Kent Saheli Group presents and celebrates annual Teeyan festival in Gravesend, Kent.

Kent Saheli Group (KSG), a charity based in Kent, celebrated Teeyan with 700 women attending at Fort Gardens, Gravesend on Sunday 21 July 2024. Teeyan, also known as ‘Teej’ or ‘Teeyan Da Mela,’ is a traditional festival that celebrates the monsoon season and women’s sisterhood. Women from various parts of the UK gathered to celebrate […]

My journey:  From light into darkness!

‘I am the unlucky one’ I said to the Consultant. I was sobbing away on my own with nobody to hold my hand or support me. Where did I go wrong? What had I done? I always helped everyone – young old, needy and desperate. So why did it have to be ME? I didn’t understand. 

Diaries of a 90’s kid

My dad was just a teenager when he arrived in Bradford in the 1970s. With the support of extended family he found work, learnt the language, and a few years later returned to Pakistan to marry my mum. I was born in the 80s, the second girl in a house of five children. We found […]

Soundtrack to my life

Stories to tell: Celebrating meaningful music in South Asian culture This month is South Asian Heritage Month, where communities and organisations across the UK make time to commemorate, mark and celebrate South Asian cultures, and the history and identity of British South Asian people. SAHM was first celebrated in 2018 and each year explores a […]

Frangipani and daisy chains

Hiranya’s debut album, Frangipani & Daisy Chains, grew from her experience of race and identity following the 2016 Brexit vote. At turns tender, at turns fierce, she explores migration, colonialism and lineage. Part personal nostalgia, part history lesson; it contemplates belonging through the plants that are rooted in England and Sri Lanka’s folk traditions.  The musical […]

One of the few – My journey as a British-Mauritian-South Asian

  We all have stories to tell. Mine is about being ‘one of the few’. I am incredibly proud of my South Asian heritage story. I am British-Mauritian-South Asian and I was born just north of London. Growing up in the 1980s, we probably were the only Mauritian family in our non-ethnically diverse town. I […]