Eat the Rich Before They Eat You: A Hate Letter to Gentrification

BY: AYESHA ALI

Diaspora has and always will be a strange thing to me. I often talk about it at length with my parents who do their best to understand, and friends who have lived similar experiences. How I feel I have two homes, and also no home. How I can never return to one as myself, and how I’ve lost parts of myself in another. But I’m still part of a community. A community in limbo, a cohort in a kind of voluntary exile. I’ve always been adamant about who I am, insistent on people getting my name right, and not confusing me for something else. I cling to myself by clinging to a mosaic of my culture. Sometimes I think I shouldn't make it my Roman Empire, that I'm more than the division and crossing of borders from a lifetime ago. But most of the time I ignore the feeling of being annoying and continue. 

“Home is with the people I love,” my mother says simply. “I’m just happy being with my family.” Ideas of nationalism and patriotism don't appeal to her, nor do the opposite. She's not a passionate anti-royalist, nor does she miss 'home' very much. But it can be a beautiful, unique thing, and when I’m home for the summer, I feel this deeply. It’s in the food she’s always force-feeding me because do I even eat over there? It’s in the fish curry my sister passionately hates, and my dad passionately loves. It’s in the long, winding, over-the-ocean phone calls he spontaneously makes to old school friends. It’s in the towering pile of books in a script I never learned to read that gathers dust as I write, but which no one moves, because Bengalis are nothing if not poetic hoarders. It’s even in the petty family drama over land, property, money, or all three. But where is it outside its physicality? Where is home outside those four walls?

Everywhere. And nowhere. Everywhere because this is the UK and people from all walks of life have made a life here. But also nowhere, because how could an emulation ever beat the real thing? I suppose it can come very close to it, such as a community in the capital. London is London is London. I am both enamoured by and sick of the city. And as someone who’s visited family there regularly, it’s lost its novelty. It’s emblematic of chaotic family gatherings in crowded dining rooms, and saying goodbye for an hour at the door because the conversation just never ends. It’s a Muslim family driving around the city to admire the Christmas lights because can we actually go somewhere for once? As a child, it was exciting until it got repetitive. 

But as I grew older, I started filling the gaps in my memory by drilling my parents about things I couldn’t quite remember. People, places, sounds, tastes, even that one time I got emotional over a good cup of cha. Memory has and always will be a strange thing to me, too. Mainly because mine is terrible and I often feel as if this has lost me so much time. The other day, I stumbled on some photos of me and my sister as kids from the family archives. By family archives, I mean old pictures my mother hoards in her phone, and by stumbled, I mean asking her have we ever been to Brick Lane or Banglatown before? I was genuinely curious, given the history of British Bangladeshis I’d learned over the years—not through a school curriculum, but my own research. And when the answer was yes, many times, I was taken aback by the pictures of me and my sister smiling and posing in front of a memorial.

I look at the pictures now and see the innocent irony. Kids tend to pose for pictures, especially when it’s going to be a part of the family album. But I feel my stomach hollow out at the bouquets in the background, the pillars symbolic of a mother and her martyred sons, and the obvious sentiment of remembrance and respect. It’s a smaller replica of the Shaheed Minar, The Martyr Tower, in Bangladesh’s capital, symbolic of a time of revolution and reclamation. But it also represents the memory of Altab Ali, a victim of an anti-South Asian racist attack, after whom the park in which the monument stands was named. It’s a tangible reminder of loss experienced by one people in two places, and even the arched entrance itself incorporates a mix of Bengali and European architecture. 

So it’s strange to think that the place in which Ali worked is now getting a makeover. It’s the same story for plenty of places, really. A culturally rich area catches the eye of real estate developers, new infrastructure is forced upon the existing community, many of which are forced to move out due to skyrocketing housing prices, and in come the shiny new residents. It’s probably why I remember so little of Brick Lane and its surrounding areas, seeing as how new additions, such as bars and overpriced restaurants, are often dissonant to the brown family outing experience. And while the area has achieved a spike in economic growth throughout the 2010s, it took the appealing and attractive affluence of the wealthy to accomplish this. Boutique shops, overpriced cafés, art galleries, and independent cinemas have materialised in many similar communities. Areas like Peckham and Brixton, historically Afro-Caribbean communities, are also no strangers to this phenomenon.

But maybe ‘phenomenon’ is the wrong word, since it’s not as recent as it seems. Soho was briefly home to some of London’s aristocracy in the 17th century, before immigration made it less desirable to live there. But it definitely attracted writers and artists on the hunt for sensory stimulation and inspiration, as well as new debauchery. Fast forward to the 19th century, and its reputation for illicit activity dubbed it the Red Light district. By the time the 20th century came around, it was the centre stage for the rock scene, with the likes of Pink Floyd, David Bowie and Led Zeppelin performing there. But now, it seems to be undergoing the same process it did four centuries ago. When asking a friend about it, she compares it to Covent Garden. It’s a popular, crowded, tourist attraction with new restaurants, luxury apartments, and media companies. But the nightlife lives on, just in different ways, partly due to the decrease in the sex industry.

The benefits of gentrification are few and far between. Claims of lowered crime rates are dubious. Economic growth is evident, at the expense of long-term residents. Revitalisation of infrastructure is also clear, but in some cases, it means turning older buildings into expensive apartment complexes and studios. The process itself is multifaceted, as it changes the entire personality of a place while rejuvenating the quality of life there, albeit not for current residents. And in a city where people of colour have managed to make the unknown a home, it seems like an unsubtle way of undoing generations of history and culture for the sake of profit.

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