It's almost 45 years since Indian-native Nisha Tandon first set foot in Northern Ireland on a very dreary and wet summer day.
Today, she's busily preparing for the return of Northern Ireland’s largest cultural diversity festival, the Belfast Mela, which is making a welcome return later this month.
The 64-year-old, who lives in south Belfast, is also the founder of ArtsEkta, which promotes intercultural exchange through arts, culture and heritage.
Read more: Belfast Mela: NI’s largest cultural diversity festival returns with eight day extravaganza
Born and educated in Dehli, an arranged marriage first brought a 20-year-old Nisha here in 1977, at the height of The Troubles.
"I was told that I would be marrying a young man who lived in Northern Ireland," she told Belfast Live.
"My husband's family originally came here in 1949 after India gained its independence and they went first to Strabane before settling in Omagh. I hadn't a clue about the place when I first arrived. My grandfather used to listen to the BBC news and sometimes references to Northern Ireland would pop up about The Troubles so he was against me coming here at the time.
"I remember it was August 15th and when we landed in Aldergrove it was lashing out of the heavens and so dark. I had nowhere to reside in Belfast so we went straight to Omagh where my future in-laws lived, which wasn't a pleasant journey in those days."
Nisha had studied at the National School of Drama in New Delhi but on her arrival here, she found it challenging to find work in theatres where she could use her talents.
"In those days people didn't really want to know you because you were from a different background and the type of diploma I had didn't mean anything to the education system here either. I would probably have had to go through it all again," she recalled.
"My sister-in-law lived in Belfast so we moved up here and because I had good English, I was lucky that I ended up getting a job in a florist on the Dublin Road. There were probably around 50 Indian families living in the city at that time; it was a very small and tight-knit community.
"We were the second largest population in the 1980s but people were scattered all around like Derry, Ballycastle, Bangor, Ards, Newry and Portadown. It was very difficult to get spices or any kind of Asian fruit and vegetables here as there was nothing available at all. The Indian Community Centre was set up in 1981 and an Indian shop opened up later in North Belfast.
"My mother-in-law started to get items she needed stocked in a shop in Omagh and so many people in Belfast would end up going there for their shopping. An Asian supermarket also opened up on University Street but it was bombed so many times."
Nisha, who has three children and two granddaughters, eventually turned her attention to Indian cooking, hosting classes in community centres and even fronting her own cookery show on UTV for several years.
"I was doing that work myself on a freelance basis and was embraced everywhere I went as people were curious and enthusiastic about Indian culture. I found that Northern Ireland worked best through word of mouth and recommendation so that's how the cookery school and TV shows were born," Nisha added.
In 2006, she founded ArtsEkta on the principles of inclusivity, creativity and openness in all aspects of society – Ekta means ‘uniting’ in the Indian language.
Bringing together communities of Belfast and beyond, Nisha and her team create projects that inspire audiences to engage with the diversity, tastes, rhythms and sights that make up the multicultural life of Northern Ireland.
Over the past 16 years, ArtsEkta has grown dramatically in both size and scope and is now one Northern Ireland’s leading arts charities and a pioneer in the development of intercultural arts in the region.
A year later in 2007, Nisha organised the very first Belfast Mela, which is making a welcome post-Covid return later this month.
"There were about 500 people who attended the first Mela and when only five or six different cultures were being showcased compared to the huge number we have today. We chose the Botanic Gardens for its cosmopolitan location in south Belfast," she added.
This year the 16 th Belfast Mela Festival takes place from August 20-28 after a break of two years due to the pandemic. The celebrations will include a carnival procession, world food market, silk road supper club and tea walking tours, culminating in the festival finale in Botanic Gardens.
Hundreds of artists and up to 60,000 attendees are expected to attend events over the eight days.
The Full Mela 2022 programme is available here.
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