Aneesa Chaudhry: on being Asian, friendship, and on being herself

Hi, I'm Roni Guetta. And I'm David Sheppeard, and this is My Queer Museum, a podcast about the value of queer memorabilia and the kind of unlikely objects that maybe don't end up in your traditional museum collection. Are we talking the kind of stuff that lives in a box under my bed? Well, Roni, I dread to think what lives under your bed, but you're exactly right. So what we've done is ask some of our favourite queer people in Brighton and Hove which kind of unlikely objects from their lives they were put into an imaginary queer museum, and these are their stories. Hi, Aneesa, how are you? I'm very well, thank you. How are you doing? We're very excited to be here with you. We're very well. You know, as well as one can be in a pandemic.

I just like to remind that to people. You don't need to feel fantastic. But we do feel fantastic being here with you. And I'd love you to introduce yourself first so that people who don't know you, I don't think they exist, but if they don't know you, what would you like people to know about you? Okay, my name is Aneesa Sabiha Chowdhury. I'm a very rare species. I am, I think, one of the very few Asian non-straight women who are out on the scene doing what I do. And that is that I'm a professional singer. I run lots of choirs, LGBT choirs, choirs for hospices. I do my own workshops. And I'm Asian and I'm out there and I'm being visible, hopefully doing great stuff to make a difference to this world.

That's great. And you definitely are out there making great stuff. I've witnessed some of it myself. Yeah, you have. So Aneesa, we have come up with this idea that in our heads, in the imaginary realm, we would like to have a queer museum. And we would like everybody to feel free to deposit things from their queer lives in there. And so that's why we brought you here today is to talk to you about what from your life is going to go into this queer museum. So maybe if you can have a think, we've asked you to prepare, but maybe if you'd like to tell us about your first object from your queer museum. I just want to set the scene that Aneesa is getting a bag out. I'm so prepared. It's a mixtape. Oh, yes. And the reason that I've put a mixtape in my queer history of my life in my museum is because mixtapes represent so much. So for me, it was very much about what coming out was about.

So when I first came out, I was really lucky. I was surrounded by a lot of loving friends and the university that I went to, Kingston University, had what was called a chocolate society. And that meant people felt safe coming to a group that no one had to ask questions about. And that is where my kind of first sort of experience of love happened at university. So my first girlfriend, well, my second girlfriend actually made me a mixtape. And on that are songs of lovely sort of LGBT artists who I really respect and also non LGBT artists as well, but people who were able to really kind of help me access some of the emotions that I was feeling. So artists like Joan Armatrading, Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell, you know, there are a lot of jazz artists in there as well, but just people who could tell stories about life and that represents maybe your friendship or relationship.

So that mixtape was from my girlfriend at the time called Alex. And we used to have hilarious times because really it was nuts what I was doing. I was an Asian girl who wasn't supposed to do anything on the realm of meeting people and falling in love. You know, what should have happened was I was supposed to kind of have, I say arranged marriage, but not in a negative way because I trusted my parents. So they'd never make me marry anyone who didn't want to. And I still would. But, you know, they were always wanting to know that we were looked out for if we wanted to settle down, that the right thing would happen and that they would do the right thing. But they always said, get educated, stand on your own two feet. But that mixtape, it reminds me of the hilarity of the whole thing, because basically my loving parents would drop me to the train station in Reading and I would go through the doors and say goodbye to them.

My whole life was deceitful in that regard. Walked through the doors and they'd, you know, wave me off. And I just think, oh, that's, you know, I did feel sad saying goodbye. They'd drive off and would even know what train I was going to be getting on, inverted commas. And I'd just basically walk through to the platform, up the stairs, across, down the back of the station and out the door to a car where my girlfriend was waiting. This is fantastic. It's awful, isn't it? Absolutely awful. You know, I was so lucky. I had the most loving parents. I'm sure if I told them, you know, it would have been fine. But at the time, I wasn't ready. It was amazing. I felt so lucky that I could have that experience. I'd live this totally underground life for a couple of years. But it was very difficult to be Asian and out.

You know, I went to uni and actually I was the only girl, the only Asian cis woman that a lot of my law friends knew. I was absolutely astounded. I thought, you know, you've come from Lancashire and you're saying I'm the only Asian person that you've ever met in your life. That felt very strange. 94 to 97. 1994 to 97. Yeah. So, yeah, the mixtape, it was great because that's the music that kind of told some of my story and carried me through what was quite angsty times, but amazing years as well. Was it a music that you were familiar with or was it, did it feel like a kind of glimpse into something that you hadn't experienced before? It was a bit of a mix, really. I mean, mostly I would say it was glimpses because I would say I was quite sheltered in some ways being Asian.

