Woman's Hour - The play Lotus Beauty, Women in Agriculture & America’s Sterilisation policy

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

The play Lotus Beauty set in a beauty salon in Southall tells the story of the Punjabi immigrant women it serves where culture meets the desire to fit in. The beauty salon is a backdrop for exploring themes such as domestic abuse, suicide, and a desperation for belonging. We hear from the plays Director Pooja Ghai, and from Kiran Landa, who plays the character Reita. In 1973, two Black girls - Minnie Lee and Mary Alice Relf - were sterilised without their knowledge in Alabama by a government funded organisation. The summer of that year, the Relf girls sued the government agencies and individuals responsible for their sterilisation. By 1979, the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare was ordered to establish new guidelines for the government’s sterilisation policy. A new book, Take My Hand, draws inspiration on this landmark case and explores the history of compulsory sterilisation against poor, Black and disabled women and girls in America. We hear from the author - Dolen Perkins-Valdez.We hear from the documentary photographer Joanne Coates who has a new photography exhibition and book Daughters of the Soil looking at the role of women in farming . This work is a culmination of a year’s research where she explored the role of women in agriculture in Northumberland and the Scottish Borders. The poet Charly Cox takes us through her latest collection inspired by a piece of research by the dating website Plenty of Fish. It found that 51% of people have secretly brought a friend along on a date with them. Charly tells us about her own experience and some of the stories behind the eight poems she has written about blind dates and dating. Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Rabeka NurmahomedPhoto credit: Robert Day

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 Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning, welcome to Woman's Hour. A bit of romance for you this Friday. I want to know the origin story of how you met your partners, particularly if someone else was instrumental in your love life. That's because some new research has found that 51% of single Brits have pulled off a covert operation to have

friends attend their date with them incognito. Is this you? Did you have a buddy sitting at the next table or loitering at the end of the bar ready to stage an intervention if the date was an absolute disaster? What elaborate plans have you come up with to get yourself out of the date was an absolute disaster. What elaborate plans have you come up with to get yourself out of a date? What were your backup plans? I'd also like to know if your friends or colleagues or even your exes have helped you get together with someone. It could have been a total stranger, in fact, because 31% of us seek love advice from strangers we meet when we're out and about. So has a random on a bus ever given you love life advice or boosted your confidence? I don't know, maybe you've even pulled

on a bus. Love can blossom anywhere. Whatever your stories, we'd love to hear them this morning. Get in touch. It's the usual way. You can text WomansHour84844. You can also contact us via our social media. It's at BBC WomansHour or if you'd like to write me an email, go to our website. We're then taking a trip into rural Britain today, a place I like to visit, as do most of us. A new photography exhibition is looking at the lives of women farmers and asks questions about the gender imbalance and inheritance of land. So are you a farmer? How is the workload divvied up on your farm? Are you a female farmer?

I'd love to hear about your work life today. Maybe you don't farm, but you run the business in other ways. Who will the farm be passed on to in your family? Is it the sons or the daughters? My experience of being on farms is that they are family run businesses and women are instrumental, if not the driving force. But I'd love to hear your experiences this morning. Again, get in touch in the usual ways. Also on the show, we'll be talking to American author Dolan Perkins Valdez about her new novel set around the very true story of two young black girls who were sterilized in America. When I say young, they were 12 and 14. And this wasn't hundreds of years ago.

This case happened in the 1970s. It's truly shocking. And I'll be talking to Pooja Ghai, the artistic director of the Tamasha Theatre Company, about their new play set in a beauty parlour in Southall, turning the spotlight onto the lives of Punjabi women in Britain. All of that, and we'll be hearing from you. Again, the text number 84844, or email us by going to our website. But first, let me take you back to 1973 Alabama, when two black girls, Minnie Lee, 14, and Mary Alice Ralph, 12, were sterilized without their knowledge by a government-funded organization.

I'm just going to let that sentence sink in a bit first. The Ralph Girls sued the government agencies and individuals responsible for their sterilisation. It was a landmark case and led to the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare establishing new guidelines for the government's sterilisation policy. A new book, Take My Hand, draws inspiration on this breakthrough and explores the history of compulsory sterilization against poor, black, and disabled women and girls in America. And I'm delighted to say I'm joined now by the author Dolan Perkins-Veldes. Dolan, welcome to Woman's Hour. You're speaking to us from Washington. Firstly, we fully appreciate

that you got up to speak to us at 5am. So thank you for that. Thank you for the invitation. Now, the novel is based on this shocking story of Minnie Lee and Mary Alice Ralph. Tell us who they were. They were two little girls in Montgomery, Alabama. They were the daughters of parents who were illiterate, who were dependent upon government subsidies for their subsistence. And they had social workers. They were patients at a federally funded family planning clinic that was delivering birth control to them. Why were they delivering birth control to them? They were so young. Why was this happening? Well, I think at that time, there was a belief by the federal government that there were too many teenage girls getting pregnant.

