Woman's Hour - Separate duvets, Asma Khan, South Asian women in Regency England

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

Ammu, a term used mostly in South Asian Muslim homes for mother, is the title of Asma Khan’s new book. Part memoir, part cookbook 'Ammu' is a celebration of the food she loves to make but also of the woman who nurtured her and taught her to cook. Drawing on her experiences during the pandemic, the chef and founder of the acclaimed restaurant Darjeeling Express, celebrates the power of home cooking and the link between food and love.How important are your sleeping arrangements in a relationship? Recently the journalist Sally Peck swapped one duvet for two in bed with her husband, and now she can’t imagine going back. Sally joins Chloe to explore what difference this simple change made to her marriage.The second series of Bridgerton starts today and features Simone Ashley, a British actor of South Asian descent, in a lead role. She plays Kate Sharma, who has recently arrived in London and quickly draws the attention of Anthony Bridgerton. But what was life really like for South Asian women in Britain during this era? Professor Durba Ghosh lectures on Modern South Asia, the British empire and Colonialism at Cornell University.Presenter: Chloe Tilley Producer: Kirsty StarkeyInterviewed Guest: Asma Khan Interviewed Guest: Sally Peck Interviewed Guest: Professor Durba Ghosh

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Chloe Tilley. Welcome to Woman's Air from BBC Radio 4. Hello and welcome to Friday's programme. Good to have your company. Now, Asma Khan, the acclaimed chef and founder of the restaurant Darjeeling Express, joins us to talk about her new book. It's part cookbook, part memoir. It celebrates the relationship between mother and daughter and all the things that her mum has taught her. She's immensely proud of her mother.

So do you feel that pride? As we approach Mothering Sunday, I'd like to hear from you this morning about the things that make you proud of your mum. Now, I realise this can be a tricky topic for some, but whatever our relationship with our mother, past or present fulfilled or strained is there a moment of pride that you can share you can text me now on 84844 text will be charged at your standard message rate you can reach out to us on social media it's at bbc

woman's hour or of course you can email us through our website now as we emerge from the covid pandemic we're starting to see the cost of Covid and lockdowns on different parts of society. Children have paid a high price as schools closed and physical activities with friends were curtailed. NHS England data shows a quarter of 10-year-olds were obese during the first year of the pandemic. That's up by a fifth. Should we be surprised children were forced to learn at home, many sitting at a kitchen table, parents were juggling work and homeschooling, snacks within easy reach. Well we're going to speak to two child health experts to get to the bottom of it. Also the Women's Six Nations kicks off this weekend and

for the first time it has its own window away from the men's game. We're going to give you a step-by-step guide looking at where the game is and the players to look out for. It's perhaps telling that England are the only fully professional team in the tournament. And if you're a Bridgerton fan, you're going to be pleased to hear it's back on our screens today. This time with a female British actor of South Asian descent in a leading role. We're going to find out about the real South Asian women who lived and parted during the Regency era. And also, I want to ask you this morning, how well do you sleep? Do you get disturbed when your partner rolls over in the night? Do they pull the duvet off you?

Well, if the answer is yes, one of our guests could have the solution. Sleep in the same bed, but get separate duvets. Apparently, it's a big thing in Nordic countries, and journalist Sally Peck is a convert. She says she will never go back. So could this be the thing to save your relationship or drive a wedge between you? You can let me know 84844 on the text or at BBC Women's Hour on social media. Now the word Amu is used mostly in South Asian Muslim homes as a term for mother

and is the title of Asma Khan's new book, which is part memoir, part cookbook. Asma, who's a chef, she's also the founder of the acclaimed restaurant Darjeeling Express, wrote the book during lockdown. It's to honour her mother, who she describes as an anchor in her life. Well, the book charts her journey through recipes from the food she ate as a child growing up in Calcutta to the last meal she ate in the family home the night before she got married and the meals that she now cooks for her own children. I'm pleased to say that Asma is with us now. Good morning. Good morning. It's great to have you with us and I mean we were talking there the introduction the impact lockdown had on so many different parts of society and you wrote this

book during lockdown. Did that help you feel that food helps you connect with your family that are in India? Absolutely. I think none of us were prepared for what lockdown did to us emotionally, mentally. And as a restauranteur, everything became dark for me. I went into debilitating debt. My restaurant shut. I didn't know. And we've all forgotten that time. No question of vaccine. We didn't know how this disease was being transmitted. And friends and family around were getting very ill. And in the first, absolute the first wave of COVID, I lost three members of my family. And then the borders closed. and I realized that I don't know when I'm going to see my mother again and there was a lot of fear and I am grateful for this book. This book kept

me going. It kept my head above water because I sat down and actually wrote the prose, all the chapters before the recipes and also I could write this book because I had nowhere else to go. I had no restaurant. And I became very acutely aware that for 12 years, I hadn't eaten meals with my children. Both my kids were home. My child had come back from university. I suddenly became a mother again. And I remembered Ammu. And this book was probably

always in me, but the lockdown gave me the opportunity to write it. And it is a very personal account. You're very honest in it about your relationship with your mum and how your life moved from India to Britain. And it essentially uses food almost as a way to guide us through that, doesn't it? Yes. And actually, food is part of our journey. It is in our DNA. And whenever we think of moments, we often will think of food related to that, birth, death, marriages. And I think that because it is so much part of that occasion and memory that we don't separate it. And in this book, I've been able to weave it through, talk about memories, talk about the food and the emotion. And I think that for me, I discovered while writing this book, how much I am like Ammu.

