Meeting Yet Another Anglo-Indian Couple in Wembley

Wednesday, June 3, 2009
London

It has been a very very long time since I have had breakfast with anyone; so I was especially grateful to have Paul and Loulou to chat with at breakfast in their lovely bright kitchen this morning. Over cereal and coffee, we talked about my research project before Paul raced off to the airport for a trip abroad. Loulou and I went over some minor programing details and then I was off, rushing on the Tube to Wembley to keep my appointment with yet another Anglo-Indian couple. Indeed, it has been a very productive week for me and I am grateful for all the contacts I have been making recently with this ethnic minority–all of which will validate my research and give me a wider sampling to comment on as I begin to analyze my findings.

I had never been to Wembley though I have heard so much about it. Indeed, Wembley is Little India and if I did not see the red buses right in front of me, I would never have known that I was in London. South Asians (mainly Indians) have flocked to this London enclave and colonized it, as it were, bringing their piquant Indian smells to the area in the form of fragrant spices, temple flowers and Indian attar perfume. The Anglo-Indian couple with whom I had an appointment, Gerry and Coreen Gilbert, had made their home in Wembley 46 years ago, however–long before any Indians came to settle here and their dwelling has to be seen to be believed.

So, let me say, at the outset, that Gerry is an ornithologist by profession–a passionate hobby that grew into a profession and provided a successful entrepreneurial business that made him a wealthy man beyond all his wildest ambitions. I took to him and his lovely wife Coreen immediately and before we even settled down to our chat, Gerry led me out to his enormous garden to take a look at his aviary. Believe be, I felt as if I was at the London Zoo for the variety of bird life in his backyard is unlike anything I have ever seen . It still amazes me that what started as a childhood hobby for Gerry in his native India became a flourishing business in the UK that made him the sole provider of exotic birds to the superstore chain called Petsmart. The achievement of his dreams led him to retire over 15 years ago on a rambling property the likes of which is truly rare in London.

Once we did sit down to chat, I found the couple to be thoroughly engaging. Their climb up the financial ladder and the interesting stories and jokes that Gerry cracked along the way made me feel as if I ought to devote an entire chapter of my proposed next book to this couple. And what’s more, they reinstated my faith in the innate hospitality of the Anglo-Indian community for I was, quite unexpectedly indeed, plied with a heavy meal of absolutely delicious Mutton Biryani with salad, fresh Alphonso mangoes (boy, did those take me straight back to Bombay!) and a plateful of Indian mithai to complete our repast. Considering that in the past couple of days I have traveled to homes in far-flung Hounslow and Osterley where I was given nothing more elaborate than a simple cup of coffee, this meal went down a treat and I was deeply grateful. What’s more, the couple instantly invited me to a party at their place on a Sunday in July at which I hope to meet many more of their Anglo-Indian friends. I found them jovial and fun to be with and, like so many of the Anglo-Indians I have met, unbelievably youthful for their years.

Then, since I had a bus pass, I took a bus back to Euston (and what a journey that was!!!). I passed through parts of London I had never seen before where the ethnic demographic is so different from anything to which I am accustomed in Central London. I saw women covered from head to toe in burquas with only slits in their veils for their eyes. I saw (and smelt!) Blacks who were obviously down and out and reeking of cheap alcohol. I saw streets that were filthy with litter and, for a moment, I thought I was back in Bombay yet again! Nothing like fresh ripe mangoes and refuse to whisk you back ‘home’ to India!

As soon as I got home to Farringdon (I am still discovering the little bylanes of my new neighborhood), I called Tim, my friend, hoping to receive advise from him on how to get hooked to the wireless network. Within ten minutes, we were all set up and I was so grateful to him for his help and the time he devoted to me. In fact, he was all set to come right back to this flat to set me up when I made the discovery that I was, in fact, connected! I managed to contact him again on his cell phone before he had left his place to get to mine. What a weight it was off my mind when I found that I could finally work from my favorite place–my bed!

I spent the evening catching up on my email (there was loads of it!) and updating by blog as well as writing up one of the interviews I did with Owen in Kent. And then, it was time to read a bit more of Harry Potter and get it to bed.

Interviewing an Anglo-Indian Couple in Hounslow

Jun3

Monday, June 1, 2009
London

Settling In my Awesome New Roost:
I did not sleep badly in my new roost, all things considered: late night, new bed, etc. I awoke mid-way, at about 4. 30 am, checked to see what the time was and went promptly back to sleep to awake at 6. 45 am. Not too bad at all. I hope I can continue this pattern of sleep through the rest of my stay here.