And it was intended to stem the flow of unintended teenage pregnancies. And how did they get consent? Well, I'm not sure how the family gave consent for the birth control. I do know that the family was very fearful of the federal government because they depended on them. And they listened to the federal government. They trusted the federal government because they depended on them. And they listened to the federal government, they trusted the federal government, and they didn't want the government to cease giving them their benefits. When did you first come across this story? When did you first hear about it? I learned about this story first time years ago from my dad, who was a graduate of Tuskegee University in the late 1960s and

had a close connection to Alabama. But I started researching it as a writer and as an adult seven years ago. And I was just curious. I was like, what happened with those girls? And I began to do a deeper dive into the archives. And what I learned really startled me. And the more I learned, the more I knew that I had to turn this into a book and that everyone had to know about this story. Absolutely. And, you know, it is so shocking.

It's like a dystopian nightmare. It's almost hard to believe that this happened in reality. It is very hard. I mean, I'm the mother of two daughters and I cannot imagine something like this happening to my daughters at that age. The family, like I said, was illiterate. And when the nurses brought the consent form, they couldn't read it, but the nurses didn't explain to them what it said. And the mother and the father signed an X on the lines for signature. Now, I know a lot of research went into writing this book. So who were some of the people that you met that were involved in the case?

Well, I first called the lawyer who had actually argued this case, a man by the name of Joseph Levin. At the time that he argued this case, and we're talking about the real life case, he was 30 years old. He is still alive. He's in his late 70s. And he remembered everything. And I had a wonderful conversation with him. I said, I'm coming to Montgomery. And he said, that's fine. And he had not gotten the files, the case files out of storage in over 45 years. And he took them out so that he could refresh his memory. And what did you learn from those exchanges with him? Well, he said that when he first learned about the case, he thought it was just the Ralph family,

and he thought it was just these girls. But after he made that initial lawsuit filing, people started contacting him from all over the country. And he learned that it was tens of thousands of women across the country who'd been sterilized and not just women, but also minor children. And he said he was stunned by that. So he dropped the case against the clinic and then filed a case against the federal government. How did he become involved in the case? How did he hear about it? So that was the second person who I met during my trip to Montgomery. She was the girl's social worker. Her name was Jessie Bly. And she discovered that the girls had been sterilized. She went to the hospital and she said that they were lying there in pain and she couldn't believe it. She immediately went to her husband, who was a military, who was enlisted in the military, and he advised her to go to his commanding officer on the base.

She went to his commanding officer, distraught, upset to his commanding officer distraught, upset. The commanding officer told her about this young civil rights attorney in town. And that's when she contacted Joseph Loven. And this landmark case went on to establish new guidelines for the government sterilization policy. What was the significance, do you think, of two young, these two poor black girls taking on the federal government and winning? It was a huge deal at the time. And that was one of the things I discovered in my research. It was in every major newspaper, every major magazine carried this story. There was television footage. The family testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee.

The case itself was very significant. It was the year of Roe v. Wade. There was a lot going on the year of the Nixon administration scandal. So it was significant. What I've learned is that the family has protected those girls since this case because they were exposed to such national scrutiny. And as they grew into women, they were very much protected by the family. But it was a big deal. So big that you decided that you wanted to base your novel around the story. And the main protagonist, you decided to write the book from the point of view of one of the nurses, civil. Why did you want to look at it through the perspective of the nurse?

Well, when I first learned about the story, I didn't know what my window into the story would be. So I wasn't even sure if it was a book yet. I was just following my curiosity. But I read this line in a 1973 Montgomery newspaper where they interviewed the supervising nurse who was a white woman who authorized the sterilization. And she said that the sterilization must have been okay because all eight nurses who worked at the clinic were black. And I said, what? I couldn't believe that. I just thought, how could this be? And that was when I started to wonder what it must have been like to be a black nurse working at that clinic at that time and have something like this happen under your watch. It must have been just absolutely devastating. Yeah, because you are complicit in something that is happening to your own.

That's right. You're complicit, although you're trying to help, you find yourself crossing a line that you can never go back over. Yeah, because in the book, Sybil works in the family planning unit and it's her job to administer contraceptive injections to these young girls. So what was the justification then given to Sybil about why this was being done? Well, she believed that women ought to have more reproductive control over their lives. When she was in college, she had an unintended pregnancy. And so she wanted to make sure that that didn't happen for other women. But what she finds very quickly is that there's a line. And the first thing she learns is that she's administering birth control shots to two minor children who are not even sexually active. Well, one of them hasn't even started her period yet.

Yes. Well, one of them hasn't even started her period yet. Yes, and she learns that very early in the book. After, however, she's given the young girl a shot, and she cannot believe it. She's very disturbed by what she's just done. I also thought it's interesting that Sybil comes from a very different background to the two girls. She's a black woman living in Alabama in the 70s. Her father has his own clinic.

