Pillar 1 - Jaya

Pillar 1 - Jaya - TRANCRIPTION

SUMMARY KEYWORDS neighbour, recognising, hopeful, music, safety, sang, inequality gap, favourite, singing, word, faces, feel, baby, person, song, various different types, bird, Manchester, sound

like feeling like I'm part of a local community where people know each other even if you're not sat chatting, or going around to their yards and houses, you know having dinner and tea and stuff being able to say hello and recognizing faces. And occasionally, you know, petting the dog or whatever, just feels nice because then it feels like people see you and they know you. And then if something happens here, somebody might go, oh, where so and so, safety. In one word as the community means safety to me. Like family you don't get to choose your neighbors. I think being a good neighbor is remembering that the people next door - your neighbors are not you & they're not like you in any way.

And they're also trying to live like you're trying to live and have a roof over their head. A good neighbour I think, is someone that tries -at least as much as possible- to consider not just their boundary and their needs and you know how they like to see the lawn and all that kind of stuff but recognise that people exist and anywhere people exist, there's going to be a difference. Sometimes, it's perceived that I'm a nosy neighbour. I'm a bit of curtain twitcher, and a bit of a noosy neighbour. Those are the labels that you can place up on me. However, like I said, in the previous answer that I've saved, sometimes I'll hear something that doesn't sound normal. So I'm really good at recognising sounds in my home in my community on my street, and if something doesn't sound like it should do, I will look and if something is going on that shouldn't be I'll also make my presence known because that is also part of safety and making sure that the area is you haven't got somebody crazy coming along. You know, breaking windows and you know, all of that kind of stuff. So, and then sometimes some people are just arguing and it's funny, but I don't judge them. I try not to judge them publicly anyway, just in their mind and have a little giggle. When I first moved I was the only person while I was the only young person that was single, queer Brown of South Asian descent and everybody else was families and older people and people from various different Caribbean islands and things and everybody was like initially a little curious, who is this strange little young thing? And, you know, I had lots of various different types of butch women come in and you know, day in and all of that and it's not necessarily a well that some of the neighbors were used to particularly the older ones, but you know, what, there was never any friction. Everybody just, I took time to get to know who they were. And they took time to get to know me and I was there for about 10 years. And it took about two to three years, but we became chill with each other. There's nothing more hopeful than music. Because music is the most universal language. And it allows everybody to be able to in one way or another, hear, feel and see each other music. Like sometimes there are chords and I can feel it building my body, in songs in a certain type of music. Sometimes music just take you back somewhere. The festivals, when you know parties, moments anywhere, there's music, it's just so hopeful because you're dancing. I mean even even a funeral where it should be or considered the most saddest moment. You put on that person's favourite tune. And it just gets you thinking of all of their all the nice stuff that you did with them. The fact that this was their daft favourite tunes. There's nothing more hopeful than music. So, I'm going to pick a Bengali nursery rhyme. I'll do it first, right so that you just get an idea of what it is. And it goes only:

[Jaya sings a song in Bengali]

I picked this because it reminds me of growing up it reminds me of my mum and my aunt other you know nice people that sang this song or you know said this. Sometimes they don't sing it they just say in words and it's just about a little baby bird. There's nothing complicated. There's nothing amazing about it. It's the baby bird and what it likes to eat. But I remember the hopeful eyes and the faces and the smiles as they are saying that the poem. When I'm doing it and I'm singing it to the children, especially particularly to young children, babies you're singing it with hope - you think oh gosh I hope you live a healthy life and grow and I hope your 10 fingers stay 10 And I hope you all have all the good things, and blah blah whatever it is that you're hoping, you know as just as you think in the silly little words about a little tiny bird wanting to eat a teeny tiny fish. You just do it with so much hope and smiles and the look in your eyes and things and it's like that's why I picked it.