My first priority was to try to get connected to the internet. Though I did try to use the Ethernet and the long cable that my neighbor Tim had provided, I was unable to get online—a matter of some concern as so much of my work is done at home. I called Tim to ask for his help. Meanwhile, I went about trying to unpack my boxes, find storage space for all the empty suitcases and cartons and get myself organized in my new room. I stopped in-between to get a bit of breakfast (cereal and milk) and watched the BBC Breakfast show as I did, becoming acquainted for the first time with the TV set and the new remote control. Then, it was to time to get back to work unpacking.

Tim called me in about an hour and offered to come across and see why I wasn’t able to get connected. This left me enough time for a shower and at 12 noon, he arrived. It was not long before he had me connected and online and how delighted I was—though I have to say that to have a wireless internet connection would be far better as I can then use my PC in my room. Still, I am not complaining. As long as I have access to my email and I can respond from home (and do not have to get to my office at Bloomsbury which is what I had intended to do), I’m fine.

When Tim left, I had some lunch (the remainder of the Hot and Spicy Prawn Pho that I had ordered last night at the Vietnamese place—gosh, I was so tired I don’t even remember it’s name). I opened the lovely French doors in the kitchen so that the sunlight streamed in on this golden afternoon. Placing a chair at the window, I seated myself there and took in the scenic vista spread before me. There was the brick building just ahead, built in the 1700s now a boutique hotel called The Rookery. St. John’s Street lay just ahead and below me was St. Peter’s Lane and in the distance was the white conical spire of a church whose name I have yet to discover. And I thought me myself once again, “Ah, this is England!” How idyllic this urban scene and how privileged I feel to be able to enjoy it.

And then I was off to Hounslow to interview an Anglo-Indian couple. I stopped en route at High Holborn to return my keys to my concierge Arben and do a final walkthrough of my former flat to make sure I had not left anything behind. I also took a few pictures with Arben and thanked him warmly for everything he has done for me (which was a great deal indeed).

Off to see an Anglo-Indian couple in Hounslow:
It was during the Fall semester when one of my students had taken my course on Anglo-Indians at NYU that I had become introduced to this couple through the ethnographic profile he had created. I decided to contact them for my own research and had found the gentleman quite willing to speak with me. Though we had been in telephonic contact, it was nice to finally meet them. I took a convoluted route to get to their place (using the buses as I bought myself another bus pass since the rest of my week will be spent interviewing Anglo-Indians in the far-flung suburbs). They awaited my arrival at the Tube station, then walked me over to their place where we arrived at 4. 30 pm.

I spent the rest of the afternoon talking to them and gleaning a great deal of helpful information. The gentleman warmed to me fully only at the end of the interview when he realized that I was born and raised in India and, despite my naturalized American citizenship, consider myself wholly Indian. “Oh”, he said, “from your name I thought you were Portuguese and since you say you are from New York University, I thought you were a Yankee!”

This individual, who has neither joined any one of the Anglo-Indian Associations in London nor socializes with any other members of his community in person, spends his days in cyberspace communicating with Anglo-Indians around he world online through ‘The Anglo-Indian Portal’. He was rather an interesting character who joked frequently and told me things about his experiences as an Anglo-Indian in India and in the UK that made me laugh rather heartily. His wife too joined in our conversation. These are, what my father would call “simple folk” (but as the nicest of compliments, not as an insult) because they are guileless. Their expectations are low, their contentment with their modest lot obvious, their welcome was warm and they were hospitable. As I was leaving, they implored me to “stay in touch” with them and made me promise that I would call on them again if I ever needed company.

Then, I was back on the buses and when I got home, a bit exhausted from my morning’s unpacking and my long commute, I nipped into ‘my pantry’ in my building (read M&S Simply Food) bought some milk and bread and returned upstairs to eat my dinner in front of the TV (watched a bit of old material from Britain’s Got Talent), checked my email and returned to my room to write my journal in Word with the intention of transferring it to my blog as soon as I can get online again.

Interviewing another Anglo-Indian near Osterley

Jun3

Tuesday, June 2, 2009
London

Waking up in this new place feels rather strange to me. It takes me a few seconds to realize where I am. It was 6. 45 am when I awoke and since I wanted to get to Osterley (close to Heathrow airport) in time for a 10. 30 am appointment, I showered really quickly, ate my cereal breakfast, made myself a ham and cheese sandwich and left at 8.30 am. I had to find out where the nearest bus stops are as well as the routes that serve this area. I guess I will have it all figured out in a few days.