He's a doctor. Her mother's an artist. She'd never come across that level of poverty before in her own life, had she? She had not. I knew this from the very beginning of drafting this manuscript, that she came from a different world. She recently graduated from Tuskegee, which was a reputable and prestigious institution. She is the daughter of a physician. When she graduated college, her father gave her a new car, you know, so she comes from

a very different world, whereas the Williams family, they are living in abject poverty. They live in a shack. They don't have any indoor plumbing. And she's never she knows technically, theoretically, that people live like that. But she's never encountered it in person before. In the book, her career choices are questioned as well. She's told that she should be aiming higher. Do you think we undervalue the role of nurses? Oh, yes. I hope we value them more now since the pandemic. But I come from a family tradition of nursing. My mother was a nurse. My mother's sister was a nurse for over 45 years. And even though in the medical profession,

I know there's a hierarchy with doctors at the top in my family we've always understood the value of the nursing profession. You must have had did you have some interesting conversations then with your mother and your aunt around when you were writing the book? I did I had interesting conversations with them about Black' mistrust of the medical system and their encounters with people who wouldn't receive treatment, for example, or we talked a lot about vaccine skepticism at the very beginning of the pandemic that was very prevalent in the Black community. So we've talked a lot about that. I really believe in the honour of the nursing profession. It's just I wish more young people entered it. Yes.

And in fact, I think in the UK we've had an uptake after the pandemic of entering the nursing community. And we're having similar conversations about various communities and women of color and the trust around particularly maternity services at the moment in the UK. This book is interesting in this book because it's almost like everyone has a right to have a say about what should be done with a woman's body, whether it is a nurse entering into nursing and someone presuming that she may want to go and have children, or whether it is the young girls, like who has the say over what should be done with that woman's body? Yes, the very first thing that Sybil learns, she's only, when the book starts, she's only 22, 23 years old, but she's got some lessons to learn. And one of the very first lessons she

learns is that she has to listen to her patients. It has to be a dialogue. She can't just make decisions for them. And I think when we talk about women's control over our bodies, what we're really talking about is there needs to be a conversation. It needs to be a two-way dialogue between us and our healthcare providers. And people need to listen to us. That's really important. And when you shut that conversation down, then you really shut down healthcare. And it's still happening now.

Reproductive rights is in the national and international spotlight. Are you worried? Are you concerned about what's happening right now in America? I'm very concerned. I think we're about to have some very painful conversations in this country. When this US Supreme Court ruling comes down, it is going to be a difficult time. There are a lot of reproductive justice organizations working on the ground. And, you know, to be clear, reproductive justice includes so much more than the decision to terminate a pregnancy. It includes, you know,

the right to contraceptive services. It includes the right to raise a child in a safe and healthy environment. It includes a lot more than that. And I'm hopeful that the contours of that conversation will include all of the things that have to do with mothering or the decision not to mother. Back to the book, Sybil made a decision not to mother. She had a child aborted before she goes into the nursing profession. But what's interesting in the book is the father of the unborn child is her best friend, Ty, and he desperately wants to talk about what happened and she doesn't. Do you think society acknowledges enough how painful and complicated abortions can be for men too? I don't think society talks about that at all. And, you know, one of the things I've

been hearing from my male readers is that this is the first male character they've seen who has pain about the ending of a pregnancy. And I think we often stereotype men in this situation as being either absent or uninvolved or uninterested. But in fact, this can also very much be a decision that a couple makes together and has to work through. So I wanted to portray that with Ty. And I wanted to show that this is a conversation that involves all of us. And the lawyer who takes on Erica and India's case in the book is a white man, Lou Feldman. Now, this wasn't the case in the first draft, was it? Well, in the early draft, I toyed with the idea of making the lawyer a black woman because I didn't want to write a stereotypical white savior story. I've seen that so often in books and in

film. But then I realized I couldn't do that. I couldn't take this story away from the work that Joe Levin had done. And I really wanted to recall the interracial cooperation that happened throughout the civil rights movement. That is a movement that could not have existed without the unity of whites and blacks in this country. And I wanted to just sort of reflect upon that. What's your hope for the book, Darlene? You know, I'm not sure if my book can change the world or anything like that. But I hope that it

will remind us as we enter these conversations this summer. And of course, I didn't plan this. I started this book long before this U.S. Supreme Court happened. But I do hope that it will remind us to think about the women who are most adversely affected. Poor women, disabled women, women of color, women without resources, who are really going to be affected by this policy that's coming down from our US Supreme Court. And as we think about this, I want us to remember the sacrifice that those girls made. It is a shocking story and one that needs to be shouted about. And you know what, it made me wonder why we don't all know about this and that this happened only in the 1970s. And then I discovered that it's still happening. Yes. As recently as 2010, we discovered that women in California state prisons were being sterilized without their consent. Right now, there is an ongoing battle, legal battle happening at

our immigrant detention facilities at the border where women have alleged that they've had invasive procedures, including hysterectomies and sterilizations. And I met with some of the lawyers who are representing those women. The stories are horrific. So this is still happening. That's why we have to remember, and we have to make sure that people don't allow

this to happen again. Dolan, it's been a real pleasure speaking to you. And again, thank you very much for waking up in the middle of the night to talk to us on Woman's Hour. The book is called Take My Hand. That was Dolan Perkins Valdez. Thank you, Dolan. Now we're taking a trip into rural Britain. One of my favourite things to do. Who are the women in agriculture across Northumberland and the Scottish borders? Well, documentary photographer Joanne Coates' exhibition Daughters of the Soil is trying to answer that question. Her new exhibition is the culmination of 12 months of work researching gender and agriculture and chronicles the lives and stories of more than 40 women involved in all aspects of farming today and Joanne joins me now. Very good morning, welcome to Women's Hour Joanne. What is Daughters of the Soil? Daughters of the Soil is

an exhibition and it's a body of work that looks at women in agriculture and it's photographs so they were part of an art commission by Newcastle University and the Maltings. And the theme of that commission was gender and agriculture. And I also got to work with Professor Sally Shortall, who's an expert on the subject, but also comes from a farm herself. Why did you want to look into this? So I really wanted to look into it for one, because I think farming in the UK can often be seen as a male career. But from my experience, that wasn't the case. Like you said in the introduction, I saw families who worked together to farm. And to me, it's that kind of it often takes a community to make a farm work.

