summering in london

My mom, dad and I went to London for the first time. I absolutely loved it. My parents don’t travel anywhere, but luckily they have me as their unabashed, adventurous daughter (what would they do without me, really) to parade them around the whole city and get an ungodly amount of steps in. I loved how historic London was–I felt like a citizen of the world–and everyone knows I love dressing up, so posh was on the menu everyday.

As much as I loved strutting around London, I must admit the horrors of British colonialism and its bloody, brutal history of stealing tyrannical, gluttonous amounts of wealth from India and Africa was on the back of my mind. Compared to the racial and ethnic demographics in America, what struck me most about London was that I’d often see Indian, Afghani, Pakistani, and African-diaspora immigrants as minimum-wage service workers: the ones folding napkins at restaurants, scanning tickets at tube stations, hauling luggage at hotels. Obviously, their home countries were relentlessly destabilized and squeezed dry of labor, land, gold, and resources by the very empire that built this gleamingly prim and proper city, and still their underpaid descendants were keeping the whole machine running tidily for tourists like myself.

I perceived my parents and I as silly and naive every time we marvelled at something beautiful in the city, because the beauty was never theirs. The ornate, elegant architecture, the manicured parks, the royal, grand museums; bloody at best.

Not to mention, the British Museum made me realize how many artifacts the British looted from practically everyone around the world. I found it hilarious that an employee stopped me when I was taking a photo of the Kohinoor Diamond. Like girl dis ain’t even yours to begin with DaFuq. Catch me if you can. I took the picture anyway.