And I was very, very surprised at the response from my first ever girlfriend about, you know, after the first time we got together, you know, been together for some some months. And then we talked about, I suppose, how I was and having come from a family where we just didn't do anything on the kind of, you know, dating front, sexual front, nothing. We just didn't. It wasn't the done thing. And to just think, where did that all come from within me? So I just put it down to my family, my parents, my ancestors and just think, thank you, because I'm having the time of my life, you know, because it could have been something that I don't know, perhaps I would have lacked more confidence in, but I didn't seem to.

So, yeah, I think mixtape should never disappear. Absolutely. I definitely see them as part of my kind of queer upbringing was just especially especially when I think you when you're not out. At least when I was in my earlier teens, I guess you somebody gives you a tape because you think you're going to have an affinity with something. And then you realise that actually it's all kind of queer musicians or something with a queer kind of lens, at least in it. And it's so sort of, yeah, so, so formative. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely think I did a lot of courting via mixtapes. Before I even knew I was courting people, I used to just make friends mixtapes and they were always incredibly romantic. But I kind of wasn't entirely aware that they were always for beautiful women.

You know, I was like, I've got a great new friend. I'm going to make her a beautiful take full of love songs and she's not going to think it's weird. Yeah. So, yeah. I'm really curious about the chocolate society you mentioned. Yeah. So it's it's what would now be, I suppose, the LGBT queer group. But at Kingston Uni, it was the LGB group at the time. And I actually came out as bisexual. And there's definitely something about men that I really love. I've just never kind of there's there's a certain. Well, I mean, I'm I'm with a woman of 19 years and we're really happy. And that's, you know, that's great. But the whole journey of first coming out was going to a big conference called Bicon, which is like a thing that happened at the end of August every year.

And I met my first girlfriend then, Jennifer. She was incredible. She was just so lovely to talk to about coming out and, you know, the whole experience of what it is to love someone else. And I'll never forget standing in front of the mirror dancing to let's get together right here, right now in sweet harmony. And she's standing there, like just, you know, dancing like this, looking in the mirror. And I just thought, oh, my gosh, I like this. Whatever this is, I like this.

Thank you. So shall we move on to item number two? Bag is coming out again. What do we got? I'm putting my mixtape away. Although I could do a copy. Is it the original mixtape or was it just the? It's an original. This is the mixtape. Wow. It even says, Alex and Aneesa, songs from March 2001. Alex reads her favourite poems. And that is the woman that she was and still is. Oh, that is just made my heart. Yeah, she's incredible. Yeah. Very, very beautiful. And, yeah, of course, you need the pen to wind up.

Yeah, so that's going to go in the bag. You can take pictures and, you know, things of it. Yeah, I would love to take a picture of that. So my next item is, in fact... The bag. My rucksack. This is somebody that has really thought about the practicalities of this. You see? We already understand one another. So this is very significant in my queer life because, again, I was really lucky. You know, I was really lucky. I was surrounded by a lot of love and friendship when it came to coming out. So I was living in London with my twin and lovely, lovely friends, Ali, Ray, Anne, Hina. There were so many of us. We're just... We're all kind of connected through the LGBT world, mostly through sports and music.

And one of the things I always loved was this feeling of care and love amongst friends. But we'd all go clubbing. And, you know, it was just... When I think about me and clubbing, it makes me chuckle a little bit because I just think, am I a club? And I think, God, I love music. But sometimes I would get bored standing against a wall. I'd fall asleep. Just think, how many hours can this go on? You know, I don't mind... I don't mind the kind of pop stars, 80s, you know, wig out kind of music. But sometimes. But it was brilliant because I always felt safe. I felt really safe. And, like, I was given access to this whole world that ordinarily an Asian girl wouldn't have. So, you know, we'd all meet.

We'd all be in the queue together with our rucksacks. Why did we need rucksacks? Because, of course, it was fine to look good. But you needed to have something to put your coat in. You needed to be practical that at the end of the night, you weren't going to freeze your tits off. Right? And so we'd look at all these other people going out around town with their short skirts and heels and think, yeah, that's fine. But I'm taking mine out when I get in there. I'm going to go to the living room and get changed. And, you know, and just this whole kind of sense of care. I remember sometimes, you know, you'd hold your bags together and someone would say, oh, can you take this for me and that for me?