And I know a lot of women. I work with a lot of women who work on farms, farmers' daughters, farmers' wives, but there were also parallels between photography and farming. So according to Women Photograph, there's 15% of women who are professional photographers. And then research by DEFRA that I came across, 14.9% of women are registered as farmholders in the UK. So those numbers really echoed and it kind of made me think well why is that um and maybe at first I kind of wanted to challenge the question

because I was like well there are a lot of women in farming but then looking at the research I was like why are women not the ones who own land or why are the women not having leadership positions and kind of like is there anything is the stories out there that are different and kind of highlight that? And why aren't they? Why don't they own the land? What's going on? What did you discover?

So it's quite a complicated, I think there is a role of tradition. And in a way, I think it's not a harmful way almost because you talk to families about it and they kind of say, well, that's just how it was done. So it's not maybe intentional, but I think that what was happening was there was no visibility of the stories of a woman farmer and that is slowly changing and what I really wanted to do was change that even more and say look at all these women making the work and but also maybe someone like there's one of the women and called Rebecca and

she's a farm partner she's a businesswoman and and just a superstar and she works at Ingram Valley Farm um but she's not in the field so she's doing the paperwork she's running diversity schemes and she's bringing the farm into the future but when we think of a farmer we might not think of her and when I asked her questions and photographed her she was said no one's ever asked me what I think about the farm or they've never asked they've never seen her as like the important one and yes it is a partnership she farms with her husband Ross and his dad but it's all of them that make the farm work and actually I would argue that women are always that force for change they're the ones

behind it but we don't always see them as that. I mean you know I've been on a lot of farms and I tend to agree with you as I said in my intro it is women that I found that are often the driving force as well especially around farms that have had to diversify. We've got a listener Christina Willett who farms with her son in Essex who's going to join us to talk to us morning christina hello there alisa how are you very well thank you um you're arable farmers tell me what it's like right tell me about your life tell me you've obviously been listening um tell me what it's like to be a woman farmer today what's your experience well yeah it's a fantastic job and of course it's a it's a great privilege to be farming and to inherit a farm.

It's fantastic. I'm one of four daughters. So I think my dad did have reservations about whether he should let me go farming. And I didn't pick up on it at the time. But I have discovered since that he took advice from one or two people. But I'm hoping that he uh he eventually was happy to to run with it oh what do you mean he had to get some advice what because he had four daughters what to do i yes exactly i think um he he thought oh i don't know should i

let my daughter go farming or not but uh actually he was he was probably more enlightened than than many at that time and um i'm glad he i'm glad he did let me go farming do you think things have changed you say your dad was more enlightened do you think the new generation is or do you think it's hugely yes i mean i'm i'm now in my 60s when i started farming there was definitely um a little bit of uncertainty about whether women should be in farming. But I find now that it's a lot better. Although I would say that I get treated a lot better by younger people than an older generation.

But yeah, it's definitely improving and it's a great industry for women to be in because I mean, I'm five'2 and 8'0. I'm not big and strong, but you don't need that in farming anymore. You know, on machinery, it's all fingertip stuff and with livestock handling, you've got things to help you. You don't need to be built. What did other farmers make of you 30 years ago then christina um the

farming community is extremely friendly and welcoming and on the whole we deal with really lovely people and i would say probably the only time i've experienced uh bad things is is from people outside the industry uh the farming industry is fantastic and welcoming, yeah. And you've got a son? Yeah, I've got a son who's farming with me and is pretty much taking over the farm these days. And I find myself turning up to work and being told what to do, which is how it should be, really.

I'm very happy about it. How did you navigate then bringing up your son and being told what to do which is is how it should be really i'm very happy about it how did you navigate then bringing up your son and farming because farming doesn't stop it's not like you can take maternity leave you know you have to carry on yeah well that that is very true i mean when i was um having my children i had huge support from my mother and fortunately for me she took the view that um if the parents couldn't be looking after children and grandparents were the next best thing and interestingly my mum says actually that uh because my family are descended from scotland and the north of england uh we came down to essex um sort of in the early 1900s and mum always says that the reason that those newcomers to Essex made it

is because the women were prepared to farm. And they were milking cows and really getting stuck in. Women were hugely instrumental in the success of those newcomers to Essex in particular and all over the country. So what do you think about Joanne doing this photography exhibition, sort of highlighting the role of women in farming? that I'd be delighted. I've got a couple of young girls who are doing their Duke of Edinburgh's experience on the farm. And they would be brilliant farmers. I just am delighted to see more women getting into farming.

It's a great thing. Absolutely. Christina, we've loved speaking to you. Thank you so much for chatting to us this morning. And good luck. And maybe, you never know, I might be popping along to see you one day. Joanne, there you go.

