to help a lot...I finally retired in 2012 aged sixty-four. My mother-in-law had passed away in 2010 so I was on my own by then as my daughter was married in 2004 and moved to West London. Looking back at my life, I just see it as a lot of hardship. I didn't think my life in London would be like this. It felt a bit like a prison, the houses all looked the same and the doors and windows were always closed, in India everything was open and free, life felt easier in India then, we also had people who would help and support each other in the community. I did find London very clean, there wasn't much litter anywhere back then and I made some great friends...Anyway, this is my life in London, hard work most of my life. But now I am free, and since 2010 I have been travelling a lot more and try to go away two to three times a year".
They came to London for a better life and better opportunities for themselves and their children, and faced prejudices and racism, making life harder than they would have imagined. This is the story of one of many who came during the 60’s and 70’s whether through initiation by the Government to fill jobs or for a better life and more opportunities. This story is only the beginning.