Shaili Desai

Let's start from the beginning, tell me about your childhood.

Sutinder Nagi

I was born in Uganda. I was born in August 1962, so when I came to England, I was just over 10 years old. We came in November 1972, so I was just over 10 years old and yeah I have great happy memories of my childhood. We used to live in the town called Jinja that's where we went to school and in the holidays we used to go to Masindi and that's where my dad and his brother, and his dad and grandad and his two sons, had their timber business, their sawmill, and they also had a hotel and bar and shops, that kind of thing so they had their business there. So they'd be working there and we would go there in the holidays and it was a great balance of life because when we were at school during term time all the studying and then we would just let loose when we went to Masindi and we just had freefall in the forest which was just surrounding our house and the sawmill and we lived in sort of a very big house, it was a complex of a couple of houses and the kitchen unit and storage unit and so on, and that's just what we did all day. We just played, we made houses, we went and picked fruit, we walked in the jungle, we played in the water and it was just amazing, it was a bit like being Mowgli basically.

Shaili Desai

How many siblings do you have?

Sutinder Nagi

So I am the second of five sorry I should say the fourth of five because I have three older siblings and one younger so we sort of alternate I have a brother, then a sister, then another brother, then myself, and then a younger brother.

Shaili Desai

And how was it growing up in a house full of lots of kids?

Sutinder Nagi

It was great because we actually lived with my uncle and his family as well, so I mentioned my dad and his brother, so the two families always lived together. So together we were eight children, there were five of us and I had three cousins, and so the house that we lived in Jinja we all lived together, a big house, it was a square house with a big open veranda in the centre of it which is where we did a lot of our playing and just running around and where all the sort of communal cooking went on. When we had festivals we do all our Samosas and Chevda  and all sorts of things like that were cooked in there in the squared veranda and we also had a lovely lady her name was Diwali Massi and she and her family lived in a couple of the rooms in the house and we used to just share everything with them as well, it was just like an extended family. It was always very busy because there were eight of us children. I remember getting up for school everything was done in order, obviously eight of us had to use the bathroom and get dressed and my mum or my aunty had to get us all ready for school so we’d all be in and out of the shower one after the other and all get dressed and get our hair brushed one after the other. We used to have jam sandwiches and a cup of tea for breakfast and then go off, walk off to school, we used to walk quite a long distance to go to school and then school used to break up at around lunchtime and we'd come home, we didn't go to school in the afternoons unless we had to go back for sports or some kind of extracurricular activity like drama or something like that or sports day. So I remember as a child just coming from school taking my uniform off and just running around in my petticoat and that's it because you know it's just so warm and so free [there] just [didn’t] seem to be any kind of restrictions I remember as a child at all.

Shaili Desai

Sounds like a very freeing and fun experience. What would you say was your fondest memory of that time?

Sutinder Nagi

It's hard to pick one because I'd say that feeling of freedom and abundance comes to mind. So my fondest memory is just being free to run around and do as you please, there was no danger, there were no restrictions and everything was in abundance it felt like you had all the time in the world to do what you wanted and even in terms of things, we weren’t materialistic in the sense that we didn’t have toys or things like that that the modern generation do, but we had you know an abundance of time with which to make things or do things or just play games and for example when we were in Masindi during the holidays we’d spend the whole day just going through the forest and we had extensive land outside the houses so we had our own fruits and vegetables so we just go around picking bananas, picking mangoes, and passion fruit there just seemed to be enough freedom and abundance and what more would you want in life, it was just the best.

Shaili Desai

It sounds like paradise.

Sutinder Nagi

It absolutely was.

Shaili Desai

And how would you, maybe this is a loaded question, if you were thinking of yourself as a 10-year-old, but back then if you had to go back how would you have identified yourself in terms of being Indian, being Asian, being Ugandan, a mix of everything?

Sutinder Nagi

Do you mean at that age?

Shaili Desai

At that age

Sutinder Nagi

Yeah, it's a really good question because at that time it's almost like at that age you're oblivious to those kind of things. You don't really identify yourself as anything, you're just a child and all you identify yourself with is how much fun can I have, what can I play with. So to me if at that stage I knew what I know now I would have loved to go straight back on the next flight back because I would have had that freedom and abundance which I never ever experienced again in that way as a child.

Shaili Desai

And looking back now, I mean obviously you were a child, and you had many siblings and cousins to grow up with and you explained how it was really fun and freeing, but for your parents, for the older generation of your family was that a similar experience? Do they have similar fond memories of that time?