This I had not really worked out because she also was, you know, she did a food business, a food, you know, first food entrepreneur in our family. She never went to college. She was incredibly brave and she stood up to patriarchy in a very dignified way. She did really what I sit back and think. I remember her jumping off a kind of open truck, sitting on a biryani pot at three in the morning in her silk sari, wearing her diamond jewelry. Nobody questioned her. You didn't question Ammu. She just was so incredibly powerful as a person, kind and humane, intelligent, that she just got away with everything. Because in our society, you don't go out and you know till three o'clock in

the morning you know perched on the edge of a truck sitting on an empty biryani box she would make sure that she brought lots of bones back for all the street cats and dogs there was chaos when she came back this every animal knew my mom had come and bought bones for all the all the animals she was just she just did her own thing. And you talk about that, and she really does come across in the book as a kind of force of nature, if you like. And it's interesting because both you and your mother are second daughters, and it kind of feels in the book that you talk about how that informed

the way she raised you. Yes. The thing is, my mother was the middle of five daughters. She was the dark-skinned one, and for sure, I know, not the favourite of her parents. Her grandmother loved her a lot, her aunts, and that's who she learned to cook from. My mother would never talk to me, ask her, how was it as a child? She never talked about her childhood. But she must have understood what it is not to be treated equally. She was very disappointed when I was born. But I think

that was just the pressure of everybody telling her, oh, now you're going to have five daughters, you know, and that kind of pressure from mother-in-laws, aunts, and unhelpful relatives really kind of hit her. But she then really made an effort to make me feel equal to my sister. This was very hard because my sister was everything everybody loved. She was very slim. She was beautiful. She had long hair. She was graceful. She was a princess. I, on the other side, was very dark. I was fat and everybody called me ugly. And my mother would just make sure that there was never this feeling of separation between my sister and me. And when my brother was born, she never celebrated his birth. I stood on the door and neighbors came and said, oh, you've had a sister.

No one believed I had had a brother because my mother refused to do the traditional celebration of the arrival of the family heir. That was life changing for me. I realized that if someone powerful, someone empathetic stands by you, it can change your entire attitude towards life. And yes, my mother and I both faced all this backlash of being daughters. And it was not easy. But the strength that came from knowing that people stood by you, other women stood by you, this changed my life. And so was that what drove you on to empower women to be involved in your businesses and to become chefs? Yes, absolutely. I had not understood how powerful my mother's influence was on me. I did it intuitively. But when I started writing this book, I have cried so much. I wrote most of this book late at night because I needed to see dawn. I needed to see light break through dark because my mother would always tell me this, darkness will never stay.

Day will always follow night, Asma. Never give up hope. Be powerful, be strong. And I wrote this book mostly waiting for dawn, for the light to come. And I realised that, yes, you know, she had a huge influence and I have done so much in my life because I understood how important it is to actually stand by other women and lift them up. You rise by lifting others. Talk to me about the different sections in the book, because one of the things that I liked was you sort of, at the beginning, there's an opportunity for you to have a look and say is it a date night right I'll go to those recipes or is it oh am I cooking for my future mother-in-law I'll go to that section it's really nicely put together like that very accessible yes I I just thought it would help because I hope for those who get the book I want you to feel I'm in your kitchen that I'm

holding your hand I'm sitting on the stool chatting to you because feel I'm in your kitchen, that I'm holding your hand. I'm sitting on the stool chatting to you. Because when I describe the recipes as well, I'm not going for timings. I'm telling you what's going to look like, what the aromas are, how you're going to feel, what it's going to taste like, what you're looking for. Because this is pretty much how I was taught to cook. Yes, you have the recipe and the recipe will work. But I'm also telling you other things that my mother would tell me along the way while she cooked. And anyone who is from South Asia, East Asia, you know how random mothers are when they're telling you how to cook. Absolutely random, no measurements, no timing. And often they actually forget to tell you half the things.

So you've got to stand next to them and watch them. And that's how I learned to cook. But I'm sparing you that torture by actually writing down everything accurately. So, in fact, it was so crazy that my cousins who came to my book launch, they bought so many books. They were like, oh, finally, you know, because we don't have to depend on our mothers because they are so unreliable they can't explain so I think on that night most of the books are bought by my own family in joy because finally they can make all their grandmother's dishes you know our aunt's dishes because I've written it down. There's some beautiful family photos that you share in the book as well it almost feels like you're flicking through a family album at times. But I'm also really struck by the cover of the book. And you talk about

that. Maybe you can explain to our listeners about the cover and the significance of that. The cover is a Bengali style of stitching, Naxikatha. It is mainly done by women who stitch together torn and broken fabric, weak fabric, in this kind of very basic running stitch, you know, just little motifs. But I love the idea that women put together two things that had no value, pretty much like second daughters, the way that you looked at being, you know, surplus to requirement. No one really cares. And they held things together. They put a balm on the scars and the torn fabric. And I was very, I had a diary that had these motives on it. Every time I ran my hands over it, it kind of made me feel that everything was going to be okay.

