How it started

My parents brought me to the UK in 1965, as a three-year-old, and we lived in Southall – known then as ‘Little India’, as many immigrants from the subcontinent had initially moved there. This was a happy time. I was part of a warm Sikh community, going to the Gurdwara every Saturday, playing with other brown children, shopping in South Asian stores, and watching Hindi films at the cinema. In 1971, when I was nine, my parents moved to Hastings. There were only a couple of other South Asian families in the town, and for the first time I realised that I was ‘brown’. The years in Southall, luckily, had given me a strong sense of identity, but now I had a sense of being an outsider.

The thirteenth century poet Rumi wrote, ‘The wound is the place where the Light enters you.’ In 2020, around the time of the Black Lives Matter movement, I found this out for myself, when someone I had known for a long time openly attacked me on Facebook when I spoke about colonial history in India, accusing me of being illiterate and posting ‘counterculture crap’. I felt isolated. I received no support from people who saw the post – which hurt me. I was shocked and upset, and for a while I stopped going to my studio.

I had recently found a mentor, and he believed my version of the story without question, even though he barely knew me, and offered me his unconditional support. The day after this conversation, which I can only describe as profoundly healing, I wrote my first poem in forty-four years. I have not stopped writing since.

The light that came from the wound is my poetry. It has enhanced my practice and allowed me to communicate on so many more levels. As I spoke up about what had happened through my poems, and as more and more people who I hadn’t previously known stepped up and shared their stories, I realised how important it is to create a safe, inclusive, compassionate space. This is what the Third Space project is about, and I hope you will join me in it.

by Suman Gujral,
April 2024