Sutinder Nagi

I would say no, nobody talked about it nobody ever shared feelings or emotions about that experience, all we sort of understood was that we all had a difficult time, but nobody really shared what they felt or thought but it wasn't a great experience. I think for myself and my younger brother it was possibly quite exciting I remember thinking “Oh my God we’re going to England, that’s where the Queen lives, that’s where it snows, that's where all the fairy tales come from” and you know I was very excited. I'm not sure what the older generation thought and I think they probably would have thought that they might get a different experience here (UK) in terms of freedom or the music industry, maybe they might get to see some pop stars whereas back in Uganda we only ever heard them on the radio or watched some of them on TV.

Shaili Desai

So, you were a 10 year old girl in Uganda. What was the first sort of sense that you got that you would be relocating or that something's not right here and that your family just decided to move elsewhere, do you remember the first time you realised that?

Sutinder Nagi

Yes, I do. There was all of a sudden a sort of like a hushness [sic], it's almost like people were scared to talk aloud it was like the whole volume of the country or the family/the household just went down and then things like curfew. I’d hear as a child oh my dad was stuck coming from Masindi to Jinja because it was evening and he’d been stopped by the police and then I remember my grandma had a sudden attack, she wasn't well, and the doctors wouldn't come out because it was curfew and there was this horrible feeling of danger, something not nice happening, and we felt a bit helpless because in the end I remember my middle brother and one of our house help went out to find one of my other uncles to come and help, I still don’t know what he would have done because she needed to go to hospital but no doctor would come out. So there was this sense of danger that was the first thing, and then there was a bullet that came right through the house and missed my cousin, missed her nose I’d say, and there was a hole in the wall and that was a bit scary, I felt scared but I didn't quite understand what or why this was happening.

Shaili Desai

How did you feel when you would just walk on the street or go to the local shop or be outside of an area that wasn't within your home, how did you feel with the community around you, what was your relationship like with them?

Sutinder Nagi

I think during the daytime life sort of went on as normal. We went to school and we came home by lunchtime and then we just played around in our area and that seemed fine but it just seemed a little dangerous that sense of uncertainty, something eery when night fell, but otherwise we still went to school until the very last days when obviously we didn't go to school. I think everyone was just frantically trying to pack things.

Shaili Desai

What was that process like then from the moment realizing okay we’re going to leave to then actually leaving, you mentioned it was frantic, how so?

Sutinder Nagi

It was because I just remember everyone just rushing around because we weren't able to bring much, but I think we were allowed to send things over or maybe we did that because one of my aunties already lived in England, maybe someone came up with the idea that we will send some stuff over to her. So I remember my mum and my aunty just thinking “Oh we need to pack this, we need to pack that” it was that going on amongst the adults and I remember towards the end, just before we left, my dad going to Kampala everyday having to queue up to get documents to travel with because we never realised we were ever going to leave the country, that's where I was born, my parents were born there as well, that was my home I mean that was our home, if you ever ask my dad he would always say he’s Ugandan, he didn't really have an affiliation with India for example which is where my grandparents came from, they came to Africa. So although we have the language, the culture, and the cuisine he always said he was Ugandan so we never expected to ever have to leave. Nobody had any travel documents, so everyone was rushing to the passport office or whatever it was to get a travel document and that was very very frantic, because I remember he'd come back and he didn't get through so he’d go the next day and come back and I don't know how many times he went until finally maybe just the day before we had to travel he managed to get us all a document and I think there was some confusion over children who were at that age where they were just an adult so they couldn't go on their mum’s passport but they had to have their own independent documents so there was extra work, a lot of red tape, which I mean in the normal course of life is difficult enough but in a state of crisis and panic it’s a lot worse. Sadly, he used to say the queues were very long and it sounded like it was a very sad affair. I mean I could just imagine people just queuing up with their ticket to get out of this crisis.

Shaili Desai

What was the journey like over to the UK?