Women make up 28% of the farming industry in the UK, but it's often described as the work that they do is just helping out. Definitely. And I think that that's, for me, what's needed to change, that they do work just as hard as men. And I think that farming in general, everyone is important. But I think that that work that women do and the real sacrifices they make,

like, for example, the maternity. There's no farmers that I know who are women who haven't worked through maternity. There was one woman that I photographed on the day she was due to give birth and she was still doing farming duties. And you just, any other job, you wouldn't be able to believe that.

And I think it's that kind of work and commitment that I really wanted to kind of shine a light on or like show that wasn't really being seen or talked about. And what about the other really important factor that Christina brought up, which is attitudes. Now, she's saying the younger generation are very different and her dad had to be convinced that his daughters could take on the farm. Are attitudes changing? Attitudes, I think they are changing. But, for example, if you look at my partner's a farmer and his sister was maybe the one who was more kind of into farming when they were growing up.

Are you saying, Joanne, that your sister-in-law would make a better farmer than your husband? I'm not saying that. But I would say that it wasn't considered for her to be the farmer. Right. But I think that that's interesting. And I asked kind of why in this. Again, it was that, well, that's just how it's done.

And I don't even know if she'd have wanted to be the farmer. Sure. But I do think that that's interesting. And I think maybe it's a conversation and kind of maybe succession is something that as a family, like we need to kind of talk about more or farmers need to talk about more. But the only way they can do that is if it's visible. Do you work on the farm with your husband? I'm not that great at working on the farm, but I try and help out.

But in the background? In the background. Well, you say you try and help out, so you are still involved. It's one of those industries where even if you're not farming, you're involved, aren't you? It's the whole family that gets involved. Definitely. And I think certain times of the year,

you wouldn't just be able to be on your own kind of working away, which is sometimes how we maybe see farming, but there's certain jobs that need lots of people to get involved. What do you think needs to change to improve the position of women in farming? So there's a study coming out by the lady I worked with on this called Sally Shortall for DEFRA, and that's all about women who are kind of making changes through businesses on farms

and I think things like that studies like that are great but also stories being told which I think is happening more and more if you look on the telly there's more stories and I just think that we need to kind of go forward and really highlight those stories in any ways that we can. Yeah do you think influencers are helping there's lots of female farmers on instagram i think there's some great ones the red shepherdess i think i saw i saw a story by her a few days ago and she was talking about lambing and the realities of it but i think there's some really great people like that who were really educating people so yes they share like photos of lambs the things we love to see but they also talk about really difficult things and i think there's some really great people out there who are doing that yeah it's

just shifting perception isn't it um where's the exhibition on where can people go and see it it's currently on at the gymnasium gallery and Berwick-upon-Tweed until June the 5th and then it will go to Vane gallery in Newcastle and that will open on August the 11th. Joanne Coates thank you very much for joining me this morning. Now dating can be a minefield and more so a blind date but would you ever consider bringing along a friend to lurk in the background of a blind date? Sounds sinister doesn't it? Or has a mate ever set you up? Have one of your friends, work colleagues, random stranger helped you with your love life? Lots of you getting touch with your um love stories stewart says i was in the forces and my buddy fancied a young lady in the nearby town i already like the story christine was a twin and when he asked her out she would only accept a date if her sister came too so he asked me if i would help him by agreeing to date

the sister i wasn't enamored by the option having having seen the sister. Shocking. He came back the next day and asked if I would consider dating Christine's friend. Not wishing to let my friend down, I agreed and went on what would be termed a blind date. The relationship between my friend and Christine didn't last. As for me, oh, I married my blind date and we're still together 43 years later. Congratulations. Well, I'm joined now by the poet Charlie Cox, who's written a new collection of poems inspired by a piece of research by the dating site Plenty of Fish, which found that 51% of people

have secretly brought a friend along with them on a date. Charlie joins me now. Tell us more about this research, Charlie. What exactly did it find? Oh, do you know what? It's been such a pleasure as someone who talks so much about their own dating life, and I've probably milked just as much as I can from exes that they feel comfortable with,

that to actually go in and look at the nitty gritty and the data of what people are experiencing in the modern world, you know, things like 59% of people enjoy the debrief with friends more than the actual date itself. I love that. And I totally understand it. I mean, that's the best bit, surely, you know, sitting down with your mates, but they enjoy it more than the date. I think it's because it's that evocative thing of, it almost takes you back to being a teenager. You know, there's the innocence of being able to pull it to pieces and and also be present in a way that dating is scary and we

sit and we can feel incredibly nervous very preoccupied with our own internal self-doubt or what the other person is thinking of us and I think quite often it's the conversations you have with friends after where you go oh I was actually really funny or are you right I looked amazing or yeah I maybe I misstepped on him you're completely correct he's great um so it was nice to see that the data really matched up with my own personal experience I bet there's loads of people listening, nodding along, listening to this on the radio. So what reasons did people give for bringing a friend along? This shocking figure, huge figure, 51% secretly brought, smuggled a mate in on a date.