And it was, you know, you did. And either we'd get a rainbow car home, which was like the cabs at that time, about nine quid, really cheap from central London. Or I was a designated driver because I don't drink, being Muslim and everything. Yes, the whole thing can go together. God made me. There you go. So I'm a good example of how to be a good Muslim. I just love the idea of queer women doing good self-care. Yeah. Because they're not there for the male gaze. So they can actually wear a coat if it's cold. Absolutely. And I just love that. And it's a cliche, but it's also so very true. Yeah. Practical, good self-care. Yeah. I'm just thinking just about your kind of clubbing experiences. And were there any, did you have any particular kind of favoured or favourite nights?

Venues. Venues, places that you would? Yeah. So my favourite thing would be to meet in the first out on a Friday night, which was on Tottencourt Road. It's an amazing, beautiful cafe. You could then go downstairs. I think it was a girl night on Friday night from my recollection. But yeah, upstairs was calmer. Downstairs was like the beginning of the rumblings of having a good weekend. And then we'd go across the way to the Vesper Lounge, stay in there for a little while. And then basically we'd make our way sometimes to the candy bar. There were times when the candy bar was really good. And then there were times when sometimes we had bad experiences because, you know, we all do. But generally it ended up being somewhere like Popstars, Wig Out, which was on Falkenberg Court behind the Astoria.

And I did an LGB at that time gig in the Astoria as well. So that was great having that sort of venue right there, really well located. But then it disappeared. And then, yeah. My partner who I met in London at Royal Boxer Tavern was just like, he went to ghetto like three or four nights a week. Yeah, yeah. If you can imagine that. I had my very first night out in London at first out. And it was also my very first night in London in my whole life. I arrived to London at the station. And then someone on the phone, you know, on the phone bit with coins told me to come to Tottenham Court Road. And I had to, I made a repeat that 15 times. I had no idea what she was talking about. And then she picked me up from there and took me to first out and took me downstairs.

And I thought I was in paradise. I was so confused. I'd never seen so many women in one place. It was just, yeah. I'm very, really fond memory. Yeah. Thinking, where am I? And I'm never leaving, ever. But one of the things that I'm really grateful for is the fact that I came out and I was alive at that time. Because I'm only 44 now, 45 next month. Oh, my God. But it was so different. Like, you could go to a physical place and you knew it was there. Where now, I think certainly where I live now, there are nights for women or, you know, different groups. But then you just knew you could just go somewhere. It was there. It was always going to be there. And I think that was really important. There was something that I felt safe about.

Like now with the pandemic, I think if you're experiencing coming out now, it must be doubly hard. Because not only are you dealing with the fact that you're isolated, but there's not somewhere you can escape physically to. And I think that's something we really crave as humans that, you know, we realize, what I've realized over this period of time, that we need people. People need people. We need contact. So I just really hope and pray that people out there who are coming out or, you know, questioning their sexuality, that they're able to look back and talk about what they would put into their queer museum in a positive way as well. And it's not all tarnished and dampened just because of this pandemic.

Yeah, I feel like part of this sort of relationship with young people and part of, I guess, the reason for wanting to do these kind of podcasts or this initiative in general is just being able to kind of see yourself, isn't it? Or, you know, you've got to see it to be it kind of thing. And I think it's so important that even if it's just memories of places, you know, memories of experiences that we had or joy that we had, I think that's a really powerful thing for young people. I'll never forget, like, being in ghetto, and I think it was probably at Wig Out, where I heard a dance remix of Kate Bush's Wuthering High. Wow. And it was like a really extreme dance remix. There must have been like a sort of white label, whatever it is, you know, something somebody's just made in their bedroom.

It wasn't like an official thing. And I just thought, I can't believe that somebody has made a dance remix of this song that I love. Yeah. And that somebody, you know, you feel that kind of like, it's a sort of taste thing, isn't it? Where you realise that there is something about queerness or queer people that kind of means that in some strange ways, our tastes are kind of aligned. Yeah. Or have kind of points of focus or concentration. Yeah. What we all just kind of, you know, get, which I think is just like joy is, joy is powerful. Joy is belonging, isn't it? Joy is for the best. Joy is belonging. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, thank you so much for that.

