“Home” becomes wherever the dinner table is every night when you’ve lived abroad your entire life, and as Pakistanis, we have no lack of dinner tables scattered over the world. We have infiltrated the Gulf, extended to the United Kingdom, crossed across to North America, and are willing to endure the harsh winters in remote Scandinavian areas.
Southall is the spot to return your desi heart to factory settings, here in the south of the United Kingdom, where the local fashion is as wonderful as an expensive brown shawl and the food as stimulating as dishwater. You enter Southall Broadway, an otherworldly place, as soon as you leave the train station. Or Tariq Road 2.0, as I like to refer to it.
Do you need fashionable clothing? It has every one of them
Located in West London, just a short distance from Heathrow Airport, Southall has been successfully eroding the white population since the 1970s by establishing itself as Little India or Little Punjab. Don’t allow the name deter you either, fellow Karachiite. Maybe you gave birth to a teenage guy who looked at every kurta shop in Karachi like it was a bucket of vomit on your most recent trip there. He can do it all over again, no need to wait till you visit Karachi the following year! Everything is in Southall! When you pull out your phone to check the exchange rate, you’ll see that the Southall branch of Pakistani brands is just as expensive as any brand’s kurta in Dolmen Mall, despite your initial reaction to the startling price tag.
Of course, you may be the type of buyer who finds it unacceptable to spend absurd amounts of money on items that your child will outgrow in five seconds or that will go out of style in five minutes. If so, browse the opulent storefront dubbed “Shopping Palace” (which is almost the same as Shadman Arcade on Tariq Road). Here, you may get slippers, basic kurtis, or shimmering bridal gowns for a price that won’t make you clutch your heart in pain. You can find whatever you need at stores like Kids Pride (which, ironically, is delightful to see without an apostrophe), Jaan London, Omega Beauty, J., Pyara Collection, and Riwaaz Boutique.
Or maybe you need mehndi badly and you don’t know how to turn complicated YouTube patterns into anything that isn’t brown goo. Every year during Eid, an army of industrious mehndi ladies equipped with a plastic lawn chair and a cone can be seen sprinkled along Southall Broadway. They work in the dark light of street lamps overhead, with hawk-like eyesight, transforming your hands into a beautiful object in a matter of minutes. This gives you the freedom to walk over and carefully choose a kulfi with your fingertips from a booth located nearby.
You may satisfy every appetite by going here
Street food is the lifeblood of any food enthusiast, and Southall leaves other immaculate, sterilized places in the dust when it comes to it. Your taste senses will forget they ever boarded an aircraft at Jinnah terminal, since this place is home to Jalebi Junction, a million pani puris, and an endless stream of chaat. A kulfi master will contact you in Urdu and assure you that he has THREE flavors—pista, malai, and mango—that would satisfy your hunger in no time at all, as if reading your thoughts. You will stroll along and find three additional kulfi carts selling the identical products within spitting distance of each other before you have even taken off your wrapper.
There will be a line of food carts selling pani puri, chaat, and samosas just past the kulfi men, and people will be standing in line like they’re waiting for Taylor Swift tickets. However, there are a few options if you would prefer to eat outside under a canopy with real tables and chairs: Giftos Lahore Karahi, Spice Village (which will sadly tell you that it’s the best Pakistani restaurant in London), Wok and Karahi, Kulcha Express, Karak Chaii, and Rita’s Chilli Chaat. Whatever it is, be certain that the cuisine here is just as good as the exquisite dishes from the KU dhaba; in terms of street food, it doesn’t get much better.
The clothing of Tariq Road devoted customers is the only thing that truly separates it from Southall. Instead of sweat-soaked kurtis, people pounding a path down Southall Broadway are clad in jackets since the UK is nearly always enveloped in a chilly blanket of grey. Furthermore, there is no chance of a rickshaw stepping on your foot as it squeezes past because there is no parking. But never be afraid! Even if cars are idly looking for parking on side streets, you may still enjoy Karachi the way it really is! Similar to their counterparts in Karachi, drivers in Southall also drive with their eyes closed, so you may travel to Southall knowing that, if you can endure it, your ride along Tariq Road will be the culmination of your Tariq Road experience—that is, if you can avoid the diesel fumes of Karachi.
I am a dedicated student currently in my seventh semester, pursuing a degree in International Relations. Alongside my academic pursuits, I am actively engaged in the professional field as a content writer at the Rangeinn website.