Getting out of Theobald’s Road and arriving at Holborn Station takes the longest time in the bus what with all the traffic snarls and the peak hour rush. Despite changing three buses, I arrived at Osterley Tube Station earlier than I expected and called the Anglo-Indian gentleman who had agreed to speak to me. He picked me up from the bus stop in his car and took me to his home where we settled down with a glass of water that I requested. His wife was also supposed to speak to me as part of my project; but I sensed her reluctance right away and when she agreed to answer some questions only and did not sign the agreement giving her consent to the interview, I politely declined. In the end, I spoke only to the husband who had rather interesting views which he shared very frankly with me. He told me later that his wife had completely conflicting views and did not wish to air them in front of him as they differ widely on the subject of their decision to emigrate to the UK and the manner in which life has treated them since they arrived in this country 20 years ago.

Still, despite his misgivings, it is impressive that three of his four children are university educated and that too in the cream of the country’s institutions of higher education such as Cambridge, Oxford and UCL. Their last daughter is taking her GCSEs this year and is also headed towards what we, in America, would call an Ivy League school. This man was so different in attitude and behavior from the couple I met yesterday. Thus, though I have spoken to over 35 Anglo-Indians already, I do not find my work repetitive as each of them tells me completely different stories and has inordinately different views.

A Visit to the Museum of London:
Back in the City, I went straight to NYU to settle the last of my utility bills and then I was on the bus heading to the Museum of London. This one, together with the London Transport Museum, is still on my To-Do List and I decided today would be a good day to go out and explore it. It is located near the Barbican and has a very interesting architectural design. Built in close proximity to the old London walls (the base dating from Roman times), they make the perfect backdrop for a place that traces the evolution as this city from 43 AD to the present date. The only misfortune is that the entire lower level is under refurbishment and closed to the public (which means I shall have to make another trip to London sometime to see it!) but the top floor contains interesting artifacts that span several centuries right up to the Great Fire of 1566.

I watched two rather short but fascinating films—one on the Great Fire, another on the Black Death (the Plague) that ravaged Europe throughout the Middle Ages. Then, my exploration of the contents began. Among some of the most notable things I saw (and not necessarily in any order at all) were:

1, 2 Roman leather bikinis that would have been worn by dancers—it is remarkable that they have survived despite being made of leather. There are only 3 Roman bikinis in the world and 2 of them are here in this museum.
2. A set of Roman gold coins, excavated in a single hoard, featuring the heads of every one of the most significant of the Roman emperors. This must have belonged to someone very wealthy who buried his treasure hoping to retrieve it someday but never got back to it.
3. A fragment of a marble tablet on which for the very first time the people of London have been named as Londoners (Londiniumvernis, I think it said).
4. The very first fire engine ever used in England.
5. A spectacular Roman mosaic floor found intact in a house in Bucklersberry near London in the late 1800s.

I did not finish seeing all of the museum. I have yet to see the exhibit on the Great Fire of London which was crowded with a school group, leading me to postpone my visit there.

I took the bus and returned home to Denmark House to find that my friends Paul and Loulou had arrived there from Suffolk to spend a night as they do once a week. It was great to see them again but we did not have a chance to spend a whole lot of time together as they were off to a party and will return late tonight. I tried to set myself up once again with the wireless connection but failed. Will try again tomorrow. Hopefully, Tim will be able to walk me through the process.

I ate my dinner while watching a program called Come Dine With Me—in which four strangers are thrown together to cook for each other and put on a complete meal for the other three. It made rather interesting viewing but because it was an hour-long show, I saw only a part of it as I wanted to get back to writing my journal for my blog.

I was pleased before I went to bed to review the comments in the evaluation sheets left for me by my students and to discover that they were very complimentary indeed and said a lot of very positive things about the courses I taught them this past semester. I am very pleased that the year I spent teaching in London was beneficial to them and that they enjoyed my classes.

I also began the next novel in the Harry Potter series: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince which I hope to finish in the next couple of weeks so that I can start the last and final one and return the last two books to Barbara who lent them to me. When I have finished all of them, I can cross out yet another item on my To-Do List: Read all 7 Harry Potter novels in London!

Moving on Pentecost Day! Goodbye Holborn, Hello Farringdon!

Jun1

Sunday, May 31, 2009
London

I awoke on the last morning of my stay in my cozy flat at High Holborn at 6 am. I guess you could say that at the very end, I was sleeping almost the whole night through and for that I am grateful. I did check my email and I continued drafting my monthly newsletter to my friends around the world, then checked the website of the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Field as I had never been there before for a service. I figured that Pentecost Sunday would be a good time to get there and listen to the choir of a great church.

