This is an AI transcription, apologies for any typos.

[00:00:00] Sumit Shah: We feel in our hearts. Liverpool gonna win. We're gonna be part of history. We saw it. We were there.

[00:00:07] Alex Melia: Welcome to Stories of Men Beneath the Surface. I'm Alex Melia. Join me as we discover what it means to be a man in the modern era.

There's nothing quite like the relationship between brothers, whether you've got 1, 2, 3, or even more. It's a rivalry, friendship and bond unmatched by other acquaintances in life. Sometimes it can feel like you and your brothers versus the world. Sumit and his brothers run their way to watch their team Liverpool, playing the 2018 Champions League final in Kiev.

These tickets were gold dust and the brothers were making their way to the arena.

[00:00:57] Sumit Shah: We're, you know, coming towards the evening. Now I'm at seven o'clock. The sun is setting. It's a warm night. It's a nice stadium. It's a really, really, it's a national stadium. It's like Wembley way, but it's not 'cause it's just full of guys with guns waiting to see your ticket and they're being very, very diligent.

At that point, I was a bit intimidated and I was a bit like scared. Like, am I gonna get through? I think, let me through. Are we gonna get in? I always have a big thing about having to get through. Maybe it's the tension of the game. But I wanna get in. I just wanna get into the stadium, know that I'm there and once I'm in my seat, I'm safe.

And I'm walking through with my brother. We're walking through, I start getting glimpses, and so we started making our way to our gate. We're starting to get the vibe now. Fans dancing around videos. It's now starting to become a vibe. Now we start getting into the, into the rhythm of the game. We start taking pictures.

We're super excited 'cause we feeling in our hearts, Liverpool gonna win. We're gonna be part of history. We saw it, we were there. I walked through these large gates and these blocks, these cinder blocks of cement. And you start walking through and you start getting a glimpse of the, of the pitch. The pitch is lush, right?

You can hear the fans start to chant. And we started looking at like, hold on a minute. Shouldn't we be, we should be closer. Why are we here? And so we start, we start to get confused. This, this seems too far away, loads of steps. What, what do we do here? So we start making our way. We, we speak to a steward and said, no, you're, you're sat here.

So we sat here and then we look up and half the pitch is missing because it's a massive, it's a restrictive view. You can see half a cinder block and you can see half the pitch. And we're like, This is not what we paid for. My brother who had got tickets through the official club, he went through the club, officially, got them through the ballot.

Lucky enough to do that, and he's like, I'm not having this credit to him. Always has the courage to go, I'm not having this. This is not on. I've paid a lot of money to be here and I'm gonna sort this out. I'm like, what do we do? He's like, Find a steward. I found someone in a UA for jacket, said Hi, do you speak English?

Yes. Oh, thank God. So we speak to speak to this person and I bring her over to my brother. He said, look, I've bought these tickets through the club. I'm a disabled supporter and I can't go up many stairs. We can't see half the pitch. This is unacceptable. And so the u a for person, like, what do I, what can I do?

What can I do? What can I do? He's like, well, you've gotta do something 'cause this is unacceptable. As this back and forth ensues to the point where, The US person goes away and I'm going, what's, what's my brother done? What we gonna do? We gonna have to sit here. Why you sit in my seat? You can see a bit more.

He's like, no, no. We are going to, we're gonna follow this through. And I'm like, super tension. 'cause this is like my first final, I've never been to a kind of Liverpool final before. It's my first one. And I'm like, my heart's pounding. I'm anxious. What's going on? And then the UA for person comes back and says, Yeah, you got two fresh tickets.

Here you go. My jaw dropped. I, I, I couldn't give it away to my brother, but I was just like, oh my God, how did you wing that? And so we make our way to the new tickets. I'll give him a massive hug, and I go, you are different. You are, you're just different.

[00:04:09] Alex Melia: It was, yeah, it was really interesting to hear from, from your perspective, you know, this, this camaraderie that, that you had with your brothers. And I'll disregard the fact that you're a Liverpool fan, but I just love this story that, you know, you've got, you've got these two brothers really. Fortunate to have two brothers as well, and, and also not just that, but to have two brothers who love football and also love the same team.

Because I've heard about brothers who have different football teams that they support and that can create a lot of conflict. And the fact that you all had the financial means to go there, you all have the time. Everything sort of like all the stars aligned basically for you to do that with your two brothers.

[00:04:48] Sumit Shah: We're working class South Asian family, British Asian family who lived on their state and just worked their way up and, you know, very grateful. And I think, you know, with, with Liverpool, and I think the camaraderie of my brothers comes from the things that have happened in our lives that have brought us closer together.

There's some things that have happened in our lives that mean that actually there's some things. Bigger than a little rift, a little squabble. And when you see the bigger picture and that bigger perspective and big losses within the family, it brings you closer because you really understand what's at stake here.

