Meera Syal Biography and latest books by Meera Syal

Meera Syal is a British comedienne, writer, playwright, singer, journalist, producer and actress. She rose to fame as one of the team that created Goodness Gracious Me and became one of the UK\'s best-known Indian personalities portraying Sanjeev\'s grandmother, Ummi, in The Kumars at No. 42. She was awarded the MBE in the New Year\'s Honours List of 1997 and in 2003 was listed in The Observer as one of the fifty funniest acts in British comedy.

Life and career

Her Punjabi-born parents came to England from New Delhi. She was born in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire (now West Midlands) and grew up in Essington, a mining village a few miles to the north. When she was a young girl the family moved to Bloxwich. She attended Queen Mary\'s High School in nearby Walsall, and then studied English and drama at Manchester University.

Syal wrote the screenplay for the 1993 film Bhaji on the Beach, directed by Gurinder Chadha, of Bend It Like Beckham fame. She was one of the team who wrote and performed in the BBC comedy sketch show Goodness Gracious Me (1996–2001), originally on radio and then on television.

She achieved a number one record with Gareth Gates and her co-stars from The Kumars at No. 42 with Spirit in the Sky, the Comic Relief single. She also sang Then He Kissed Me (composed by Biddu) with the Pakistani pop star Nazia Hassan. Syal, Hassan, and Bidddu also came up with the girl band named Saffron in 1988.

Awards and recognition

Syal won the National Student Drama Award for performing in One of Us which was written by Jacqueline Shapiro while at university. She won the Betty Trask Award for her first book Anita and Me and the Media Personality of the Year award at the Commission for Racial Equality\'s annual Race in the Media awards in 2000.

She was given the Nazia Hassan Foundation award in 2003.

Personal life

Her parents are an exception as they married for love after a secret seven-year relationship, going against the Indian tradition of arranged marriage. One of her parents is Hindu and the other a Sikh, but the two families were reconciled. Syal was apparently surprised to discover both her grandfathers had campaigned against British rule and presence in India: one was a communist journalist; the other was a Punjab protestor, who was imprisoned and tortured in the Golden Temple.

In January 2005, Syal married her frequent collaborator, Sanjeev Bhaskar, who plays her grandson in The Kumars At No. 42; the marriage ceremony took place in Lichfield, Staffordshire. Their baby, a boy named Shaan, was born at the Portland Hospital on 2 December, 2005. Syal has a daughter called Chameli from her former marriage to journalist Shekhar Bhatia. Her brother is investigative journalist Rajeev Syal.

In February 2009, Syal was one of a number of British entertainers who signed an open letter printed in The Times protesting about the persecution of Bahá\'ís in Iran. In January 2011, Syal took part in the BBC Radio 4 programme My Teenage Diary, discussing growing up as the only British Asian girl in a small English town, feeling overweight and unattractive.

Her works

Anita and Me

Anita and Me is the story of a young Punjabi girl growing up in the fictional English village of Tollington in the 1970s.  The book follows Meena during her pre-teen years as she is desperate to fit in with the other children in her neighbourhood while forever feeling like an outsider.  Meena makes friends with Anita, a slightly older girl who is the self-proclaimed leader of a motley gang of outcasts and outsiders.  She seems tough and streetwise to Meena and Meena fights earnestly for her attention and approval. As the book progresses, Meena seems to fit in quite well with the other children, admired even, by the community.  This all begins to fall apart though as ignorance and racism clash as Meena encounters first hand how hurtful racism and ignorance can be and she struggles to understand the relationships between people. This is an incredible story of Meena’s impressive development from a selfish, self-involved little child seeking to reject everything about her culture and heritage into a self-assured and confident young girl capable of making decisions.  The book is said to be semi-autobiographical.

Life Isn\'t All Ha Ha Hee Hee

The novel traces two years in the lives of three 35-year-old London women. Sunita, Chila and Tania, who have been close friends for 2 decades, and the book starts with Chila\'s wedding to the super wealthy Deepak. Chila has always been considered the slow one, who astonished everyone by capturing the eligible Deepak. Tania is perhaps the most interesting character, who has a single successful life in film and TV. Her experiences with the establishment are probably reflective of Syal\'s life, who was one of the first Indians to become a major name in British TV. Tania is sexy and smart, but is always seen as an Asian, and asked to produce reports on \'Asian\' issues and incidents.  Sunita was a brilliant law student who settled into a restless domesticity with Akash. Sunita\'s dissatisfaction with herself and her husband\'s lack of participation in household affairs and the mental exhaustion of mothers of young children is beautifully captured. Although the women are very distinct when described from the outside, their voices when they speak for themselves are not all that different.