Sutinder Nagi

The journey was, I think as far as I remember I either played or I was asleep, but I remember leaving Uganda in an aeroplane being excited and when I woke up we landed at Heathrow and you came out of the airport on the aeroplane and I've just felt the coldest breeze I’ve ever felt in my life because it was the 7th of November and it was a very cold winter and I thought to myself “Oh my God where the hell have we landed, it’s so cold here” and of course we didn't have coats or anything and then we were ushered into a big room with lots of winter clothes for us to help ourselves to. There were loads and loads of charity organisations that had set up tables of all kinds of things coats, hats, gloves that we would have needed immediately to keep us warm so it was a shock I would say, not so much a psychological shock but just a physical shock, you know it hits you the cold, it's a bit like when people go on holiday and they come out and they think “Oh my God the heat just hit me” this was the opposite it was the cold just hitting you and thinking “Oh my God where have we landed”. I still remember my very first coat that I picked up off that table and it was a lilac coat double breasted with a waist lapel at the back and it was an embossed print so that is etched in my memory.

Shaili Desai

Where did you go to live once you landed?

Sutinder Nagi

We were all taken to a Royal Air Force barracks, we ended up in the one in West Malling which is in Sevenoaks, Kent and that's where we stayed, and I don't know if you know but it was basically barracks. They would have massive sort of dormitory type rooms that were portioned off for different families, so we’d just have beds there and I think just a cupboard, like a bedside cupboard.

Shaili Desai

How long were you there for?

Sutinder Nagi

We were there for seven months. We got there on the 7th of November and we were housed in June 1973.

Shaili Desai

And was that through the council? How did that come about?

Sutinder Nagi

Yeah, so basically when we there, I mean it was a lovely stay from my perspective obviously from my parents perspective it was very different especially my dad who’d lost all his businesses, all his properties, everything, and at that age he’d built himself up and had come down to nothing so it was hard. But for me as a child it was a really nice experience because we had a purpose built school on the campus so we’d go to school there, we’d get taught, we had lovely teachers and then we had to go to the mess hall where we had all our meals so we had breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner and I very fondly remember the tea when we always used to have shortbread biscuits with a cherry on top and that was really a lovely experience. But I think whenever they found, the council, and I mean everything was run by charities or the council, and then my dad would go and view a property which they had suggested might be suitable for us and I think he had a choice of three, he’d been offered three, and he more or less would have to accept the third one if he hadn’t liked the first two. Yes so then we came, we’ve always lived in Palmers Green, he saw this house in Palmers Green and then he went and then we were moved here, I don’t remember how we got here, I think it was in a big van or a big car. So it was a furnished house but the furniture was all very very old and I mean stuff would be really sort out after now because it was all vintage antique stuff, very nice.

Shaili Desai

Tell me your first impressions of Palmers Green?

Sutinder Nagi

I want to the local junior school but I was only there for a  short while because it was very close to the end of the term for summer holidays and I really liked it because we looked on the main road, the North Circular which very busy, but what I liked was right opposite the house were three little shops, conveniently one was a grocery shop, the other one was a green grocers ,and one was a butchers and then I had a little walk to the school and I used to pop into the sweet shop every day and had a lovely time in school, and then come home. So it was just lovely I mean I remember that being nice and enjoyable and I had my younger brother also, sometimes we’d go to school together, yeah it was good memories and then after the summer, after that summer holiday, I started school at secondary level and that's when I’d have to say take a couple of buses to school because that was far away or walk, I didn't mind walking. Sometimes it was easier to walk because I’m quite a small person and I’d just get bombarded with loads of schoolkids, I just preferred to walk.

Shaili Desai

Was school drastically different to the school in Uganda or was it quite similar, how did you settle in?

Sutinder Nagi

It was different I remember when I was at junior school, I was only there a couple of months or so but I just remember thinking all the young children they were so sweet so nice and gentle but when I went to secondary school I noticed the difference, there was a little bit of like you know “Who’s she, where she's from?” that kind of thing. At junior school I felt as if people thought I spoke a funny way. When I started secondary school some of students would think that I spoke in a funny way, and some of it may have been an accent, but some of it was because I always felt that the children didn't actually speak properly, and it was only later on I realised it was the difference between, in Uganda we went to school and we were taught grammar and so we learnt to speak properly we learned grammar properly, but here I found in schools grammar wasn’t really being taught so I found sometimes thinking “Well they’re actually not speaking properly or writing properly” so that was a bit of a funny sort of realisation and before you know it I’d morphed into one of them, in London we all became a little bit you know relaxed in cockney (laughing).

Shaili Desai

Who was the first friend you made in UK?

