Banglatown, Bangladesh and Hodgepodge Multiculturalism
on From Banglatown to Bangladesh (Bangladesh), 29/Sep/2008 21:11, 34 days ago
'Banglatown': the nickname commonly given to the area around Brick Lane, in east London. Just past the City and on the edge of the East End, Banglatown today is reknowned for its curryhouses, its Bengali sweetshops, clothes shops full of brightly coloured saris and salwar kameez, and street signs, often displaying Bengali first and English second. It's an area with a history of change and immigration, combining influences from the Indian sub-continent, Judaism (Brick Lane still holds the best bagel shop in London), the old East End, amongst others. Increasingly, it's also emblematic of the new East End: hot young things venturing from the bright lights of Hoxton and Shoreditch to Banglatown's bars and markets - all skinny jeans, bedhead hair and eyeliner - swigging on Caribbean lager, choosing between chewing on organic pizza, freshly grilled burgers from outside stalls, and BYOB curry deals.Banglatown is also my favourite area of London. It's a fascinating combination of cultures and histories, smells and sights, foods and colours. Being the Sociology geek I am, I may say that it's an example of 'hodgepodge' multiculturalism, with peoples from different backgrounds and traditions, languages and religions, all living, working, and entertaining within its concrete surrounds, reciprocally influencing one other as the area's demographic twists and turns and changes. This might be contrasted with 'mosaic' multiculturalism, often used to describe cities like New York, in which different cultures live in their own microcosms, side-by-side within the city as a whole, with limited cross-cultural interaction.Having spent the last year or so living just beyond the edges of Banglatown - within hearing distance of the Bow Bells - it's an area I'm only beginning to discover and could not pretend to have a deep understanding of. This makes me re-think the depth of my 'hodgepodge' experience, and presents me with thoughts and challenges for times ahead. While I - also displaying messy hair and eyeliner - frequented the restaurants and shops of 'Banglatown', I knew very little about the 'Bangladesh' that has had such great impacts upon the area. Following my own path from bus stop to market to restaurant to pub, observing the sights, but not really considering their significance, the multiculturalism I knew may have been hodgepodge on the surface, but remained strictly mosaic underneath.Having discovered about three months ago that Bangladesh would be my destination as a VSO volunteer, I've tried to learn a little more, but still struggle to tell the difference between Bangladeshi and Indian food on Brick Lane menus, or even to work out if it matters. So this is the challenge that I have ahead: moving from Banglatown to Bangladesh, jumping from the partly familiar to the entirely unknown, taking the time to learn about my surroundings, discovering ways of forming cross-cultural relationships across differences of language, religion, wealth and outlook. And trying to turn the hodgepodge or mosaic surrounding my new and old homes into something more meaningful than a Brick Lane curry.