And this is the cover. And incredibly, my publishers are able to recreate that textured feel and the look of my diary. And this is the resilience of women, the power of us to get up every time we fall, we rise, we're scarred, we're bleeding, but we move on. And it's a celebration of that. This book is really a celebration of the resilience and how food has actually been used by women for centuries

to actually connect and communicate. My mother was very bad. She never told me that she loved me or she cared for me. She cooked for me. She sat and watched me eat. And now I know that was her lifetime of loving in that gesture of feeding me and watching me eat. So she I know that was her lifetime of loving in that gesture of feeding me and watching me eat. So she gave you that love of food and you watched her and it inspired you to open Darjeeling

Express. But as you talked about, really challenging during the pandemic and you even moved the business, didn't you? Which is, you know, the challenge that you had to move the business and the financial strains do you feel that you're starting to come back from that now well i'm coming back from that and because of that i'm finally looking at moving out because i had to find a place where i could say keep my women away from getting ill they're very high risk they're south asian three generational houses i've been early part of covid. This was the community that was very badly hit. And we were all, everybody survived in there, their family, no one got ill. So it was,

I needed to have a kitchen that was away from everyone, a huge space that I could separate. But I miss the fact that you do not see the women when you come in to dine at my restaurant. So I am actually now looking to move out. I'm looking for property where I can have the women in an open kitchen. I think the image of nine women, the average age being 50, is a very powerful story. We are the only all-female Indian restaurant in the world. And this is so important because when you look at it, every Indian household, it's a woman in charge of cooking. In every Indian restaurant, which is mid-level, high-end, there are men in charge. And I want people to see the hands that labor, the women who cook, the shakti, the power,

the female energy in this kitchen. And so I'm going through this difficult stage just when everything is stabilized and things are back to normal. I'm going through this difficult stage just when everything is stabilised and things are back to normal. I'm thinking of moving again because I need to show my women they are Darjeeling Express. I'm just one of the whole team. When we're talking about cooking,

when we talk about the love of food, we've also got to acknowledge the rising cost of food at the moment and living costs. I was reading earlier that the Trussell Trust has said that there's an increasing number of families that visit food banks who are saying, please don't give us root vegetables, don't give me potatoes, because I can't afford the cost of cooking them. It is a desperate situation for some families at the

moment who are trying to cook and trying to cater for their family on a really tight budget. It's very tough. I mean, just as a restauranteur, you notice the price of just cooking oil has become so high. You can't get a lot of things anymore. It is so hard and debilitating for women who have kept their families together, had their children over this long period,

schooled them, taken care of things. It is unfortunately the truth that women are the nourishers and they nurture families. So it concerns me a lot that disproportionately, again, the burden is going to fall on women to feed their families. And I wish the government could have done more. I'm disappointed that we didn't get more support for families in the statement by the chancellor. It's not going to get easier and the idea that so many children will go to school now hungry is so tough. Food poverty in a country like this is unacceptable. And we need to do something. We need to talk about it. There is no shame in raising this for families. It's going to be very tough. And we really have a responsibility, a moral responsibility,

to make sure that little children and mothers are fed. Because often what will happen is women will eat least. They will make sure the family is fed. And you cannot run on empty. Let me ask you before I let you go, what did your mum make of the book? She was very emotional. She was also taken aback by the fact that I'd managed to find all the negatives of the black and white pictures

her father had taken. I found them abandoned. I had them made. They actually developed them again. And I got them back digitally. She hadn't seen these. She'd never seen some of these pictures at all. So many of those black and white pictures of her childhood, she had never seen. That completely destroyed her. She was weeping. And the thing that she did, which was very emotional, she took the book and she bowed to me. In my culture, someone who is your elder does not bow to someone who's younger. Sorry, it's making me cry. Because that gesture of her, of acknowledging and bowing down to to me was so hard for me to take, but I understood why she needed to do it. It was a very big gesture. It was a gesture that

I had finally done something that completely, you know, made her feel so emotional that she bent down and she acknowledged my, me. And so it was very emotional. I can see in your eyes. Thank you so much for speaking to us. It's been a real pleasure to speak to you. That is Asma Khan. She, of course, she's a chef. She's the founder of Darjeeling Express.

Her new book, Ammu, is out now. I see you wiping your tears away. I'm sorry I made you cry, but thank you for sharing that with us. Thank you, Asma. So many of you getting in touch with us this morning about how you feel, the pride you feel, or otherwise in some cases, for your mother.

Obviously, Asma was talking about the pride she feels. Debbie says, my mother has taught me to be curious about the world, embrace other cultures and treat others how you would expect to be treated. Growing up under the apartheid regime regime this was not generally what was encouraged i cannot thank her enough for these life lessons love and respect that is from debbie with an anonymous one here i can't think of any one single instance where i felt proud of my mother or her actions however

my difficult childhood has made me very proud of everything that i've overcome i've now worked through the trauma and at the age of 33, I feel ready to start my own family. Any children I raise will strive to make them proud of me and of course of themselves. And just one more here. Hi, as a mixed race woman born to a single white mum of only 20, I'm so proud that she kept me and didn't give in to what was likely to be societal pressures to give me up for adoption. It can't have been easy in the 1970s in East Yorkshire. And that is from Faye in Yorkshire. Do keep those coming 84844 on the text or at BBC Women's Hour

on social media. Now, the chief medical officer for England, Sir Chris Whitty, earlier this week spoke about the many aspects of public health that had, he said, either trodden water or even gone backwards over the last two years, including levels of childhood obesity. NHS England figures show that a quarter of all year six pupils and almost a sixth of all four and five year olds are obese. The NHS is setting up special clinics in England for severely obese children to try to deal with this. So why are so many children overweight and what impact could it have on them later in life? Let's speak to Dr Helen Croker. She was a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Child Health at UCL. She's now at the World Cancer Research Fund. And also with us is Judy Moore, a paediatric dietician who worked in the NHS for many years and now has a private clinic working with parents.