And I think for, for all three of us, and I can only speak for myself, I can't speak for them, but having lost at such a young age kind of. It kind of matures you very quickly. You've gotta be a bit more emotionally intelligent and you've gotta be in touch with your feelings a bit more and own them a little bit more because there's no time.

And I think that camaraderie bring us together.

[00:05:43] Alex Melia: I'm curious about the, the age gap between you and your brothers, because I've got, I've got a brother and, uh, we have, there's 16 years age gap between him and I. So obviously, you know, I was, In my last year of high school when he was born. So there is, I I understand what you mean about the camaraderie and there's, there's a bond there, but it's a different kind of bond between him and I just because of how many years there are that separates us.

So what is the age gap between, between the three of you?

[00:06:09] Sumit Shah: Between the three of us? The eldest is about nine years older than me. I think then after that six years and then me, so you're the youngest? I'm the youngest of three. I'm the youngest of three. Yes, indeed.

[00:06:21] Alex Melia: Indeed. Interesting, indeed. Interesting, interesting.

So it made me, it made me think, uh, on this trip as the youngest, are you usually in that position when you are led by your older brothers? Because it's, it's something that my younger brother, He sometimes is willing to take direction and sometimes he doesn't. He doesn't like it just because of the age gap.

It doesn't mean that he, he could be told what to do and I'm very careful on how I speak to him, so he doesn't feel like that, because at the end of that, I'm not his father, although biologically speaking, I could be, you know, with that age gap. But how do, yeah. How do you find taking direction from him and, and yeah.

How does it feel with your ego?

[00:07:01] Sumit Shah: With the eldest, it's slightly different. The dynamic's slightly different because I think the eldest is always in protective mode. And not to say that my, the middle brother, the one just slightly above me isn't, but there's a different tact and, and there's a different way in which they do that.

But in, in the instances where they. Offer me advice and talk to me. I'm receptive to it because I know it comes from a, a place of love, right? And, and a place where they want me to do better. I think that sometimes the eldest brother in the way in which he articulates, or the verbiage he may use is very different to the brother who's in the middle, and so I'm more.

Attracted or akin to the, the middle brother in terms of the verbiage he uses. So my middle brother, the, the way in which he will. Offered. His advice won't be as direct than the eldest brother. But again, I think that's to do with the protective nature. Where we grew up, it was, it was rough, it wasn't easy.

So it's a bit more direct because you don't have time to explain. This is what I think. But I think we are all growing up and it's also strange. It's a strange dynamic and I always like to think about. How, you know, what it's like for people in, in their shoes. It's also strange for the eldest in any, in any kind of sibling dynamic, when you watch, you know, you see your youngest brother or sister as a baby, essentially.

Remember when they, they remember when I came home as a baby, and then you're seeing this person grow up. It's, it's a bit of a mind. Beep, like to kind of deal with that and, you know, do I speak to you like you're still 12 or how do I, and then you realize that that person's their own individual now, whether it's, uh, your boy or a girl, whoever, it's brother, sister, and you're still having to deal with that.

And it, it can, it can be difficult to adjust because you're used to certain way. Um, but that's

[00:08:56] Alex Melia: gross. Right? It's a really valid point that you make about speaking to your brothers or the, your brother speaking to you as if you were still that little boy. I. Because Sumit is not a little boy now he's in his, he's in his thirties, so.

How do, how do your brothers not fall, fall into that trap? Because I notice in myself, my brother's 20 now, and sometimes I have to stop myself from speaking to him like he's a five-year-old, but he's, 'cause he's not that way anymore. So it's almost like, it's sort of like when I'm present and I'm conscious and I'm, I'm self-aware.

And I'm not in a preachy mode because sometimes I can slip into that sort of preachy mode when I'm speaking to him about do this, do that. No one wants to be spoken to like that. I mean, I've had people older than me try to speak to me like that, so why would I put that on someone else? It's this sort of like self-awareness thing of, oh, okay, I'm about to become preachy.

I'm about to tell him what to do. I'll just stop myself before it triggers him.

[00:09:55] Sumit Shah: There's self-regulation within the person, so you have to regulate yourself and think about what you're saying before you say it. And sometimes that's difficult. Sometimes it comes out, but I think that you get to a place after many, many, many, many, many arguments, you get to a place after learning that actually this person's their own self.

And also it comes with respect. When you come to that realization, you start to ease off a little bit with the, with the preachiness and kind of go, well, if they're going, they're gonna have to learn their own way. As much as I think I might be writing something, I have to take a step back and go. I have to respect the decision they have, they wanna make, it's the same conversations I have with my wife.