That's wonderful. Do you want to pick, would you like to tell us about your third and final objet? No. Well, I struggled to, you know, whittle it down because I was thinking, well, is it going to be my mum's lovely Pakistani food or is it going to be my, I don't know, something else about experiences? And I thought, well, I think it's going to be, I think it's going to have to be my performance wardrobe because. Yeah. Some sequins. I hope. Maybe. I don't know. Wow. Yeah. Or what? Well, okay. So I'm Asian. So let's just go back a few years, let's say to when I was probably about 16 or so, and we'd have Eid, which is the big celebration after fasting, you know, once a year you'd fast for a month.

Not the whole month. You only get up at sunrise and eat and then again in the evening. And it was great. It was like a real kind of good way of thinking about discipline in your life and thinking about people who need things in life. And I've never had a negative relationship with religion or God. I know other people have, but I feel I was really lucky about how I was taught about all that. And as a result, I've become who I am. So it took me a while to reconcile other people's issues around it. But I just sort of thought, well, you know, God made me, right? And so therefore my reasoning is if God made me, he knew exactly what he was doing, assuming God's a he. Could be something else, but, you know, only present thing.

And therefore it's my job to just be the best example of an Asian non-straight Muslim that I can. So just going on to my performance wardrobe, one of my first sort of moments of memory was after Eid, we'd meet the rest of my family. There's about 50 of us, just the local ones in Regent's Park after going to the mosque. And we'd have this lovely big family picture with all the generations going from like the really little newly borns to my grand grandmother. And I remember looking at the photos and noticing that me and my twin were the only people who were wearing sawa kameezes, but not wearing high heels or glitzy sequiny, you know, lovely Asian shoes. What were we wearing? We were wearing trainers.

And I don't think I even consciously realized what was going on. All I just remember thinking was it's not very practical. I want to be able to run if I need to. And I want to play and, you know, kick a ball about. And I can't really do that very easily in heels. So I don't know how my parents managed to allow us to do this. They were strict, but they were also very loving. So I think they, you know, they probably thought, well, at some point they'll get changed. So we're wearing trainers. Everyone else is wearing lovely clothes and we're wearing sawa kameezes. Which are very pretty, by the way. Lovely, like, colours. And at the time, colours and jewellery wasn't something that interested me.

It was something that I felt suppressed by, inhibited by. Because I thought, that's what every other Asian girl is wearing. I don't want to wear all of that lovely gold and colourful jewellery and colour. I want to wear something different, but I don't know what. And so sometimes we'd end up wearing Western clothes at family get-togethers, but didn't really have any sense of style. Roll on a few years. I get to London. I've done university. Now working in the voluntary sector in Kensington and Chelsea in patient and public involvement in health. And I thought, right, I've done the bar, but I want to change from singing classical music to jazz. And I had this lovely group of friends at the charity I work for called KCSE.

Lev, Becky, Jill, Josie, Jenny. And we'd all stand in the corridor. There are others. I'm sorry if I've forgotten people. We'd all stand in the corridor at 11 o'clock and have a cup of tea. And I remember saying to them, I've just started singing jazz, but I just don't know what to wear. So parallel to this, I also had this other lovely group of friends in the team I worked in in another voluntary organisation. Emily, Jill, Bernie, you know, Gail, there was a group of them. And they were all very beautiful women and stylish gay men. And I thought, Chowdhury, you have so got to get some kind of style into your life. This isn't, you know, I went, I did a jazz open mic session. Got a gig with a big band, went to the rehearsal.

And I saw the girl standing there who was going to replace wearing a suit. And I thought, that just doesn't resonate with me. She's wearing a black suit. She's going to be singing some Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, which is what I'm going to be singing. But suits just remind me of law, which is what I decided I wanted to escape. And so I thought, right, do I do what everyone else is doing? Wear like a halter neck or polka darts and, you know, typical big band kind of Marilyn Monroe sort of thing. And I thought, I just don't, I've never worn that kind of stuff. I have no idea if it'll work. I just felt really painfully shy and embarrassed about the whole thing. And then I remember Jenny and Becky took me to town in Kensington High Street, which is where we were working.

And just generally just said, try this on, try that. Oh, my God, you've got to try this and that. And all you need is a bunch of really good friends to take you shopping and do some of the hard graft for you, like help match things, accessories with clothing, shoes with tops and so forth. I had no idea at all. But I managed to get into these dresses and I thought, actually, you look pretty good. You've got you've got nice legs. You've got, you know, but I remember putting these dresses on and thinking the sort of androgynous side of me took a back step. And the more feminine side of me started to surface. And I thought, ah, so you can wear heels and you can wear dresses and you can enjoy it. And then I started to strut my stuff and move around and thought, this is nice.