I mean, the fact that it's secretly really illustrates just how brilliant we really are as the human race. What was so fascinating within the stories is it seemed to be quite happenstance in the way that people were meeting. It was almost as though the universe had taken what could have been a really dire and sad situation and then offered a new person in the wake of being stood up. So, for example, there were two women who I felt for tremendously, had given people a second chance having been stood up for the second time. And then in the bar, spotting the chef, going, oh, quite like the look of you.

And 40 years later, they're married with three children. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent, excellent, excellent. So we should hear one of your poems. Let's hear something that you've written especially for this. Thank you. So this one is called Far From a Car Crash. Okay, so give us a bit of context before you read it. What's the story behind it?

So this woman, Brilliant Debbie, was left stranded by her then boyfriend but found her Prince prince charming who whisked her away on a romantic date and the rest is history she was sat outside a hotel waiting for her boyfriend to pick up he didn't show up a group of guys walked past they got on and off they went for the night hang on so she just okay we don't need to we don't need to unpick the fact that she just went off with some random but after being stood up it doesn't matter it's a happy ending it doesn't matter it's 2022 2022 it's all good it's all good sorry my inner safety kind of you know button just kicked in

it's all right it's fine me too good news is is that he was a really stand-up guy so was her friend her friend and his friend got on great amazing let's hear the poem thank you to the no-show to whatever was more important than picking me up because you gifted me luck with the chance to have my faith restored and allowed something better to arrive sure the taxi back crashed and your friends were all lashed and the evening was now definitely morning but I got nothing but gratitude for being stood up because I deserve to meet my husband in a way that wasn't conforming. You can take your dinner and drinks. How boring. Oh, so good, Charlie.

You've made me smile. Some of our listeners are getting in touch with their stories. Shall we hear from Trish? Shall we see what Trish had said? She says, my friend Nicola introduced me to my now husband, Derek, by giving him my phone number without telling me. It took him four months to ring me, by which time I'd forgotten about this. So I didn't know who it was.

It took me a further couple of months before I agreed to meet him. We hit it off instantly. It's cut long, sorry, short. We had 20 truly wonderful years together when not only did we love each other, but remained in love. Sadly, he died after a sudden short illness in April this year. And I truly feel I've lost half of me. Nicola, who introduced us, remains close to both of us. We often blamed her for our happiness and wonderful relationship. nicola how nice is that this is warming my heart

this morning um now the other bit of research that stood out for me charlie was that 31 percent of people say that they've sought love advice from strangers but just a random mean, in my mind, I instantly was on the bus just chatting to someone about my... I have definitely done that. And there's... I think because of the digital scape of things, we're very quick to take success and failure as a linear path and we don't look at the grey. And I've gone on some really horrific dates,

but on the way there it may be in a taxi I've had some of the most profound confidence boosting experiences with people that owe me nothing other than to see me as a young woman with faith and hope and love in her heart and a new dress on hoping that the next person will be the one. Tear-stained, mascara-stained cheeks as tears are rolling down her eyes in the back of the taxi. Was that you, Charlie? Penning another poem in the moonlight. I would love to hear one more poem because there's one that I particularly liked and it was about work colleagues helping someone out. Give us a bit of context for that one.

You absolutely may. So lovely Laura in London was off out on a date after work, was feeling quite sheepish about it. In fact, was very close to not going at all. But had made an effort, gone to the bathroom, I think, probably just as five o'clock rang in. And a couple of her workmates, who she didn't know particularly well, stopped her in the lift and said, oh, wow, you look amazing. What are you doing? And she thought, yeah, I do look amazing. I'm going to go on this date. Love that.

So this one is called Whatever Works. It's as simple as being noticed by those who see you every day. The head in spreadsheets, work shirt and coffee stains They could email me back faster, stop eating egg salad at lunch They're definitely not perfect, but without them would I have taken the plunge? It's as simple as being noticed by those who see you every day An interest in my evening and oh, you look lovely by the way Thank you to the colleagues who nudged go get them in the hall the date was perfect we're now in love but without you

I'd never have gone at all love it I love that you've got egg salad in a poem that just brought a smile to my face that little detail hot Charlie I'm so pleased because that's exactly what this has been about is showing that it is fun it is exciting and there are so many beautiful brilliant people along the way that we need and we need to celebrate them more. Absolutely do you think we've changed the way we date post pandemic and the sort of support that we need after do you think what have you found? Yeah I mean I was very fortunate I met my now boyfriend on Zoom during the pandemic, which was bizarre in itself.

Back up a little bit. How did that happen? Was that a date or was it a work? No, it was a work Zoom. It was a work Zoom. He was one of 27 little faces that I saw in front of me. And yeah, I sent him a message in the little private message box. Hang on a minute. This is just opening a whole new thing here.

So you sent him an instant, like a direct message. You chatted him up during the work meeting. I chatted him up during the work meeting. That was two years ago. Totally forgot about it. A year went past. We bumped into each other again at an in-person work event. And yeah, it's coming up to our year anniversary in two weeks. I mean, that is just brilliant. Have you written a poem about that meeting? Oh, yes. So many poems about that, but none that he's been allowed to see just yet oh um what a lovely way to hear about your own origin love origin story uh charlie thank you so much absolutely brilliant loved that thank you charlie for bringing a smile to our face this morning uh charlie cox there um i'm sure you can find her on social media if you want to read all her other works now um a desperation for belonging suicide domestic violence these are just some of the issues which

create the backdrop to a new play about the lives of five asian women based in southall lotus beauty is set in a salon in the heart of london's punjabi community and looks at the experiences of immigrant women where culture meets the desire to fit in puja guy is artistic director of tamasha and Director of Lotus Beauty. And she joins me now alongside Kiran Landa, who plays Rita, who's one of the main characters in the play. Welcome to you both. Hello. Hi there. Hi.