Good morning to both of you. Helen, first of all, are you surprised by those figures, the sheer number of children that are now obese? I'm not really surprised, although those are shocking figures. I mean, COVID has really exposed the inequality we see in society and we know that obesity is strongly related to levels of deprivation so given what we've seen happening over Covid in the stock you know issues that that's you know pressures that that's put people under for example through the increased food bank use, it's really not surprising that we've seen levels go up. But that said, you know, this is shocking and shouldn't be something that we're accepting of. We have seen this jump, Judy, during the pandemic. And it's not surprising,

is it? Many people wouldn't have had access to outside spaces. Certainly during the first lockdown, we were only allowed an hour's exercise outside every day. When you have conversations with parents, are those the kind of messages that you're getting? I think during pandemic, certainly you're quite right that there was less opportunity to have exercise. I used to see a lot more children out on bikes with their parents, in my area. But I that the uh exercise they get running around the playground was probably not equal during pandemic there would have been a lot more time at home and indoors yeah so i think a lot of children lost out there but i i think also as asthma was saying you know she became a mother again and eating with her children was

quite important and i know a lot of parents took up baking and activities like that around food with their children. And I think probably just a lot more food was consumed. We also have to bear in mind, of course, Helen, that this was a time of extreme stress. And it's not unusual for people when they're feeling extreme stress to turn to things like food as a comfort. No, I mean, absolutely. The pandemic affected families in such different ways. And, you know, what the research is showing us is that there wasn't one way that people were affected. So some studies show that people, you know, did more home cooking and reduced their intake of unhealthy foods, whereas for other families, it was quite the opposite. There was a big increase in unhealthy snacking, increased

processed food use, for example. So it's really affected people in very different ways. And that will be part of contributing to the differences we're seeing in childhood obesity rates. Judy, when you talk with parents, what are the problems that they're saying they're facing and the challenges in addressing this? I think the main message for parents is that if their child is overweight, then they're eating too much for their body or for their growth and their development and their physical activity.

And that'll vary from child to child. But it's important that parents understand that to isolate the child into sort of you're being treated this way and we're living the other way, it's important not to do that. And if you're going to help a child who's overweight, then the whole family must follow the same guidelines. So if you say to the child, this portion of food's enough for you we're not there's no second helpings then the parents have to do it as well and as Helen said the unhappy unhealthy snacking between foods

that's got to go for everybody in the family the parents really have to role model a new healthy lifestyle for their child and and do it with them. The other thing is that these overweight children often get a lot of pleasure out of the food. They're overeating often because they don't have a very strong feedback mechanism telling them they're full. So they carry on eating and enjoy the food. So if you take away the joy of eating that extra food or food itself, you've got to replace it in some way because they're children, you know, they seek out happiness and joy. So I encourage parents to try and do more with their child, but make it fun to do exercise with them, to try and keep up their physical activity skills. So catching a ball, hitting a ball, those sort of things so that they're not going to fall behind their peer group.

There's a tricky line to tread here, isn't there, Helen? Because particularly if you're talking about girls and I have friends with daughters who are nine or ten Googling how to get a flat stomach and how do I lose weight? You need to tread gently with children, don't you? You don't want to swing it the other way so that people have eating disorders. So how do you tread that line in approaching this without creating a problem in another area? to be putting children on very restrictive diets. And as Judy said, having the whole family engaging is really important so the child's not being singling out. But I think we really need to think about this beyond individuals making changes. There's such a big problem now that there's such a strong

environmental component to um gaining weight that it really requires a high level intervention so above what individuals are doing much of what we're talking about is outside of individuals control so i think really if we're serious about this there's got to be some high level environmental changes of the sort that the government has been talking about um but not you know some of these haven't been kind of enacted but you know the taxes on unhealthy foods and drinks restricting um advertising for example which we know that children are exposed to huge amounts of advertising for unhealthy foods having safe green spaces that they can be active in all those sorts of things have got to be part

of the solution rather than solely relying on individual families to make changes as important as it is to support families we know don't we that the the ban on junk food advertising before 9pm is coming in next year so maybe that will have an impact. Judy, just on the mental health issue, before we move on to the solutions, we've spoken to parents who've said, look, the bottom line is we've all had a really bad trauma the last few years. Everyone has experienced this because of COVID. And kids have experienced that trauma. And is now the time to be looking at weight? Should we actually be looking at mental health because that causes a greater damage to these children? Or can it be something that can be done in tandem?

Well, I was surprised to hear Esma say, you know, when I was a child, I was fat. I think the most important thing is that you, as she's mentioned, is that you love your child whatever they are and you accept them I think the drift towards eating disorders can come if if the child is if their physical appearance or anything is commented on in a negative way particularly by a close family member I think that really hurts the child. And kids I mean kids are cruel aren't they in the playgrounds they're cruel. Yeah and I have to say that I think most children do know they're overweight. I have never met a happy one who was happy about being overweight so I think it's about doing both in tandem really. You have to make sure the child feels loved, accepted exactly as they are. But as you said, the eight and nine-year-old girls, I see quite a few of those, they want to

go shopping and buy with their mother and buy the most fashionable clothes. But when they try them on, they just don't fit or just don't look right on their body. So I think it's got to be both. I think you've got to help your child slim down as well, because that will help their mental health. And Helen, what about making sure that people don't feel judged, whether that is the family or the child themselves? It's absolutely critical. Weight is so heavily stigmatized in society today and you know not only is it unhelpful to blame families it does nothing to help people and in fact it does the reverse it's also incorrect because of you know our understanding about how complex obesity is and