And then we try to get to the root of it and we'll go like, oh, I understand you now. And it's that process that you do in all your relationships that will allow you to really understand how to talk to someone and, and code switch in some senses. If

[00:10:53] Alex Melia: you don't have that open discourse, then it, it, you can have this sort of, this boiling up of, of anger and emotions and it.

Lets itself off in maybe more destructive ways. And if, yeah, like you say, if you don't, if you don't air those things from the get go, nip it in the bud. As we say. If you don't nip it in the bud early doors, then things can really fester. And I've, I've seen that to my detriment, but I've also seen the. The good effects of that, of being able to just talk about things straight away because it's, it's, it's about being authentic as well.

It's about not people pleasing. It's about getting it out there. Especially when you've got two other brothers, strong-willed, I'm sure. Like yourself, you know, and I'm curious as well about the role reversal. In terms of older brother, younger brother sort of syndrome, there's a lot of

[00:11:39] Sumit Shah: reversals of roles. I look at it like a band, right?

Sometimes someone's gonna play lead, someone's gonna play backup vocals, someone's gotta play tambourine, and you're playing to your strengths. I think I. The good thing about my sibling dynamic is that we all know what our strengths are, and we probably also know what our weaknesses are. It's almost like automated for me and my brothers.

We are very aware of who we are and and what we bring to the table, and that's, that's come from self-reflection. There's also important thing I wanted to add is that within our community, and I say the Southeast Asian community speaking up about your feelings, saying how you feel, having open, you know, communication is kind of not frowned upon.

Well, it is frowned upon, especially among the. Older generation, like getting my dad to tell me about how he feels is like putting teeth and it's because that's what they were told. You don't have to reveal how you feel. You don't cry, you don't do any of these things. And I think that when it comes to my, when my brothers, I'm lucky that we saw through that.

It wasn't just about going No, no, I'm not gonna tell you. I feel it's like no, we, we learned from the mistakes that we saw within our community. I'm British Asian, but with. We're different. We don't follow the same rules and conventions that that happens within that. So we are very open and, and communicative how we do that.

Do you mean in,

[00:13:02] Alex Melia: in your community that you are, if they weren't, like, if they weren't so open-minded, your two brothers, that they would've stopped you from following the path that you wanted to go down. Is it sort of this, is it something in your culture that to say, No, you'll, you'll do what your older brothers tell you to do.

They'll lay out a path for you. A

[00:13:22] Sumit Shah: little bit of that. But I think, I think I, I would have my own self close my mind off to the things that I could have done, but I hear a lot of stories of I. Just inequality within sibling dynamic between a a, a, a boy and a girl and the things that it's, it's, it's still shocking to hear these things in 2023, but they still exist because the generations haven't quite moved past it.

But I think that if I'd been in a, I guess almost stereotypical British Asian family, not all of 'em are the same, but the stereotypical ones where, you know, you've got to educate. You know, go get a, you know, be a doctor. If I was to do that, I think my creativity would've stifled. I think the reason why I'm able to be a podcast producer, the reason why I was able to be a hip hop journalist and you know, be featured on Rolling Stone and in Same Weekly and B B C Radio four and whatever it is.

The reason I was able to do that is because I was given the platform to thrive, and I think that's the key my. My family and my brothers in particular gave me that platform to thrive, to fail and succeed. What are the learnings from that? What can we learn from that? And we, and we, we feed each other that, you know, we're, we are now talking about financial literacy with each other, right?

So how do we help each other better prepare ourselves and our fa and our kids? For later in life. I don't wanna be working until I'm 65. I have a plan to be done in, in 12 years time. I wanna be done. I wanna enjoy my life because I see in our community, people work until 65, 70, 75. Like it's, and, and it's, it's, that's not a bad thing if that's, if that's what they want to do.

But me, I want to enjoy my life with my wife, my kids. I want to, you know, I wanna live. I wanna live it up.

[00:15:07] Alex Melia: I always get excited when I hear about people who do go against the grain that you are. There's almost an expecting expectation that you're gonna go down this path, you're gonna have this kind of profession.

And then of all things, you become a hip hop journalist, which I love because it's just the polar opposite of perhaps what you would expect a lot. I like the fact that you brought up about. Being from the British, Asian community, because I do get a lot of listeners asking to get more guests on talking about what it means to be a man from different kinds of backgrounds within the uk.

I mean, that's the great thing about, about Britain. I'm curious about your path of how you started from being this young boy to being a teenager, to being, uh, an adult man. What was that process like coming from the British Asian community with the support of your brothers as well as a

[00:15:50] Sumit Shah: boy? I think I have stark memories of a lot of racism, if I'm honest.

And I think that's where the protectiveness comes in, because it was still a time where, uh, where I was living at the time south or there was a lot of tension and there was a lot of racism towards ethnic communities. So I do remember a lot of that and having to look, you know, around your back. And I think my first, my first actual fight was at five years old with like a nine year old because I was Asian and.