I feel good. So it'd be a big band gig and I'd be kind of working the floor and think, yeah, I can do this. This is me. I like it. I feel good. And so then I got this obsession with dresses and heels and color. So what I'd sort of rejected from those years ago started to surface back in my life. So if you've seen me on stage, you'll hardly ever, ever see me in black. And if I am wearing black for, you know, maybe a funeral or something, there'll always be some nice embroidery or little hints of color and just something that takes you up a notch. Not just sort of straightforward because I'm just not. That's not me. I'm not a straightforward, average person. Beautiful. That's great. I think that's very interesting how our history defines what our gender, our origins, our community and how that all intersects in the way we present.

Because it's often that's taken for granted. People who, you know, just find that easier, don't have to reconcile their traditions or their gender or their expression. Yeah. And just able to wake up and put a dress on and feel entirely comfortable with that from day one. I think it's a very fascinating journey when that's not the case. No, I mean. There's a lot more thinking going into that. Definitely. I mean, it was definitely a journey. It wasn't just like on it went and there you go. There was just, it woke something up in me that was probably dormant and probably like some emotions that, you know, it took putting those heels on or it took being with those friends or with family that I felt safe with to be able to come out and realize who I am.

It's all there. It's in all of us. You just need someone to enable you to get there. Yeah, give you the permission or allow you to permit yourself to just put that thing on. I sometimes think some days I feel like I'm dressing up, but still feel like I'm dressing up like somebody else. Yeah. And you're just like, who am I today? Especially, I mean, it's all context, isn't it? But I think, yeah, it's so important, those moments where you feel like you can just select for yourself and be yourself. Yeah, I definitely feel when I go and visit family, I feel like on some very unconscious level, there's a performance that I'm putting on. It's not, you know, it's not fundamental. I don't change my wardrobe, but there's an attention to some details that, you know, often in Brighton, I just leave the house and I might be in my pajamas.

I won't confirm nor deny this information. You'll never know. But I definitely feel like there is an element of performativity that when we step into more space, straight environments or conservative environments, just immediately, our bodies immediately have to adapt from our clothing to the way we sit and move and talk. And not often we know, not always we know that we're doing it. And I find it very fascinating. We'd like to say such a massive thank you for coming and talking to us in this strange year, strange times, strange whatevers. Thank you for having me. And it's been such a pleasure just hearing about your wonderful contributions to our Queer Museum. So thank you so much, Aneesa. Thank you so, so much.

My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. We played Aneesa's interview to EJ Scott, our resident queer museum curator, so he could put it in the context of museum practices and conversations for us. And this is what EJ had to say about Aneesa's interview. Well, Roni, I think with, you know, in queer history, we often talk about it being hidden history or neglected history or erased history. These are the kind of terms that we throw around. But actually, what we don't think about often enough is the fact that literally queer history is under the threat of being erased. And by that, I mean, that's because our mixtapes, which are such a big part of our culture, our recent history, say, you know, the 80s and the 90s, these tapes are actually under threat of decaying.

And in actual fact, the British Library has raised £40 million to conserve their collection of 6.5 million sounds. Because it's the magnetic cassette tape, just like on VHS tapes, that's vulnerable to stretching and to snapping, but also contamination from dust and sunlight and heat and water, all those kind of things that magnetic tape hates. Well, you know, potentially our mixtapes, all our queer mixtapes have about 10 years' life left in them. So it's important, I think, to remember that, you know, these tapes, it's not just the songs on them that we want to preserve because we've got copies of them. It's actually the clicks, you know, the starts and the stops, the order of the songs that we put them together in that are important to us because they reflect our cultural desires.

They literally are secret codes of love that we've made, the labours of love to each other that we've made with them. And to lose them would be, I think, a real loss to queer history. So if there's one piece of advice I can give to everyone, it's that we should be thinking about digitising our mixtapes. But even if we can't go through that process of digitising them, one thing we can do is try and keep them as safe as possible. So make sure they're not sitting on a shelf. Make sure they're out of sunlight. Make sure that they're not next to a heater. In actual fact, probably the safest place for them is tucked away in a drawer with all your underwear. A bit like the rest of us, that's the best place to keep us.

Thanks for listening. The My Queer Museum podcast is a Queer Heritage South project created by Marlborough Productions and supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. For more information about our work, visit queerandbrighton.co.uk Original music and editing by Olive Mondegreen.