Shreya Sen-Handley | Battle Won, Who Might The Roaches Bite Next?

When you were little, and from an Anglicised clan such as mine, you might’ve heard chimed, “Night, night, don’t let the bed bugs bite”, as you were put to bed at slumber-time. But if bugs can bite, I remember questioning, did they have the necessary dental apparatus? The masses of mosquitoes in the monsoons, certainly left enough red welts on tender skin, to make a child imagine bloodthirsty fangs sinking into them after dark.

If a part of my childhood was spent in the mosquito-infested gullies of Kolkata, however, the other half was in typhoon-tossed Manila, which was as mosquito-free as it was cockroach-crammed! The horror everyone evinced for those creepy-crawlies was only outdone by the protective zeal demonstrated by our dog, lunging behind sofas in pursuit as if weapon-wielding thugees had suddenly sprung up, leading me to wonder which was the more fearsome; the winged vampires, aka mossies, of my early years, or the indestructible cockroach swarms of my tween era.

The answer to this question was revealed just last month, when India’s youth, labelled cockroaches by the Chief Justice, proudly, and with tongue firmly in cheek, embraced the appellation to take on the might of the incumbent authoritarian Indian government and WIN against them (perhaps only temporarily, as the aftermath is proving, but that doesn’t diminish what they managed to achieve, or their courageous resilience). Gen Z showed Gen X (and the Boomers, undoubtedly; architects of so much that’s wrong with the world today) how to hold power to account and make it pay (if only lightly, this time). They proved that ordinary citizens need not be toothless.

Talking of teeth, our household’s been particularly toothsome these last few weeks. With my son’s braces being fitted, we’ve grown long in the tooth from sitting about in dentists’ and orthodontists’ waiting rooms. Both my son and daughter have inherited my healthy (haven’t had a cavity yet, and I’m in my fifties — hooray!) but unusually large and crooked teeth. They also have their father’s British genes to contend with, which doesn’t confer the strongest or whitest teeth.

But if the British were as unconcerned about their teeth as American jokes make them out to be, dentists’ lobbies would not be heaving. It’s true that in the past, Brits could be rendered toothless as early as their thirties, so poor was their dental DNA, not to mention their hygiene. Was that why they were so attached to their cannon balls and muskets, you ruminate (as it would be a tad rude to ask anyone else), because nature supplied them with feeble natural defences?

In the present, however, it is Americans who have firearms as appendages, and a teeth-burnishing obsession that leave them resembling Mister Ed (I know, I know, I’m a glass-house dweller if ever there was one!), awaiting the cleansing of the Augean stables. Even vanilla Friends satirised this slice of Americana, by having socially-awkward Ross whiten his teeth to a dusk-busting fluorescence, but only the degree of dazzle was spotlighted.

If it’s sharp social commentary we want, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth has a great deal more bite. Published at the start of this century, with an Asian family central to the story, the political and racial landscape she digs into incisively, isn’t wildly different from the one we inhabit now.

Walking along Belgrave road in Leicester a few weekends ago, eyeballing its large, colourful Bombay film murals (Rishi Kapoor and Dimple in Bobby gracing a pink backdrop, Sridevi peeking from behind bangles in an iconic eighties stance, and the sensuous Rekha from Umrao Jaan following you with her eyes), gleaming gold jewellery in shiny showrooms, and shimmering sarees in big and small family stores, as we breathed in the fragrances emanating from the rows of Indian restaurants dominating the neighbourhood, I was heartened that such a place existed in Britain, nor was it alone, but also fearful that the resurgence of overt, and often violent, racism might spell the end for these rare blossoms of British cosmopolitanism.

The point is not that all of Blighty should look like this, not remotely, but that the Britain of the green and pleasant locales I love deeply — the tranquil tarns and tors of the Lake Poets, Shakespeare performed in bowering rose gardens, and golden Cotswold cottages — does, in fact, fit beautifully with the drama of Asian-flavoured oases, each enriching the other rather than tarnishing their unique resplendence. And this is true of anywhere on earth, delights of every hue and heritage only add to the magnificence of a place!

But the world is increasingly more determinedly narrow-minded, and more brazenly confrontational as well. Consequently, never have I been more anxious about the future of Britain’s multi-ethnic, multicultural youth than today. They’ve always faced many more obstacles than their white counterparts, but racist practices were covert in the recent past, and in some quarters, frowned upon enough to give us glimmers of opportunities here and there.

Prospects — aren’t they what India’s youth were fighting for last month? That there will be more on the morrow, even as the few we had appear to be drying up, is all that young people anywhere are asking for. Plus, the security of knowing we won’t be subjected to the random race-based violence on the rise in the UK.

Can new British PM Andy Burn’em douse the flames being fanned? Or does this now-simmering country need its own swarm of young, idealistic, unbowed cockroaches?