A cultural crisis in our community

It's a reworking by Ayub Khan-Din - the author of the East is East screenplay - of Bill Naughton's play, All in good time.

What goes around comes around, so they say.

Bill Naughton told a story based on what he saw in the white working class communities of Bolton where he grew up, a story about a young couple unable to consummate their marriage because they begin it in the confines of the groom's parents' home.

Ayub Khan-Din transfers the scenario into a contemporary Asian-British context.

Of course, in both contexts there's a huge amount of amusing mileage to be had about a scenario where young lovers are stifled by the over-protective nature of their parents.

But there's a piercing poignancy about the intergenerational issues, the different expectations and cultural mores, the lack of understanding, the confusion, the down-right hostility, at times, which emanates from a family context but which affects the whole community.

The production is superb - it was at the National Theatre for most of 2007 - with actor, Harish Patel, perhaps the pick of the bunch.

But as I left the theatre I found myself thinking how odd it was that we supposed, thirty or forty years on from Bill Naughton's play, that the issues now belonged fair and square with simply the Asian community.

That's too roughly put, of course.

But it does seem to me that in a place like Blackburn - which is predominantly a white and Asian community - there are issues here for both heritages.

Walk round our town on a Friday night and we see the cultural crisis for both communities.

Young - often very young - white girls scantily dressed - wearing less clothes in Winter, it seems, than in Summer! - 'boozed-up' and 'on the pull'.

They're teenagers of course and need to be given plenty of latitude in one sense because they're exploring their identity.

But what are they saying about themselves in terms of their own self-respect or lack of it?

What, one wonders, is the parental input here?

Are these young people able to relate to their parents and vice versa? To whom do they go for advice?

Walk around the town on a Friday night and we see young Asian men too, many of whom will have been to the Mosque at lunchtime, but who have now forsaken their 'cultural clothes' and have donned trendy, bling-decorated designer wear.

They're also 'boozed-up' and 'on the pull'.

They similarly deserve latitude as also we could ask the same questions about the inter-generational conversation in which they find themselves.

Now, this is of course social caricature. It applies to some not to all young people by all means.

And there's certainly a whole other story to be told about the amazing gifts and talents of our young people, the countless kids who offer voluntary hours to the community, the inspiration of sporting achievers and the musically-gifted in our own cathedral community for instance.

I do realise all that and spend quite a lot of my time trying to trumpet it!

So bloggers, please don't assail me with accusations of gross distortion or exaggeration!

I know that what I'm writing is exaggerated.

But as with All in good time and Rafta, rafta social caricature nonetheless holds up a mirror to reality, draws out some common threads and invites us to examine them.

Above all else it invites us to reconnect the realities as also the inconsistencies of what we're saying and doing.

That's what Lent is all about. And we're meant to do it on a community-wide not just a personal basis.

It's not meant to be about naval-gazing - we Christians are so good at that! - it's supposed to offer us the chance to get to grips with difficulties society-wide.

Are we avoiding them because we suppose that what they tell us is that our society is so out of control, people like me don't even know where to begin the conversation that might help us all to understand what's actually going on or being said?

And if we don't avoid the difficulties, what does in fact need to be said - and done - to change such a disconnected and confused culture?