Sutinder Nagi

So that would have been my friend called Sevdiye and that's because the very first day we started secondary school we were asked to sit in pairs and they literally went down in alphabetical order and both our names started with S and we both sat together and from that day on we just were friends, even to this day and that's like 43 years, oh my god yeah and we’re still friends.

Shaili Desai

That’s really very special that you still have a relationship with that person, did you miss any of your friends from Uganda? Was there a sense of I miss home or was it more just [excitement] about this new place that you were at?

Sutinder Nagi

I think at the time when we first got here there was excitement. As I grew older I wasn't sure, on the one hand I did appreciate a lot of things that were open to me here, it just felt a bigger place, going to school making new friends, friends from different cultures, but sometimes I did feel a sadness, a forlonging for something that I never really was able to put my finger on, and I suppose that sort of stays with you. I’ve never really been able to identify that, something that you've lost, I still choke up now when I think about it. Tt's a feeling of loss but you don't quite know what it is that you’ve lost. Even though I’ve gained so much being here but I think generally when I compared the childhood I had there to all the difficulties I've had here I do feel sometimes life would have been better if we would have gone back and I especially feel that for my dad and my mum because they didn't have an easy time here and there it would have been obviously a lot better for them, like others, if they just carried on their life there.

Shaili Desai

Well let's touch up on some of those difficulties you speak about as a family, what were a few of the challenges that you faced during those times?

Sutinder Nagi

So I think if I start with my dad the main thing was he was an architect, he was also a really successful businessman, [he] had a lot of wealth and lots of connections, [was] well known and so on, he lost all of that. So, I think to him it really affected him a lot, so I think his temperament changed a lot and I suppose at the time we were young we didn’t realise but I believe he must have had some kind of acute depression through his life, and I think that only became clearer and clearer as he got older. And one of the things was obviously not just the fact that you’ve lost everything, you’ve [now also] got to start from scratch again because, we had not nothing, we literally lived on the Social Security and my parents had to find a job and the only job he could find was factory work because, although he was an architect he couldn't get a job because you know he was a foreigner, he was at that age were they couldn't train him up or it would have been too expensive to have him as an architect, so you know he just couldn't slot in. So he ended up having to work in a factory and he did his time, he was very good, [he] kept the house going and he used to travel, get up at the crack of dawn and travel a long way to get to work and come back. He even did shift work for years and years just so we could manage, and so that was all a bit sad, and I think whatever happened to him, it affected his temperament and I think that came down onto the rest of the family and it affected us all. And for my mum obviously life in Uganda was very different for mum's, they just looked after children, kept the house. When she came to England she had to find a job because we couldn't manage, so she worked, she was very good at what she did, and sadly she then became very ill, we almost lost her and somehow she survived, and I don't know whether the stress of everything might have caused her to be so unwell or it might just have been something she was going to get anyway, but anyway she managed to survive many more years. It was just very very tough on my parents and I think to watch that on a day-to-day basis was very difficult, it was definitely stressful, I think the whole of the family, all of my siblings all suffered because of that, yeah it's hard to talk about that.

Shaili Desai

Of course.

Sutinder Nagi

You know I’ve been to all these conventions to do with Uganda Asians and a lot of us have done very well and we've set up shops we've done really well, all the kids have done really well, but I think there must be so many people out there who must be suffering or must have suffered in this way or for whom things haven't gone well and I'm not sure if there is enough said about them or are they even approached? Because I get the feeling that we’re so good at talking about all the good things and how well people have done that I never hear anyone talk about the family where things didn't quite work out and how are those people coping, or what happened to them, where are they? You know I don't feel they would be, or they would feel encouraged, to be part of these organisations because I feel that, I don't know if it's a cultural thing or if it's just that we just want to talk about the good things, but we forget the people who might not be feeling as good as that. And I got a very strong sense of that ten years ago when it was the 40^th anniversary and I was involved in a similar kind of you know celebratory organisation where people came together and we all talked about our experiences and how well we've done since then, but not a single person was there that mentioned any difficulties. I've not heard of anybody, so I sometimes wonder and worry about those people whose voices haven't been heard, because it was a very traumatic experience and I think young people did suffer because of what their parents went through and the parents themselves did suffer a lot as well. I know we have not so much now, but certainly my generation and before me, we have a way of just making things feel like they're okay, or you know just sweeping things aside and getting on and moving on with it, but years down the line those kind of things are still there because they’ve not been dealt with.