the strong driving environmental factors and genetic factors which push people to gaining weight um you know it isn't a matter of individual choice and it's incredibly damaging for people adults and children to be blamed for um you know for carrying excess weight judy do you hear that from parents that they feel judged the parents you see yes certainly yes and and the children do as well. I think the greatest risk to overweight children is the bullying they get from their peer group, from their friends. And they notice that. They often, interestingly, they often don't admit it. If I ask them about it, they don't admit it. But the parent will say, yes, it's happened already. And so I think they are. But I think, yes, overweight people have always been judged as perhaps being lazy. But, you know, as Helen says, there are genetic changes. You see

young children, particularly under five, who overeat simply because they don't have that feedback mechanism, as I mentioned before, which makes them feel full. And, you know, you have to explain to children that they don't have that and that they have to, for the rest of their life, manage what they eat and eat smaller portions. Then smaller portions than they would like to. I mean, I had a little nine-year-old girl and she came with her father and the father said she gets really cross if I don't give her the same amount as her 17-year-old brother. Well, a child, a nine-year-old child eating what a boy going

through his growth spurt is eating is just, you know, really a disaster for that child. But, you know, children can be very stroggly if they don't get the food, the size, the amount of food that they want or the second helping that they want. Parents say that. Yeah, and particularly, I guess, if they're used to it as well. And it's very difficult to deal with.

Yeah, if they're used to it, I can understand that. So, Helen, let's look at solutions. You mentioned about green spaces and banning advertising. What are you thinking, junk food advertising? What are you thinking about these special clinics being set up by the NHS to target these children that are severely obese to try and help them? Is that a good strategy? I think all of these things need to happen.

So, clearly, if you've got families where children are already living with obesity that they're going to need more specialist support to manage that it weight doesn't just kind of spontaneously drop off people in general although obviously you know some people children do grow out of it naturally, but on the whole, they don't. So having more specialist support for families is, you know, is absolutely critical, but it does need to be supported by these wider environmental changes. Otherwise, you're expecting families, children to really sort of act against the environment. It's almost like setting them up, you know, to fail in a way. It's got to be supported by the environment. So we've got to really, you know, sort of keep the pressure up to keep the legislation, you know, moving through.

You know, for example, the junk food advertising, you know, it's really important that those sorts of initiatives are really, you know, kind of pushed through because all of those things will add up to making a difference. There won't be one thing on its own that solves this. Thank you both so much for your time this morning. Very grateful to you. That was Dr Helen Croker. She was a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Child Health at UCL, now at the World Cancer Research Fund. And Judy Moore was also with us, a paediatric dietitian

who worked in the NHS for many years and now has a private clinic working with parents. Lots of you sharing your thoughts about your mums this morning and the pride you feel towards them. Alison Stedman has texted in. Lovely to hear from you, Alison.

I'm an actress and acting can sometimes be very stressful, particularly when you're young and inexperienced. I would ring my mum and ask her to help me. Although she'd never been in the business, she always seemed to understand. She would always tell me to believe in myself and she'd say, never say you can't, always say you can and you will. She was my rock. She died 26 years ago. I still miss her every day and often ask her for advice. Alison, thank you for getting in touch. You can do the same, 84844 on the text. Another one here, my mother, stubborn, self-centred, still in her 90s, proud of her, no, but I do admire her survival skills. children. That didn't stop her doing a law degree on Open University and being called to the English Bar on her 40th birthday. She still managed to run a household and cook amazingly nutritious meals

and was there for us when we got home from school. Thank you for sharing those with us. Keep them coming. We're at BBC Woman's Hour on social media. Now, this weekend sees the start of the 2022 Women's Six Nations. And for the very first time, it will have its own full window in the calendar, separate from the men's competition. It's also got its first title sponsor. So to talk about the significance about this, particularly in World Cup year and who the players and teams to look out for. We're joined by Ali Donnelly, who is a women's rugby writer and also editor of women's rugby website Scrum Queens. Morning, Ali. Morning.

So this was trialled, wasn't it, last year? And it's the first time that the women's game gets its own window, which is significant because it's not in the shadow of the men's game. Yeah, and I think although COVID was obviously very difficult for sport for all sorts of reasons, it did force some sports to innovate. And this is one of the innovations that has really benefited women's rugby so the competition couldn't happen in the window last year because of various restrictions so they moved it it was very

successful not just because it was out of the shadow of the men but also you know really simple things like the weather was better so the rugby could be a little bit more free-flowing and so on so yeah this is a very exciting kind of new era for this championship. And I think we've seen so much growth and popularity in it that it really is set to flourish. And that's the key, isn't it? The more popularity a women's sport gets, the more high profile it becomes, the more backing it gets. And I think the significance of things like TikTok is the title sponsor. I mean, that's pretty big. Yeah, it's fantastic. And it's a really different brand for women, for rugby generally.

I mean, rugby's kind of sponsorships and partnerships have tended to be pretty traditional. You know, big alcohol brands, big insurance brands, banks. And so TikTok have come in. It's the first time actually the Women's Championship has had its own title sponsor, which is significant in its own right. And, you know, they're a different type of brand. They're a young media kind of startup, you know, younger focused brand. So what they will do with the sponsorship and the partnerships will be great, I think, for the game because we just haven't had it. Let's talk about the teams themselves. Give us a guide for people

who don't know much about the women's game. Give us a step by step guide of who we should really be looking out for in this Six Nations. Yeah, look, it's quite an imbalanced championship, and that's something that we've got in the game. We've really got to try and focus on fixing in the next few years. England are fully professional. They'll be everybody's favourites going into it.

