Kavi Pujara grew up in Leicester in the 1970s. At 18, he left for London and rarely looked back. But 30 years later he and his young family returned to live in his home city and he began a photographic project to reconnect with the place he remembered.
This Golden Mile is about the streets – Melton Road and Belgrave Road – which have long been the focal point of the Hindu community in Leicester. The book and exhibition that Pujara has created, he suggests, are not about the “sari shops, Indian restaurants and jewellers of that area”, but about the “arteries and veins” of shared culture that start from there. “This Golden Mile exists in the poetry of homes, temples and street corners; it’s down the alleys and through the gaps in steel fencing leading to crumbling industrial plots. This Golden Mile is both an entry point and an ending, the last mile of a long journey to Britain.”
