Alix Marina-Chouhan

www.lumiere-photography.co.uk http://en.fotolia.com/p/200554279 How did someone from Provence end up in Loughborough? My standard answer was “not for the weather”. May be it was like the pioneers in wild America, once the first generation had settled, the sons and daughters were ready to push the frontier. My family had come from Italy, with the exotic myth of a Vietnamese great-grand-mother to explain the slanted eyes. Actually they had meant to settle in America but on a visit home to the village, the First World War had ruined their plans. I had come for a year. 20 years ago. I had had an English lover when living in Paris and, having a spare year before an entrance exam to a very elitist school, I had been curious to find out if British men were all as sensitive and adorable as he. What I found was that, although my blood was Latin- and got me in trouble often- there were a tolerance and ways of thinking here I had only dreamt about. The same people who chose to be vegetarian, fight for people’s rights- gays, blacks, women, Tibetans- and think about alternative ways of life. Not to be fashionable, but because it matters. It made sense to me. I stayed. The margins here are large and comfortable enough for me to live in. I go to Pagan celebrations and to Buddhist protests with Muslims and Christians. I love that despite strict dress codes- from the earliest age- the maddest hair cuts are allowed, individual creativity and expression is honoured. Communities keep their colourful dresses and wealth of languages. Equality doesn’t have to mean identity. So to my international family I added an Indian husband and trilingual children who asked what origins they were. You are from this land, I said, from mine and from others. You belong where you live, I said. the Earth is sacred , your roots are in your heart