France, semi-professional. So England and France, the two teams, I think, kind of pull themselves away from the rest. They play each other last. Bayonne, south of France. Final day of the competition should be hopefully a big crescendo, like a final and a great game. And then the rest. So we've got Ireland who have stuttered and stumbled in the last few years. They didn't make the World Cup, so they've got a bit of a point to prove. And there really actually isn't very much between the rest.

So Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Italy, tit for tat between those between those teams actually people are finding it really difficult to call who's going to finish third third to six but in terms of the players I mean look there are players who are becoming really recognizable in sport through and particularly the games being on free to air so BBC2 will be showing the England games and that's really important to get that slot. You know, red button rugby is great, but being, you know, on the network is really important. So, you know, a few people to look out for. I mean, England have got probably the best player in the world back,

Emily Scarrett, miraculous recovery from a broken leg not so long ago. Wales have got a player called Jasmine Joyce, who was amazing at the Olympics, you know, extremely fast. She's a player who I always say you get lean forward players. So if you're in the Olympics, you know, extremely fast. She's a player who I always say, you get lean forward players. So if you're in the stadium, you sit down, this player gets the ball, you lean forward because something's going to happen.

So, you know, there are lots of exciting kind of storylines to play out, even though it's pretty obvious, I think it will be an England or France title. Why is it only England is full-time professional? Yeah, look, there is a challenge in women's sport generally, not just rugby, around investment into the game. And I think one of the real frustrations for those of us

who write about the game and who know it is that it's taken a lot of time and we're still not there yet for some of those running the game to really see women's rugby as something worth investing in. And it really is worth investing in because for most countries at the top end adult male rugby is actually in decline and obviously budgets and investments are squeezed at the top because they've been squeezing that and for a long time so I think England did see the potential some time ago and yeah like it's going to take them a little while to get a return on that but they you know determined actually let's go for this and because

they did that you know France obviously have increased their investment Wales have given 12 players contracts New Zealand have come to the table so actually they they took a lead and others had to follow otherwise everybody else would fall behind but I think we're still in the case of we're still in the world of making the case for women's rugby as something to invest in but the problem is if you're doing a full-time job, and I was reading earlier on that one member of the Scottish team is a firefighter. I mean, you can only progress so far in your rugby if you're also having to do another job. There comes a point where the money has to go behind it to raise the game

because you can't expect that of somebody to do two full-time jobs. Absolutely. I think Amy Turner, a former Englandland player said very well when she was playing it's this is like having a full-time job and a really full-on part-time job on top of it look the game is moving towards professionalism but we're some way behind other sports so we're you know we're five ten years behind say where women's football is in england for example and it's getting there i think what we need though i mean and hopefully there are people listening who will be interested in this. We need brands like TikTok to say, okay, I'm not going to compare this to,

stop comparing women's rugby to men's rugby where we're a different investment prospect and we're a unique business in our own right. Get on board, consider us a startup and consider that in five to 10 years time, you'll make a return on that investment. And actually what you'll also get are amazing women who have great stories the firefighters the plumbers you know the teachers who've lived a life and then have gone to play rugby so I think you know that that's that's

really what we should be trying to use our free-to-air television opportunities for to say here's our sport let's sell it and come and back us as much women's sport we can get on the tv all the better Ali thank you so much for speaking back us. As much women's sport we can get on the TV, all the better. Ali, thank you so much for speaking to us. That is the women's rugby writer, Ali Donnelly. She's also editor of the women's rugby website, Scrum Queens. Not easy for me to say. Now, I was asking you to get in touch with us about duvets this morning

because we're going to be talking about whether it is good to have one duvet or two um lots of you got in touch with this my husband and i have separate duvets we've had them for 10 years it works brilliantly he gets hot at night i get cold so our duvets have different togs and i have to hook up a dialysis machine each night too so i sit up a bit he lies down flat if we didn't have separate duvets we would need separate beds, this will be music to the ears of the journalist Sally Peck, because she has swapped one duvet for two with her husband. And she now can't imagine going back. Sally, tell us about this.

How did you first get introduced to this idea? Because when I read about this, I was thinking, well, how does that work? But the more you read, the more I guess it kind of sounds sensible. Yeah, everyone who talks about it is super positive. does that work but the more you read the more I guess it kind of sounds sensible yeah everyone who talks about it is super positive um it was a German friend who was aghast when I told her that we shared a duvet but I think um you know it's all it's a lot like a the way we conceptualize honeymoons and then they have to be uber romantic and then you go and you feel this pressure I think you know five to five years into marriage we saved up some money and we bought our first bed

that we'd both chosen and it was a double bed because I thought, why would you ever want to be far away from your husband? Of course, you want to snuggle all night, this is great. And I really regretted that purchase about a year later because my husband is quite warm at night, I'm quite cold, we have different temperatures. So 15 years into marriage, we made the duvet swap,

because this German friend of mine said, that's barbaric. Why do you need to be under the same blanket? You should be comfortable. You know, in the same way that, for example, I choose my own pajamas, and Giles wears his own, right? You don't need to make exactly the same choices. And I think having your own duvet means you can regulate your own temperature. And it doesn't mean that you're somehow estranged or on the opposite sides of the bed. It just means that as you ease into sleep and as you get older, sleep is really more crucial than ever. You can be comfortable. How did you broach this subject with your partner? I mean, I came home and I said, Verena says that we are barbaric because we have the same,

I mean, frankly, that's what happened, you know. But I also, I mean, his wonderful father listens to Woman's Hour. I don't want to offend him. You know, they're a hot family, right? They just, they sweat a lot. And so this is a subject that's on the table. And so, yeah, so I said, why don't we try it?