Shaili Desai

If you could go back in time and pretend you were your parent’s therapist, in a world where adults of that generation would go to therapy, what would you want them to resolve in their mind about the situation? What would you want them to reflect on and to have peace with?

Sutinder Nagi

That’s a really difficult question because I feel there's nothing that could have fixed it for them. So the only other thing would have been, is to help them feel that this is how things have panned [out] let's make the best of it, but none of that was available at the time, maybe it was but I don't remember ever hearing of it or thinking it would be there, because you can imagine if you lose your whole life in the space of three months, and the worst thing for my parents was that at first we were one of the families which Amin had said oh we could stay. and then literally in the last month he changed his mind so we had in a way less time than everybody else [to] get up, pack up, and leave. So it's really hard, it’s something that I don't know if they would have ever recovered from, but I don't think, like these days mental health is at the forefront of everything and that’s such a good thing, but I think in those days it wasn’t and I think even culturally we’re so good at making it seem that everything is okay and you know it hurts our pride to say “Well look I'm not okay, I need some help” that a lot of people must be suffering and not able to even talk about it. I know that my parents suffered a lot, I know that my mum would have had a much happier life back in Uganda because there we had distinct roles, she would have known exactly what's expected of her, and my dad would have done his things and we would have all grown up in that expected way, but here it was complete turmoil, upside down situation, roles reversed. So she was having to work and look after kids and she became very ill and I had to take on the role of being a carer at a very young age for her, and for my younger brother, and because of the way my dad was suffering it wasn't the happiest of atmospheres in the house. So it did mean that as siblings, my brothers and sisters, we weren’t the happiest at home so my eldest brother went to university and he stayed, didn’t really come home again, and there were issues between my dad and my brothers, so it's almost like it created a dysfunctional situation all because of that one experience, whereas if we’d been in Uganda none of that would have happened, we would have just carried on living our expected lives.

Shaili Desai

What were the moments in that period of turmoil, when you're in secondary school I assume, what were the periods or the times when you felt your parents, or your family as a whole, were the happiest?

Sutinder Nagi

I don't think there was a time, I don't think there was a time, because I think as soon as we were housed, and my dad couldn't find a job that was a stress. So, he ended up working in the factory so you do a job because you have to you’re not happy, but you have to and then my mum started working and then she got sick, very sick, so I don't think there was ever a happiest time, there was always something.

Shaili Desai

How did things change over time, if they did change over the time, how did the evolution of your family and finding independence here, financial independence, and more security, was that a slow transition? Was there ever like a flip moment do you remember?

Sutinder Nagi

I think from my parents point of view I think the fact that my dad just went to work and had an income his whole aim was to have some money in the account and he finally managed to get himself a car after years and years of working, I think that made him happy-ish because he could drive. In my mum’s case I think eventually when she did get better she went back to work and she was so good at working where she was working, she was happy because she was really appreciated and she was a very friendly person who got on with everybody, she had a great time at work and she was happy doing that and also it gave her a bit of independence because she had her own salary that she could do something for herself or for the children without having to burden my dad. So that gave her sort of independence and I think with us siblings it was just going through school and as soon as we were 16 my dad would say “Right you’ve got to go get a Saturday job” because we just couldn't manage, so all of my brothers and my sister had a Saturday job, and they would contribute towards the housekeep. Eventually everyone got finished school, university, or whatever training, and had their own jobs and that’s how they became independent. I'm not sure that they were the happiest, but they were certainly becoming independent, because they were working, and not to forget that throughout this whole experience of going through school and college there was lots of discrimination. I mean even at secondary school I suffered a lot of discrimination, people taking the mickey [out] of how I looked, a kid would play with my plats, I'd be called a paki and I’d endlessly have to say “Well look, I'll give you a geography lesson. I'm not a paki, this is the world this is where I’m from” and so on and so on to a point that it just used to get a bit frustrating. And my brothers they were older and whenever they used to go out they’d always, not always but often get into trouble, they’d get arrested by the police or all sorts of things, there was a lot of that going on and we had to live through that purely because of the way they looked or just because you were out in the evening it was assumed that you were a troublemaker because you looked different. So that wasn’t nice, but you know I mean it didn't stop any of us just carrying on doing what we wanted to do, doing what we could do, but eventually everyone’s now got their own lives and their own families and everyone's getting on with it.

