Thank you for downloading from the BBC.

For details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use, go to BBCworldservice.com slash podcasts. here on the BBC World Service in which women from different diasporas talk intimately

about themselves and how their community has grown and flourished in the UK.

Today I've come to Bangla town in East London and I'm standing on Brick Lane, which is at the very heart of the British

Bangladeshi community.

And I'm here to meet three women from that community.

70-year-old Shaheen Chaudhry Westcombe, 44 year old Shamshia Ali, and Shinaz Begum, who's 27.

People from Bangladesh began to arrive in the UK in large numbers when the War of Independence broke out at the beginning of the 1970s.

Once here many of them worked long, long hours in the clothing industry, while others opened

restaurants and today, 8 out of 10 so-called Indian

restaurants in Britain are, in fact, owned by Bangladeshis.

Time now to make my way down Brick Lane and onto Whitechapel Road to meet today's

guests who are waiting for me in the Jaganari Women's Educational Resource

Center and I tell you if you have never walked down brick lane before it's a real experience if you didn't know that it was the Bangladeshi community

You think it was little India, but it's absolutely chock full of restaurants and food shops. The smell is unbelievable. It makes you so

hungry, but it's not just food shops, it's clothes shops, selling saris, jewelry shops, there as Asian grocers, absolutely everything.

Whatever you need, you can get it here.

You're listening to the BBC World Service with me as Ma Mayor and I'm now

thankfully in the warmth of the Jagannari Women's Educational Resource

Center where I'm joined by women from three generations of the British

Bangladeshi community here in East London and they are

70 year old Shaheen Chaudhary Westcombe, 44 year old Shamshia Ali and Shinaz Begum who is

...