Squash was new to me, but I enjoyed it and within a few weeks it became my favourite game.
There was plenty to learn during our training. Each full day supplied us with the basic technical skills needed for an officer in ground engineering and relevant to military personnel. Handling and firing weapons, workshop experience in repairing and dismantling equipment, and various aspects of aircraft engineering were all part of the course that gave us a broad knowledge for the job of an Armament Engineer. The effective functioning of ejection seats for pilots to use during emergencies occupied a large chunk of the course. The training was geared to connect us with the world of high-tech air warfare. We were both amazed at the availability of better technologies and a positive environment to learn in.
Our training was run by civilian instructors as well as commissioned and non-commissioned officers. Sergeant Davies, from Wales, became very popular with us for his warmth, style and professionalism. We had a few junior Nigerian Air Force officers on our course, as well as several from the Gulf and a British-born Bangladeshi officer on other related courses. To my surprise, I found life in the officers' mess very relaxed. Everyone was respectful to one another, senior and junior officers behaved like friends and the relationship with the civilian service staff was very cordial. There was no formality and no inhibition.
We also had the opportunity to visit other Air Force bases across the country, and with plenty of notes to hand all the BAF officers managed to pass the final exams with flying colours. There was a need for a theoretical knowledge of physics, which allowed me to relax on that front, so I used my time to read contemporary journals and publications on defence matters and other areas of life.
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Here I was in Britain, once upon a time a world super power where the sun would not set. A land that had produced Newton, Shakespeare, Darwin, Churchill and was an intellectual leader of the world. However, Britain has its dark history as well. In 1757, the East India Company (also the British East India Company that received a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth I in December 1600), defeated the ruler (Nawab) of Bengal, Siraj ud-Daulah, who ruled the-then provinces of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. But Siraj ud-Daulah's defeat was through deception, due to the treachery of his commander-in-chief Mir Jafar. Within a few decades, 'Golden Bengal' was reduced by colonial plunder and depredation to an impoverished land: from being one of history's fabled lands of riches to a vast rural slum.
Britain ruled its empire with an imperial 'divide and rule' policy. It was also once part of the transatlantic slavery trade which dehumanized African people. However, it also redressed some of its wrongs, such as the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire via an 1833 Act of Parliament (there were a few exceptions, but they were eliminated in 1843). In the early twentieth century, around one-quarter of the world's population was a subject of the British Empire, and until the end of the Second World War it directly ruled many countries; many are now part of the Commonwealth. Britain may have lost its imperial glamour, but it still punches above its weight in the international arena with intellectual dominance and diplomatic skills.
What made Britain great and how she rose so high in the world community often occupied my thoughts. Feelings of envy and amazement reigned at the beginning of my Cranwell period. As a keen reader of history, I knew something about Britain. But I wanted to know more and directly 'from the horse's mouth'. I wanted to see it from the inside. How could a small island country, with a population far smaller than Bangladesh, rise so high? What was the catch? The answer to me was in its people: their vision, ambition, hard work, resilience and sense of pride. In its heyday, the British nation manifested this enterprise, adventure, determination and courage to catapult it to the farthest corners of the planet. It was the quality of leadership in all walks of life; professionalism, adaptability and the ability to create institutions and their sustainability that helped them to direct the course of human history. Far-placed lands like India, Australia, and America became nearer. With English as the lingua franca, and world class institutions such as the BBC and Oxbridge, it became a diplomatic super power; Britain's soft power is still the envy of many nations.
On my free weekends I would travel across this England. Away from my family I had plenty of time to write poems in Bengali, some of which were later published as a book. There is a joke about Bangladeshis that everyone has some poetic juice. 'Why should I be an exception?' I thought. I would make the 135 mile journey to London to see the seat of what had once been the world's first global super power. Apart from visiting Westminster, the popular London shopping areas and higher educational institutions and museums, I also spent time in London's East End: especially along Brick Lane and Whitechapel High Street, where many Bangladeshis had started to live.
The East London Mosque (ELM) in Whitechapel, which was already known to many people back in Bangladesh, was just a small pre-fabricated prayer place at the time, perched on a patch of scrubland adjacent to the Fieldgate Street Great Synagogue and near the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. The ELM's history started in 1910, when it was founded by an Indian émigré in the Ritz Hotel, and so it was the oldest mosque in London. One weekend I came to the mosque and tried to find someone I might recognize (I knew a couple of individuals from Bangladesh who later settled in east London). One, Aziz Rahman (Aziz Bhai), did his MPhil in Physics at Imperial College.
In the mosque I met a few people who were slightly younger than me. They were very hospitable, especially when they learned that I was in England for training, and after the midday prayer invited me to a nearby youth club opposite a multi-storey hospice. The 'club' turned out to be in a basement flat, with an arrangement of table tennis tables. Towards the end of our chat I asked if anyone wanted to play. We kept on talking and started a friendly match. By the time I finished the games I realized it was time for me to leave London. This was the start of my relationship with the group. We exchanged telephone numbers and they invited me to come whenever I was free.
I quickly learned that sport brings people closer together, and from then on the youth club became a focal point of my visits to London. I became close with several of these East End Bangladeshis; they would take me sightseeing in London during my weekend visits. Through this interaction I learned that most of them had come to Britain in their childhood with their parents, mainly from the Sylhet region of northeastern Bangladesh. They were either working in factories or restaurants. During my stay in 1978–1979, and later on in 1981, I would often spend time with these new friends. This sowed the seeds of my future youth and community work over the coming decades.
A quarter of a mile from the ELM, not far from London's economic heartland, was the Brick Lane mosque (Brick Lane Jamme Masjid, or Brick Lane Great Mosque). During the 1970s, the whole area was subject to heavy immigration from Sylhet, many of whom then attended either the ELM or the Brick Lane Mosque, depending in part on their political and religious affiliations back home. Those who founded the mosque on Brick Lane bought and refurbished a synagogue (which had been a Huguenot church before that) as the area's once-dominant Jews continued to move on and out of the area. Brick Lane today is synonymous with diversity and modern London; it is Britain's Banglatown and London's curry centre. Back then it was still poor, and would later suffer from National Front violence.
★ ★ ★
Soon the British autumn was ushering in winter, and watching trees shed their leaves was a whole new phenomenon to me. The days were getting shorter and the chilly air forced us to adopt more suitable clothing. The first day of snowfall was hugely exciting. Even with my thick clothes I was shivering in the classroom. But I still loved the look of the trees, now enveloped by snow. When I got back to my warm room, I spent quite a long time watching the beauty of snowfall from my window.
As 1979 began, the weather took a turn for the worse. There were blizzards and deep snow and we were told it was the coldest winter since 1962–1963. The weather had an impact on consumer spending and hit the economy badly, but it was not the cold or faltering economy that surprised me, but the 'Winter of Discontent' that paralysed almost all of Britain, with widespread strikes by public sector employees demanding
