Love In London: Friendships In A New City
- Shanai Tanwar
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
I moved to London almost two months ago, and like any anxiety-riddled extrovert in her twenties, I had that crippling fear that I would make no friends. The odds of that happening, in a city with a population of over 9 million people, is reasonably high (according to TikTok), and why would anyone like me anyway?
Succumbing to my mind-numbing phobias of social exclusion, I hustled to enrol in every post-grad specific social event offered during welcome week. Pizza and karaoke at the Shack? I was there. Drinks at the Vault, where freshers told me I “didn’t look 24” (ok, rude)? I was there. Tea party during induction with my classmates? Best believe, I was there.
After a week straight of small talk, exchanging Instagram handles and having to repeat my name one too many times, my face actually hurt from smiling. I came out of that week with zero people I actually talk to today, but with a lot more practice in conversational etiquette.
In the race to secure new friends, I had overlooked a community of acquaintances and old connections from my past who now call London their home. So it was a pleasant surprise when a friend from middle school in Dubai reached out in response to a LinkedIn post I made, asking if I’d be down to catch up.
As I brushed past people on a busy Sunday night to reach Tower Bridge, I was hit with the jarring realisation that the last time I saw her was nearly ten years ago. Back then, we still wore uniforms, ate out of each other’s tiffin boxes, and rode yellow coloured buses to school. How different would things be now, and what would we even talk about?
Surprisingly, we fell into a smooth conversational rhythm and matched footsteps while admiring London’s nighttime skyline. She shared how London had begun to feel like home to her. She’d been working here for four years and was eager to tell me all about her favourite spots and what her recommendations would be for a newcomer. I, too, filled in the gaps of the last decade with updates about my years in Canada and what brought me now to London. Intermittently, we gossiped about old schoolmates over a smoke and reminisced about how much our hometowns have changed.
Surprisingly, we stayed in touch. It’s been about six weeks since we first met, and she and I see each other almost weekly (we even partied on Halloween together!). It’s a wonderful feeling to connect with someone you shared a past life with, and to see how the puzzle pieces of our personalities fit together today. “It’s like no time has passed,” I told her last week at an upscale bar in Charing Cross, to which she nodded in agreement.
Other acquaintances have also popped up over social media like adorable, amiable gophers asking if I need a friend, and “wanna get dinner sometime?” In line with my third-culture-kid-, perpetually-confused-about-where-is-home identity, familiar faces from all over the world reappear in this new city I’m learning to call home. I marvel at the random presence of goats at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens with a former classmate from my Canadian undergraduate program and discuss Palestinian solidarity in Hyde Park with a “friend of a friend.” When an online friend, who I met once at a Model UN conference in Dubai almost 11 years ago, realised I’m in London, we hit Chinatown for the best vegan Szechuan food I’ve ever had.
It’s nice to know that so many, like me, have begun to find home in the diaspora. That it’s comforting for us to meander between borders and binaries, and to exist in the grey space of this permanent “in-between.” I feel fortunate to know so many kind souls from across so many continents who want to know more about me, too.
Living in London has other perks that I should mention—unlike my last home city in the Pacific Northwest, it doesn’t take 20 hours to get here. Which means I have friends who actually want to fly to meet me, and don’t hesitate to drop a message when they’re transiting through London! A childhood friend who lives in the US (Wisconsin… don’t get me started), but calls Slovenia home, messages to say she’s in town for the weekend. So, of course, we must catch up over an espresso martini.
In the midst of all the old, familiar, beloved faces—I can’t believe I’m saying this—I’ve actually made new friends! Yes, that means previously unknown people who don’t immediately hate me and truly do want to hang out with me! How incredible, and who would’ve guessed?
It takes a few weeks, but gradually I’ve found “my people” in my MA cohort. While initially it didn’t feel like the most welcoming bunch— I’m one of only four People of Colour, so it isn’t the most diverse either—I’ve found a few sweet girls who like to complain about class with me and shop for books in Notting Hill. We keep each other company in Instagram group chats and hype each other up when deadlines are looming. Sometimes, we get drunk and read the end-of-semester final paper questions together and collectively say, “What the fuck?”
And then I’ve also found “my people” in the cultural sense; the kind of girls who like to dissect colonial power dynamics, read Brown feminist writing and paint their hands with henna. We’ve found kinship through our South Asian Women’s Writing class and actively look forward to learning from and with each other. It’s a beautiful feeling to have in an institution as traditionally exclusionary as academia, and one that makes King’s (and London) feel more like it’s mine.
So yes, I suppose I’ve found friends in London. Whether they’re the kind of friends I’ll invite to my 80th birthday, we’ll just have to see. But for now, I’ve got smiling faces from all over the world who want to grab a coffee on a chilly Tuesday with me, and I think that’s a lot to be grateful for, in this new foreign city, that I’m slowly beginning to call “home.”
Edited by Zarah Hashim, Sex and Relationships Editor