And then when we were moving house a year and a half ago, it seemed like a logical time to make the switch. So we did. And honestly, he's been an awful lot happier as well, because I prefer linen sheets. I mean, this all sounds very frivolous. He prefers cotton. But it isn't that frivolous, because if you don't have a good night's sleep, that is actually has a horrible impact on your marriage on your ability to parent and all of that so i feel um you know and as you're the person who wrote in said you know if we don't do this we're going to have to have separate bedrooms and honestly i don't judge on that either people need a good night's sleep if you find that you want your own bed great i mean i'm

not there but um but i think having control of your own space and your own comfort is really important quite another message which has come in here single duvets for a couple are a godsend the perfect way to regulate heat and deny duvet robbery i was introduced to this concept by my jewish girlfriend sorry swedish girlfriend no looking back here and by the way we also introduced the scandi system of putting hand holes at the top side of the duvet cover makes life so much easier is that something you know about i'm afraid i have not found those yet maybe that's a tip for you going forward so on a practical level are we talking about two single duvets next to each other in the bed it's not you haven't got a double duvet each. We have not. I think if I were even colder,

I might have pumped for one of those. But yeah, generally they tend to be single duvets. And if you go to any, I think there's wedding hotel reviews across Austria and Switzerland. And very often this is what you get anyway. It's the norm here. And I think that we're missing out in the UK

by not having this as more of a regular thing. What do your friends make of it? Because I can imagine there could almost be a sort of, oh, is there a problem in your marriage? Is there a problem in your relationship? Yeah, yeah, complete cultural divide. And I think my parents are a bit peculiar too. But all of my German, Austrian, Swiss friends say, well, yeah, of course, what else would you possibly do? You know, so it's just, yeah, I think from the UK side, it's, oh, that seems a bit sort of grown up, a bit estranged. You know, there's another element of this, which is that if you're controlling the proper temperature with the right level of duvet for you, perhaps you don't need pajamas as much anymore.

So, you know, maybe you have a bit of a space um to to be more intimate in that way well that's what i was going to ask it whether it is a barrier to intimacy i mean even if it's just a cuddle if you're you know sometimes you know a cuddle just to keep warm when you first get into bed but if you snuggle down in your own duvet you maybe don't need that yeah but you're balancing and waking up in the middle of the night because your duvet has been stolen and your phrase is is a balance i'm sorry a barrier to intimacy as well i think so let me read you some more of the messages which are coming in double bed single duvets best thing we ever did saw this on on the continent and thought it was a bit odd but during the dreadful sweaty nights of the menopause we bought single

duvets and it's transformed our sleep quality so much for the better. That's from Sue. Sue, thanks for getting in touch. We've had single quilts for years and it's certainly saved our marriage. I like a thinner duvet and I also steal the quilt if we share one with single quilts. Harmony reigns. My question on a purely practical level, because I do like things to look nice in my house. How do you make two single duvets look nice with your cushions and the 7000 cushions I have on my bed? Do you know what I mean? To look pretty. Yes. Well, you're going to have to change your mind ever so slightly.

No. But you could fold them, you know, a long way, fold them over. So they can be very neat, but it is a slightly continental practical look. I will. But you could put something over them, perhaps a little throw over the whole shebang. Yes. And more expensive, because I guess you're getting two single duvets. That's more expensive than a double duvet. I'm just being very practical here. You can hemorrhage money on sheets and duvets if you want to.

It all depends on where you buy them. Listen, thank you ever so much. We are yet to get a negative text about this or tweet. So thank you so much for coming on to talk to us. That is Sally Peck. She's a journalist. She has swapped her one duvet for two in a bed, as have many of you. Anne says, in the 50 years of marriage,

we've always had single duvets. Never thought of the idea of double duvets. Another one here. Good morning. This is from Anna on the Isle of Wight. We've had separate duvets for around six years. It's a game changer. It was my wise mother who suggested this.

I moaned about my husband turning and stealing the whole duvet night after night. Not only does it solve this, but it's perfect for the very different temperatures that we experience. Well, thank you all for getting in touch and sharing those experiences. Keep them coming 84844 on the text or at BBC Woman's Hour on social media. Now, the second series of Netflix hit Bridgerton today. It is going to feature Simone Ashley. She's a British actor of South Asian descent, and she's in a leading role. She will be playing Kate Sharma, who's recently arrived in London and quickly draws the attention of Anthony Bridgerton. But who were the real South Asian women who lived during this era?

Well, we can speak now to Professor Durba Ghosh, who teaches at Cornell University on modern South Asia, the British Empire, gender and colonialism. Good morning. Good morning. So, first of all, how accurate is it on the number of South Asian women who would be on this beautiful party scene in the Bridgerton era? Well, I have to confess, I haven't seen the show or the second series yet. So how many is a tough question, but there certainly would have been South Asian women in these social circles. We know of a few, and we know of a few partially

because other people wrote about them. So there's Kitty Kirkpatrick, who met Thomas Carlyle. We know about Elizabeth Ducorell, who wrote letters to folks who would have been in the social circles. So I think we know that there were women of South Asian descent circulating in these social circles. I don't think it would have been extremely common. I think the majority of South Asian women who were attached to Europeans would have stayed in India, but there certainly were some that came to England. And if that's the case, why are we not seeing them if we're watching, you know, I don't know, Jane Austen or Bronte movies? You know, I think a lot of it is about the television and film adaptations of these novels. So I think in part because we've all seen so many adaptations of these Jane Austen novels in particular, in which the casts are all white, we start to imagine