Hello, everybody. Thanks for having us on. Absolutely my pleasure. Perfect setting, Pooja, to get an insight into the lives of Punjabi women, isn't it? A beauty salon. Talk us through the storyline. Absolutely. I mean, this is a play that Satinda started writing 15 years ago. And having spent time in salons in Delhi, in New York and growing up in Southall, she kind of noticed the themes and the conversations that were happening between these South Asian women.

And Lotus Beauty is about five multi-generational women in Southall who come together and wax lyrical about their successes, about their fears and, you know, massage their troubles away. What we get with this play is that through the stories of these five women, we peel away all these hidden layers of what it means to be Asian and female in Britain today, and how our immigrant trauma and what our grandparents have gone through and our parents have gone through starts to seep into our own behaviours and wants and desires and how we reflect ourselves against the western ideals of beauty and what success means um and how women can be the worst worst enemies to each other

um and are complicit in each other's suffering and how we actually find find ourselves in a place where we can speak those ugly truths but then break cycles and heal and understand the strength of our community and the women in our community who are so often erased. And then neglected and not talked about. And it is such a moving play. I wept when I read it, I have to tell you. And it also made me laugh out loud as well. Kieran, you play Rita.

She's one of the main characters. She owns the beauty salon tell us about her so rita's such an interesting complex character she is definitely a victim of you know being that first generation immigrant um whose whose ideals of success are just you know this colonized western ideal um and she she is determined to move out of Southall where the play is set and to um and to get a better life for herself and her family and in turn her community the thing with Rita is she has a lot of integrity and she has a lot of love for her family, for her community, for the women around her. She has no idea how to express that because she is so driven and she is so busy. And I think a lot of people recognize, you know, mother figures and people in their families and communities.

In Rita, she's just so driven. She hasn't got time to kind of mollycoddle the people around her. She's a survivor. Yeah. And she knows what she has to do in order to succeed and to then carry everybody else who she feels are on her shoulders. It's her responsibility. Yeah, but she's also dealt with a lot you know she's she carries a lot of trauma Rita that she doesn't want to reveal because she holds

her mask up so high you know which is one of the great things about this play being set in a beauty salon we're talking about makeup and perfectionism of our faces and our hair and how we appear and the value in our appearance. And yeah, and at some point it's got to come crashing down and you have to be authentic with yourself. Yeah, what I found interesting about Rita's character is she sits in between generations. She's having to deal with her mother--in-law who's from a completely different generation has different values and her teenage daughter who's in a completely different world again with different values and she so this sits somewhere in the middle and we I recognize that person it's not me it's my mum but you know I mean we reckon you know we're only we're right

there you know it's set within the now so we're only we're right there, you know, it's set within the now. So we're only two, three generations deep, aren't we? And I think that's one of the most beautiful things about this play is you get all of the perspectives of these women. You know, we're an incredible ensemble. And Satinda has written five amazing parts where you can understand everybody's struggle equally I think you know it's like like yeah you said you know you might see elements of your mum in Rita but then perhaps elements of other family members in Pinky and what their struggles are is like you know the Gen Z generation of South Asian women in the UK you you know, who are way more British, but also still,

you know, for Pinky, she's craving her mum's love, you know. But how does she communicate that? I think, I think communication is a big thing. And one of the things I think we really discovered through the rehearsal process as well is when we do come together as a community as women as particularly as South Asian women when we hear each other when we support each other and we carry each other there is so much strength and power in that there is so much that we're able to achieve and and break those cycles in ourselves I mean Pooja it's taken 15 years to get this play why has it taken so long to get this play on stage well that is that is a long answer anita so i'll try and be sure we come off air in eight minutes so uh um i guess i mean you know we've talked a lot about

inclusivity and the kind of stories we want to tell through the lived experiences of our communities our sector has taken a long time to catch up with the fact that that is not too much of a risk or it's I mean I think half the problem is a lot of our stories comes in such few numbers that the expectation of each story told is to cover everything within that community. And I think for a lot of people, they couldn't see the diamond that Satinda had written because what she has done is written the play the way she wanted to. Her structure and her form is hers. It doesn't follow a Western ideal of a three-act play in 90 minutes. She's kind of taken us on a journey through these characters

where we experience their wit and their abrasive humour, and so it's comedic. And as we move through the play, the kind of latter half of the play, all these masks break down, the wit hasn't got as much armour, and we're faced with deep emotions and some ugly truths that are hard to bear so the kind of the tone of it moves from kind of wit and comedy into something quite dramatic and structurally that is is not of the western concept I guess or the eurocentric ideal so what we've got are these five Sikh Punjabi women speaking in their kind of harmony, in their tone, in their language.

