i would never have dreamed of. is there this perception that, oh, you know what, you re british born, you re young. why are you getting into the restaurant trade? i get asked that all the time, because. how does that make you feel? i want to live my whole life doing what i want to do, what other people say is regardless. that s one thing about being british, isn t it, not about being bangladeshi, you don t really care about what other people think. the restaurant industry will change. it won t be all ruby murray s curry houses, you know, pint of beers and everything. and you can see, for example, with customers asking for more inherently bengali dishes. we sell fish. do you guys get certain woke customers asking for staff curry, which is like the stuff that s not on the menu. yeah. yeah, we get that, too. back when i was in school, when i left school, we made the curries to the food industry, adapted to them. yeah, to their tongues and. the masalas and. and now we. they re adapting t
that i do represent, and i understand the importance of that now. if you and me were talking five years ago, i would have said, let s talk about baking. now it s far more important for me to talk about representation as much as it is about baking cakes. even i, even on this platform, i forget sometimes that i m actually quite good at what i do, and that s because we were raised to always be very humble. we were always raised to stay quiet, know your place, to be grateful. i remember my gran always saying, be grateful, you re in their country, be grateful. and to be honest, you know what, nan? i am grateful, but i can also be great. you know, i can also be great. i m excited today, looking forward to speaking to my peers. ey oh. what up, my gushti? it s your boy, smash bengali. excuse me? hello, everybody listening? i would just like to say, today. hey. guys! - hey.hey, guys. higher pitched: hey, guys.
pakistanis, between bengalis. let me tell you something right now white people don t know the difference between any of us. laughter and applause. you know, british bangladeshis, we re like a minority within a minority. oh, yeah. you re bengali, you know? we ll make a joke about you guys. yeah, all you do is eat fish, right? oh, you re bengali, right? you know? you lot are all short, right? you d have to ask a pakistani oran indian, like, yo, why are you guys picking on these bengalis, man? but you definitely feel it. you definitely feel it. of course, no one wants to be just the butt of the joke. # you don t love me no more.# one person who has broken down lots of stereotypes in his career is mumzy stranger, one of the best known british bangladeshi music artists. i don t know if you re aware, like, how proud we are to see one of our own up there. # ishq da rog bura # tainu lag jaave na.#
many of them living in brick lane. i m not going to lie, a lot of those haircuts still exist amongst bengali uncles. the immigrant dream, i think, for a lot of people is to have your own business. so, my dad, he was a chef. he was an incredible chef, still is. my dad saved, saved, saved, saved. there was a restaurant in devon that someone was selling, and my dad was like, this could be my opportunity to have my own business. you know, that was the only indian restaurant in my little town. and, of course, white people love curry. so, you know, my dad made a really good decision. we d make one annual trip to london from devon, and you felt a real sense of culture in brick lane. as a family, we d come here and fill our boots up with meat and chicken and halal groceries. and obviously we d go into one of these indian restaurants,
it s a strange feeling because, for me, i ve always felt like i m not going to be here, you know, it s like. what do you mean by that? because i m a british born bangladeshi, you know, when i started music, it wasn t like. it wasn t normal. i m like the alien in the family. everyone s normal, doing normal things. and for me, it was like, how do i turn up the music really loud in the house without getting in trouble? # your body s like a drug to me, let me tell you now # give me your hand and let me show you something magical, girl.# a, there s our own community that might hold some sort ofjudgment, like, who is he? what is he doing? b, there s the other south asian counterparts. like, i m not used to seeing a bengali guy doing this. and then there s the industry, there s the white man, there s the system. there s so many hurdles. for me, there wasn t a bengali man who reached out and said to me, yo, get into the music industry. i was waiting for a bengali man to do it. it s jus