That's it. That, that's basically it. Nothing else. So as a boy, that was quite prevalent, but also being athletic was quite prevalent too. That was my, that was my escape. I was a very, very fast runner, uh, sprinter in the area, like went to the middle search championships. Then, you know, athletic athleticism.

It runs in the family a little bit. Even my oldest brother, he held records and it was, it was, it was something that we were proud of that we did always look forward to. Sports day, moved into football, of course, you know, like even at primary school, year four, I'm the vice captain of the year six team, like I'm the leader of the team.

And then you kind of grow into everything around that. And the way we lived it kind of provided you with a thick skin, but it also provided you a way to navigate. You had to deal with different people. Every single day. So growing up around racism and growing around drugs, you know, there's drug addicts around there.

You see vials on the floor. Like these are people who are doing co cocaine or heroin in the garages, and then they're scurrying away. And this, this, you know, this isn't, This isn't a great way to live, but all of that puts a thick skin on you and then you go through your teenage years, and I lost my mother when I was 18, 19.

I always remember it as the first year of my exams. After the first exam. After that, everything changed like. I couldn't be the young boy, youngest of three, having a joke, having a laugh. And my frame of mind at that point was like, I have to man up now. I have to get, I have to get everything together from what I'm gonna do for my life, career, how I'm gonna support my family, and I'm in protective mode.

Now. How am I gonna protect my family? 'cause it's just a bunch of us. It's not, it's not a huge family here, it's just the four of us now and what we're gonna do. And that was. I had to mature, essentially, I had to mature on an emotional level. I had to mature, um, as a, as a person, as a man, and I had to really figure out the things that I'd learned.

There's this massive shift now. Now who, now who am I? Like, I've lost the bedrock of my family. Who am I? Well, do I cry? Do I not cry for the most part? In those years, I blocked everything out. So I, there's, there's things that come back to me now, but I think it's a traumatic thing where when something traumatic happens to you, you just block out periods of time and memories.

I locked it all away and I dealt with it later, but it was such a shock that I just didn't know what to do, and I just felt that the best way to do was to put my head down, say to everyone I was okay, and just work through

[00:18:54] Alex Melia: it all. If you have a situation where. Someone who's not part of that. Handful of people who knew about your, your mother died many years ago.

If they ask those assumption questions that I think a lot of us ask, like, I dunno, it could be hypothetically speaking, it's Mother's Day. And they say to you, they just assume, oh, summit what, what you getting your mum for Mother's Day? How, what, how do you respond to those kinds of questions?

[00:19:18] Sumit Shah: There's, there's been a lot of that.

Um, I just kind of gloss over it and I talk about it in like, oh yeah, we had a good time. The whole family had a good time. I just gloss over it. And especially at work, it just, you know, this kind of small, like I'm, I'm okay for small talk, but also I don't like small talk. If I'm being honest. I can't stand it.

Only recently, uh, a friend of mine was like, Hey, come out. I've, I'm having this kind of event. Um, can you, can, do you wanna come out? And I was like, yeah, I'll come out. And then I was like, no, actually it's like the death anniversary of my mom and like on that day I just wanna be by myself. Like, and I just had to be honest with him.

I was like, I know. I said, yes, I'll come to this and you've organized something. But like, today's like the death anniversary of my mom. He never knew. He'd never knew. I was like, I just wanna be by myself today. I hope you understand. And if you didn't, fine, I don't care, but I need to do what's right for me as opposed to always doing something on that day or always hiding it or, you know, and it's not like I can't.

You know, for Mother's Day or Di Valley or Christmas, all those things, it's not like I, I can't deal with those days. It just, it sometimes makes it just an extra bit harder.

[00:20:28] Alex Melia: Sumits story was a brilliant reminder to me that there's nothing quite like doing something that you love with the ones you love and celebrating a mutual passion. It's a lovely thought that even though their team didn't win, It's a memory that Sumit has of his brothers that he treasures the most.

Sometimes it's not about the event, it's about who you're with. Sumit Iss the youngest of three and has had the pressure taken off him to become a lawyer or a doctor. Instead, he's pursued what might be considered a more left field career. As a podcast producer and hip hop journalist, this made me feel that he's really lucky to have that relationship as well.

Three brothers who all share a passion for football as well as looking out for each other. And it's been a reminder to me too, to give my own younger brother the time and space to flourish in his own way and to think about how I can continuously improve as a Big Brother. Has this episode made you rethink your relationships with your siblings if you have them?

Sumit played the role of many different types of men in this episode. And if you want to find out what type of man you are, definitely check out our quiz. It only takes five minutes and you never know. You might just learn something new about yourself. So go to stories of men podcast.com to complete the quiz.

We'll also put the link in the show notes as well.