And finally, you know, we've had a theatre go, oh, let's produce it. It was commissioned by Tamasha 15 years ago. So it's amazing that it's come full circle, that Hampstead decided to produce the show and Hampstead and Tamasha did it in association with to bring this story to life. So I hope that now that it's on, that many more people go, great, we need more of these stories. We need to understand the multiple perspectives of these communities and their beautiful complexity

and the fact that they are British Asian and what does that mean for them? Well, yeah, and British. This is a British story. This is about a British experience. It's Southall. It's only over there. Exactly. It's only over west.

The language is really interesting because they speak a combination of English, Punjabi, you know, the pinky, the teenager is sort of talking sort of street slang and it's all combined. And it is hilarious. And there's one of the characters that really stood out for me is the mother-in-law, Big Duddy, because she's so funny

and she brings in a lot of humour, just kind of physical humour, having to cut her granddaughter cutting her toenails and all the rest of it. We've all been there. And the beard and, yeah, but also she is an upholder of the patriarchy as well. Absolutely. You know, that's very complicated, isn't it?

Absolutely. And, you know, like when I was reading the play and then started researching, you know, what Big Daddy's character goes through and tells us about were those virginity tests that took place at Heathrow Airport in the 60s and 70s. Well, you'll have to explain about that because that was the bit that, you know, you would discover what happened to her when she arrived in the UK. Yeah. So, I mean, I can't imagine what it was like for a lot of these women because they were subjected to these invasive and humiliating

gynecological exams at the airports by white doctors, male doctors, essentially to check if they were pure, so if their hymens were intact and they were virgins. So to be subjected to that, coming into a new country from thousands of miles away, the humiliation. I mean, your first encounter as a migrant. Sorry, my jaws just hit the ground. So this was happening to Asian women when they arrived in the UK.

Yeah, and it was a huge human rights violation that, again, we don't talk about. It's there. You know, if we kind of, when I started looking it up and seeing what was happening, and people were protesting at the time, and the Asian community came out against it too. But this was the first encounter of being a migrant for a lot of these women, a first encounter for a lot of virgins who are entering the country. And again, here,

it's that systemic racism, that power and that politics being used to exert ownership over a woman's body and leaving them as a test sheet or a piece of data. And within Bigdadi's case, this character went through all of that. She was married. Her husband was here. She was travelling from India after seven years of him being here and him assimilating. And then after going through that humiliating test, an invasive test, she spent 30 years working in that Heathrow airport, cleaning the toilet. So all of that experience and struggle and fight for survival to build her family is within her as she sees generations below her grow into the women that they are. Rita, Pinky and even Kamal and Tanwant, who are the illegal immigrant and the first generation immigrant in the story and how all of these experience live

through us it's our ancestral history we need to talk about it and as humiliating as it is we need to hold it together in a community so we know where we've come from so we know how to belong for ourselves and to be proud of our community is that what is that culture absolutely is that what this play is for who is the play for yeah I think well the play is for? Who is the play for? Yeah, I think, well, the play is for our communities to go, yes, let's celebrate each other. Let's celebrate our wit, our complexity, our resilience, our sense of survival and how we come together.

It is for, I think it would speak to a lot of immigrant communities because there is a universality here in how we find our sense of belonging in a country that we belong to because our histories are inextricably linked through the empire. So I think it will resonate with people who have moved from their motherland to find their grounding on a new land.

It will resonate with people who believe in the power of community and serving each other through the basis of humanity and love and kindness. I mean, yeah, and it was particularly moving, because as you said at the beginning, you know, about Rita's character is that, you know, she's holding it together, she's driven, but we discover what her trauma is, because, you know, and her mother is that you know she's holding it together she's driven but we we discover what her trauma is because you know and her mother-in-law was holding it together because women just haven't been allowed to share their trauma but it all comes out in this in this play um what was it like as an actress and well as a whole you know to have that many Asian women

working together on a project like this Kiran it was an absolute gift it's something I've not had the experience of before and you you dream of and you want but you know so often you're made to feel like there's only one role for one Asian woman at a time or something and it's yeah like like the highlander there can be only one it's so exhausting and what satinda's done beautifully is written this play that's five asian women and they're all so different their energies are so different you know i can't imagine anybody else playing these roles the girls do such an incredible job um and and being in a room where the five of us and Pooja and Satinda and actually a lot of women in that room from our creative team could talk so openly about

these traumas was so refreshing and so cathartic and it was just an incredibly emotional but cathartic experience for all of us it was really healing um and the way that that we support each other in this incredible sisterhood is you know it shouldn't be profound but it has been because it's just been incredible and beautiful and um and the thing is I think a lot of us, I mean, me myself, I'm from a Sikh Punjabi background. My family came to watch this and said, you know, they recognise people from our family and community in all of these characters.

Oh, I want to say well done. I haven't, I've read it, wept. I'm coming to see it. I'm bringing my mum. Thank you so much for speaking to us. It's on at the, where's it on at? At Hampstead Theatre. Thank you very much, Pooja.

It's on at Hampstead Theatre right now. Join me next week. We are doing a Queen's special. Have a lovely weekend. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hello! I'm Sean Keaveney

and I'm here to tell you about my new BBC Sounds and Radio 4 podcast Your Place or Mine, the travel show that's going nowhere. I get to stay on my comfy sofa talking to you fine people and excellent guests join us bringing

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