that the characters were white in the novel, whereas one can imagine that when Jane Austen wrote some of her novels, these women had European names but might have had different kinds of ancestry, but it wouldn't have been noticed in the novels in particular. So I always think of Fanny Price in Mans is quite poor or working class, it wouldn't have been surprising if that had been a family descended from Indian sailors or something like that. So I think in some ways it's the television adaptations that have made us think that those people were all white rather than they actually were all white. So actually white is interchangeable with the word elite, really, isn't it, in these circles? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's absolutely

right. And I think it's fair to say, I mean, in the depiction that Bridgerton offers, the women that would have been circulating in these social circles, going to balls and dances and promenading, they would have been very elite in their own right in India, which is, I think, why they know how to behave in these social circles, which is why they know how to comport themselves. Would they have experienced racism? Such a good question. Well, it's the same era, you know, as Sarah Bartman, right, is being shown in London and in Paris and in Berlin. So would the women have experienced racism? Such a hard question to answer. I think certainly their difference would have been noticed. Whether it would have been a difference that was attached to their color or

their hair or the way that they looked, I think is a more likely way to think about it. I suspect that the idea that they had different characteristics because they were from South Asia hadn't fully flourished. I think that comes a little bit later with the emergence of scientific racism, but I do think that they certainly would have seemed different, right? Maybe another way to put it would be that I think these colonial dynamics generated ideas of beauty in which white women, pale skin, delicate features, being very thin, would have become attached to what we imagine a romantic heroine looked like, right? And I think that those ideas emerge partially because you have different kinds of people on the scene. And many of them would have changed their names to more European sounding names. Absolutely, they would have. So I think that's probably the most unlikely feature of

the series as much as I know about it. They wouldn't have been named Kate Sharma. They probably would have had a European last name. And in some ways, I think that's the most, that's probably the most common way in which South Asian populations entered into these social environments, particularly women, right? So there are South Asian men who travel around in social circles in England, but if they were South Asian women, they would have likely have had European names. So let's talk about some of them. Kitty Kirkpatrick, she was a real woman who was in London. Tell us about her.

She's a fascinating character in the sense that she, her mother, Hera Nyssa, is a woman in the royal court in Hyderabad. Her father is James Achilles Kirkpatrick. Her parents' relationship causes a little bit of a stir. And of course, William Dalrymple has written about it in White Moguls. I think the really tragic thing is Kitty Kirkpatrick and her brother come to England when they're quite young, I think four and six, and she grows up entirely in England. She goes to a number of social events. She meets Thomas Carlyle, who writes about her. She does later in life correspond with her mother who remains in South

Asia. But she herself never returns to South Asia. And of course, she marries and, you know, continues to live in England. So I think she's an interesting example of somebody who, I mean, it's so fascinating coming on after Asma, who grows up without a mother. And I think that's much more common than we realize. Tell us about one more woman, Helene Bennett or Elizabeth de Sorel. Who do you prefer to talk about? Oh, I'll talk about Helene Bennett. I think she's such a fascinating character. So she's in the Royal Court in Lucknow, and she meets Benoit de Boin when she's there.

And he is a soldier of French extraction who ends up in India fighting. I mean, he's a little bit of a mercenary, but fighting for different armies. The fascinating thing about them is they have two children. They come back to London and set up house in Great Portland Place. He has quite a lot of wealth from his time in India. And soon after they get to London, he announces he's going to marry somebody else, a young French woman who's been thrown out of France because of the revolution. And so he takes up with this other woman. And maybe in an example of 19th century co-parenting, Helena Bennett raises the two children on her own with some support from Des Moines. He ends up going back to France.

He sets up in Chambéry, in the Savoie region. The children stay in contact and in fact, they visit him in France. She raises them, however, and the fascinating thing is she remains in England

for the remainder of her life. She dies, I think, in the 1850s in Surrey, where she's buried. So, you know, an amazing story, right? She must have been literate. She certainly wrote in English. She certainly wrote in Persian. Effectively becomes a single parent, right? Listen, we've got to leave it there. But thank you so much for speaking to us and shining a light on those incredible women. That is Professor Durba Ghosh. We've been talking about ahead of Mothering Sunday about what makes you proud of your mum.

Adam's got in touch saying, I'm extremely proud of my mum. She's 82 and she's just relinquished presidency of England Golf and is now the centenary president of a local golf club. She's been so devoted to encouraging young girls to take up golf and supported them along the way. I want to publicly forgive her for forgetting to pick me up from school because she was on the golf course. Yeah, you shame her in public, Adam. Why not? Thank you for getting in touch. And another one here saying, I'm also very proud of my two amazing daughters who are both mums, balancing work and family life and raising two incredible boys. Thank you for listening to us on today's Woman's Hour.

Since the war began, my inbox has been flooded. People from Ukraine, Russia and Britain are getting in touch with me. They're telling me about a very different battle, but one that's also having real consequences for the people caught up in it. I'm Marianna Spring, and in this new podcast for Radio 4, War on Truth, I'll be reporting on the extraordinary information war being waged over Ukraine and hearing from the ordinary people sucked into it. This blatant denial of reality is being waged by trolls, state media, influencers, online and beyond.

From BBC Radio 4, War on Truth. Subscribe now on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake.

No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.