Migrant Words
Hanif Kureishi, Sadia Shepard, Tania James, Shane Dorgi. Presented by Oliver Wyman.
Hanif Kureishi was greeted with huge applause as he arrived on the stage in the Durbar Hall at Diggi Palace Hotel to discuss the nature and experience of migration. Kureishi, who was bought up in the suburbs of London and then ‘migrated’ twenty miles away to Shepherds Bush joked that had been ‘more than enough migration’ for him, and that the journey from Delhi to Jaipur was ‘again too much migration.’ Kureishi observed that when first started writing, he realised there were few people doing what he was trying to do - put all the different aspects of growing up in England to Indian parents into one story, including the drugs, rock music, velvet trousers and the arranged marriage, because these stories of migration to England hadn’t been told yet.’ In the end, he said he had learned that to write was ‘to speak yourself.’ Tania James, who cited Dickens and Naipaul amongst her influences, said that though migration meant that people left their old lives and old countries, still ‘these ties aren’t severed and these borders really are very porous.’ Kureishi agreed that being outside was ‘a creative state’ and James observed that apart from cultural confusion, there were ‘other concerns’ in her that were perhaps more important to her, and that everyone has ‘layered identities,’ with natinonality being just one part of that. Sadia Shepherd agreed that though ‘I have been incredibly confused, I also find it creative,’ adding that ‘confusion is a natural impetus for a journey.’ The question of migration moved on to the question of identity, which Kureishi called ‘the most interesting question of all,’ saying that he alternated between times of not needing an identity at all to times when he started ‘to disintegrate’ without one. He also observed that identities are ‘useful in terms of getting paid but when you sit down to write, you need to throw all that away and write as a fresh self.’
