By Mona Ambegaonkar

I have been a traveler since the day I could afford to pay for my journeys – in life, as well as across Land and Sea. I had never come across discrimination of any kind before – nothing that made me feel like I was unwanted or actively disliked.

Until this time – I realized then that no part of the world is home to me except the one that I actually belong to.

I took my child on her first summer holiday abroad this year and I tried to make it special.

It is a very up market Holiday Resort in the Lake District of England. You stay in wooden cottages, no cars are allowed and the entire place is surrounded by lush woods full of birds and wild life like badgers and foxes and red squirrels – fantastic for kids. There is riding and archery, if that’s your fancy, a huge indoor/outdoor heated swimming pool and water park area, a lovely lake with boats and kayaks in it and restaurants along its shores. Play parks and Jungle Gyms, lovely long walks or bicycle rides and open spaces for picnics.

It was the last day of our vacation there – we were eating our lunch in this lovely place when an employee of the Restaurant turned out not to like brown faces like ours. It was an English Buffet and I decided to sample it. My sister checked to make sure we could go back for seconds, but when we did go back to refill our plates the woman serving at the counter, sour-facedly, held mine back and asked me, loudly, if I really intended to eat everything on it or was I going to feed another person in ‘my party’. It was not a question she dared to ask any of the other, white, people who had also chosen to partake of the buffet and had came back for seconds.

I confess I was taken aback and retreated, not wanting to get into a cheap confrontation, leaving my plate in her hand, wanting to finish up and leave – we were going home in any case, after the meal.

Seeing me back off, the serving lady felt she had obviously put me down, where I belonged.

But my sister thought otherwise. She swears allegiance to the Queen and is very British and did not feel she or any of her guests should take this sort of thing lying down.

Now, my sister and I are large women, so when my sister wanted to know if she was calling us fat on top of implying that we came from a third world country of starving people – why else question us about going back to a buffet that allowed limitless helpings – that lady, who was herself well rounded, realized that she had made a serious mistake.

Indians are being beaten up in Australia, shot in the USA, called Pakis in UK and are generally not considered very desirable these days in many parts of the world. That is, of course, not the view of those who have chosen to leave these shores and set up home in other countries. When they have paid their dues locally for as long as my sister has in the UK, they begin to believe that they belong there and have the same rights as other fellow citizens of that country.

With this firm belief, my sister decided to tackle this obvious discrimination towards me just like any ‘native’ Englishman! It made a Restaurant Manager appear at our table ‘trying to understand’ the situation but he steadfastly said that the woman was too upset to come to our table to apologize.

I couldn’t understand what she was upset about. And how this had rendered her incapable of walking – or was it beneath her to apologize to one such as I? I mean I was not an illegal immigrant nor was I eating without paying – all payments were made in advance – so why had I been spoken to like this in the first place.

In fact the idea that she should tender an apology did not even occur to him, it was suggested by my sister as a possible means of ending the matter without which, we assured him, it would escalate and reach the Resort Manager.

He had underestimated how hurt and insulted we felt. Also, now everyone had become aware that we were, in fact, the only table with non-white people at it. Something no one had remarked on before, because the nature of the Resort precluded such considerations.

Since he was too dense to appreciate how furious we were, we took the matter to the Resort Manager, who again tendered no apology and said that he had been informed by the Restaurant Manager – who was going to follow us along with the serving lady but never turned up – that we had refused to allow the her to come to our table and apologize.

I cannot describe what I felt when this lie was flung at us. It was as hard as a fist in the face. My sister and her husband tried for four hours to put our point across but it didn’t help much. The Resort Manager merely assured them that he would look into it and gave them a copy of their complaint letter. I wandered off with my daughter, partly because I was close to tears with rage and partly because she was restless.

We went back home and did not speak of the incident until the day I was scheduled to fly back to India. A letter had arrived from the Resort saying the woman had tendered an unconditional apology. I would have liked to know what conditions she may have considered. I said nothing because I was leaving and could not help in any way. But I know for sure that the Resort has lost some good customers.

And I have lost a little more faith in Equality within the Human Race.