In the East End... (part the first)

One of the things that I've found most amusing about this sojourn in somewhere in the middle of Bethnal Green & Bow, Mile End and Hackney is that its residents constantly surprise you. There are rows and rows of two, three and for storey brick row houses, all with names such as Twig Folly Close, Digby Knottisford, Oystercatcher Close and Gawber Street. For your amusement, I should mention that I've also seen street signs for Sugar Loaf Walk, Dug on Street (though my A to Z tells me that should be Duggon), Poultry, Gerund Rd, Railway Children Walk, Old Jewry, Garlick Hill, and Ribbon Dance Main. (I've been keeping a list!). Oh, and have I mentioned that I'm staying in Gunmaker's Lane, off of Gun Wharf?

Just for fun, I thought it would be interesting to see how far the colonial connection goes: I wasn't surprised to find Madras Place or even Bombay St -- it's near Canada Water, for those of you who know this city; there's also a Bangalore St in Richmond, a Hyderabad Way in West Ham, and even a Mysore Road, near Clapham Junction. If I can manage it, I want to go and take a picture of the street sign for Mysore Rd. But seriously, I think it would be very interesting to see just how many colonial villages, towns and cities have lent their names in this way -- we're so familiar with the metropole-to-outpost flow of names, especially in North America with its plethora of 'New something' names but this other routing is just as interesting I think.

Staying in this part of London though is also teaching me about immigration here and the ways in which it is different from immigration into North America. One of the things that struck me almost immediately is how South Asian -- specifically Bangladeshi -- this neighbourhood is and how that identity is obvious in the clothes people wear and the ethnic enclave within which much of their lives seem to be lived in. I'm two kms away from the infamous Brick Lane (and I can't recommend the books Brick Lane (Monica Ali's novel) and Tarquin Hall's lived ethnography Salaam Brick Lane enough!) and it is obvious in between Brick Lane and here that there is a large and unintegrated community here. I don't know that this is either good or bad but even Mississauga and Brampton haven't prepared me for the large numbers of women in salwar-kameezes, hijabs, and burkas and men in a combination of long thobe, wolly socks and sneakers who walk around doing their shopping in little shops that wouldn't look out of place in working-class Bombay or Karachi or Lahore. (I will admit too that nothing prepares you to have them open their mouths and sound as though they've walked off the set of Eastenders but that's another story...).

The disturbing thing about this phenomenon -- or perhaps I should say the potentially disturbing thing -- is that I don't know that this isolation is by choice. I take the No 8 bus on my trips into Central London and could wax lyrical about how wonderful it is: it goes all the way from here past Brick Lane and Liverpool Street and the City to Oxford Circus and then onto Victoria. But while it is full of people from the Bangladeshi community when I get on and for a little while after, by the time the bus gets to Liverpool Street, it's mostly white folks heading off for work and shopping.... and I'm not sure that that's because they choose not to leave the East End or because they can't....