Hi, I'm Mrs Kaur, Balvinders mother. She asked me to tell you about some of the hassles we've had over the years...My sister and her family moved out of the centre of Coventry into a nicer area. That's what they say we should do isn't it...? not all stick together and live in one place. Well she tried that and they were the first Asian family in their street. After a couple of weeks they found their dustbin was always being turned over and the rubbish tipped out. The neighbours' bins were always okay. Then they started getting phone calls - perhaps they got the name or the number from something in the dustbin.... The phone calls were horrible, all swear words and insulting things about Asians.
The police and the telephone people were quite helpful, but they could never stop the calls coming. Over the next year they had their windows broken four times by bricks with Paki written on them, and they wrote it in red paint on the door once. They have a box outside for their letters now because they've had to seal up the letter box in their door. People like us all know about when racists who put lighted rags and things like that through them.
I can't tell you what it's like, not feeling safe even in your own home. The kids can't go out and play, and they never answer the door after dark. You would think someone would have seen something, but apart from one neighbour who is nice to them the others all look away and hardly ever speak to them.
Also, I have had some terrible times with the immigration people. The worst was when my husband died in 1990 and I took his ashes back to India. When I came back to Heathrow they held me up... asked me all these questions. I have a house here, I have a good job here, I have lived here over 20 years, but they treated me like a spy, as if they couldn't believe anything I said.
I think they really thought I might be an illegal immigrant. Where do they think I got my passport and my address from? I was there for hours. In the end I think it was the head of my school who convinced them that they should let me go. I didn't want to phone her - it was embarrassing, as if I'd done something wrong, I felt like I'd been arrested, treated like a criminal. But I had no choice in the end, I had to find someone white and respectable who would tell them I really was a teacher and I had a right to be here.