Shaili Desai

But that must have been very scary and going back to my question about when you were a 10 year old girl and I asked you how would you have identified yourself, but if you could go back to say I don't know, like 18 [years old] for example, having been in the country for eight years, having just gone through school and having faced a lot of discrimination, as you said, how was your connection with the idea of being British? Was that ever something you consciously thought about?

Sutinder Nagi

No but I think after I, I never thought of myself as British. As a child I didn't think of myself as anything, like I said I was just a child, but as I grew up, going through the teenage years and experiencing all this discrimination it made me aware that I'm something different, or you know then I started thinking to myself, as you grow up you realise who you really are and then you learn what makes you who you are as a person in life and I think that’s when I started realising “Yes I’m Indian, but actually I'm Ugandan, but I'm British because I was part of the original British colony, and that’s why you invited me here and so I'm here”. But you know if someone was to ask me “Who are you, where are you from?” I’d say “I’m from Uganda” and then they’d give me a funny look and say “But you’re not black?” and then I’d say “No I'm from Uganda but my origins are from India, I was born in Uganda, but I’m a British citizen because I live here and I have citizenship because of the colony” so you know for me it's never a one word answer. It depends on how people ask me that question, how identify myself, it's basically yes, I'm Indian by my culture and language and all that but I’m Ugandan because to me that’s home that's where I was born, those were my formative years, memories, that’s my foundation. And interestingly enough at this stage in life were I have my own children and so on, nowadays if someone asks me “Where is your home?”, not where you're from because my answer to that would always be the same “I’m from Uganda”, but if someone asks me “Where is your home?” before I would say “Home to me is Uganda”, and I’ll always have that place in my heart, but nowadays I will say “Home to me is where my children are” and I know that my kids are here, so I would never want to be far away from them in another country to them, even though I know Uganda’s my country.

Shaili Desai

Have you ever been back?

Sutinder Nagi

I've not been back. My dad went back two or three times trying to see what he could recover but sadly he died in the process and never really managed to recover anything, and while he was trying to do that, he did say it was a bit of risky business, it was a bit scary out there, it all sort of depended on who you knew. A lot of the properties that we had were quite large properties and they were taken over either by the government itself or government and civil servants, like nurses are living in the home that is in Jinja near their hospital, so it was very difficult to get any of that back and it was very very sad for him. He was very happy trying but very sad whenever he returned, and whenever he came back with photographs we would see the photographs and just be heartbroken at what had become of those happy palaces, I don't mean palace in the opulent sense, but as a child that was my palace, that's where I lived and it's very sad and that makes me, I’ve always thought I want to go back to the place I was born in order to show my children where I spent my happiest days, but at the same time I am anxious about the sadness I might feel, and then I wonder is it worth me feeling that or should I just let that memory stay as it is. So I haven't quite gone back.

Shaili Desai

To round up I guess I just have one question, for the generations to come, so looking to the future now, what is the one thing that you would want the next generation to know about the Ugandan Asian migration?

Sutinder Nagi

I suppose in a nutshell I would want them to know that we had a lot, not just in terms of material, but we had a lot in terms of time and space and just natural life, and we lost it all and now we sort of we have that nice memory. What I would want the next generation to learn is to appreciate all the small things in life, because life and joy isn't about the things you have, it's about that freedom that you feel, and that joy and abundance that you feel, and you can't put that in a word or in a bottle, it's just a feeling and the only way I feel that they can get that feeling, is not from owning something, it’s from spending time with people, engaging, travelling, doing things, rather than accumulating things.

Shaili Desai

Well that sounds like a great message and it's stories like yours that will hopefully keep that message alive.

Sutinder Nagi

I hope so.

Shaili Desai

Thank you very much for telling me all about that is there anything else that you wanted to say or any reflections you have?

Sutinder Nagi

Not really, it’s one of things you could go on forever, but my only sort of lasting thought is, is there a way that we can find out if there are other people that are suffering that haven’t done so well, that would be my only thing. I'd like to know that, I'd like to know how I could find out how I could help, because I’ve found that 14 years ago when I first got involved by talking, I never realised I had bottled up these things for 40 years and it really helped me and I know there must be other people like that. So I would like to be able to talk to them and help them come out of it, because we didn't all do well, I’ll tell you that for nothing, we didn't all have [an] amazing [experience,] but we seem to just focus on that. That's my lasting thought.

Shaili Desai

I guess that's the legacy of it, is that community comes together and hopefully helps lift each other up through this, thank you very much Sutinder.