Only, I did not bargain for the fact that because the church sits at Trafalgar Square right in front of Gerard Street and the heart of London’s Chinatown, it has a huge percentage of Chinese parishioners and the service was, therefore, bi-lingual—in English and Mandarin Chinese. This, of course, made it very interesting but it also made it very long. In fact, it went on for almost two hours! There was an English priest and a Chinese one and they alternated as co-celebrants. What was particularly interesting was that the readings were done in fragmented fashion by a number of folks representing different nations and in different tongues. This was especially significant as Pentecost, which represents the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles after the death of Christ, bestowed upon them the gift of tongues. This allowed them to travel far away from the Holy Land (some as far as India as St. Thomas did) taking the message of Christ with them and spreading Christianity.

The preacher, the Vicar of the Church, whose name I did not catch, was, as all Anglican preachers are, simply compelling. The quality of these sermons astonish me, Sunday after Sunday, and given that he included detailed references to Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist with some very interesting interpretations, I found it very absorbing indeed.
The light at the end of the lengthy tunnel was that the entire congregation was invited to attend a Bring-And-Share Lunch in the Crypt after the service. And because the congregation was so diverse, there was a variety of foods on the table—from three kinds of Chinese noodles to sausage rolls and cold ham. Indeed it was all quite fascinating.

A couple of people came up to speak to me and welcomed me into their midst—one of them happened to be a Malaysian named John who informed me that he had been a member of the congregation for the past 30 years. Another lady told me that she was originally from Cape Town, South Africa, and had spent about 40 years in England. She had recently retired and wished to return to South Africa but she was disappointed by the lack of racial harmony in her country and the terrible corruption, she said. An Indian woman, who informed me that her father was a Sikh and her mother a Christian, also came up to chat with me.

Of course, I need say nothing about the fabulous interior of the Church that is a London landmark, what with its strategic position on one of the country’s most-visited sites. The lavish plasterwork on the ceiling is just stunning, embellished here and there with touches of gilding. There is a huge royal Crest in the center featuring the lion and the unicorn that I have seen all over this country—in churches, palaces and all sorts of venues associated with the royal family. I had once sat upstairs in one of the pew boxes during a fusion concert that featured Middle Eastern, Indian and Western music in the compositions of Talvin Singh. This time, seated down, in the midst of the congregation, I had a very different perspective of the church and I thought it was quite arresting indeed.

Finally Finishing The Order of the Phoenix:
Despite the fact that it was moving day for me, the bulk of my packing had been done and I could not resist joining the throngs of people who had gathered on this extraordinarily bright and beautiful day to enjoy the outdoors. Since I was so struck by the Victoria Embankment Gardens in spring when the tulips and primroses had filled the green oasis with color, I decided to take a look at it again. I had carried The Order of the Phoenix with me and I thought that the gardens would make a great place to finally finish the book—I had about 30 pages left and I wanted to return it to Barbara who had lent it to me before I left the building in the evening.

My thorough knowledge of the geography of London now allows me to find my way to my desired destination in the shortest possible time and with the least amount of walking. I have to say that I myself marvel at this ability as London is not laid out in a grid like New York and there are no numbers to guide you to a venue—you need to have a very good map or a very good instinct for direction.

In less than ten minutes, I was entering the gardens and, expecting to see loads of blooming flower beds, was in for a huge disappointment. All the spring flowers had gone and the beds had been dug up, in time, perhaps, for a new round of planting. At any rate, they looked bare and devoid of any floral interest whatsoever. Not willing to be dissuaded from my goal of finishing the book, I found a shaded bench and spent the next one hour turning the pages and people-watching (and unconsciously eavesdropping) at the same time. A pair of elderly ladies joined me on my bench and twice I entered into their conversation as I could not help overhearing them and both times I had the answer to their questions.

“What is that thing called?” said one of them pointing in the distance. “I always forget it’s name”.
The other shrugged. She did not know and she not care.

“That’s the London Eye”, I said. Though they thanked me warmly, I wondered if it was impolite of me to have butted into their private conversation. In the States, I wouldn’t think twice about doing this; but in the UK, where everyone is so reserved, such an intrusion on my part might well be considered rude and I am not yet fully familiar with the social protocol governing casual chatter with strangers.

A few minutes later, the sharper woman stopped a member of the cleaning crew to ask, “What is the name of those flowers there?” –pointing to a flower bed.

“I don’t know”, replied the man. “You will have to ask the gardener there”.

“Those are hydrangeas”, I said.

“Oh thank-you”, they said again, then proceeded to ignore me for the rest of the time I sat there! Again, I am certain that such a thing would never have happened in the States where this exchange would have been the start of a long and interesting conversation about mutual interests, such as, in this case, gardening!

Back to Pack at Home:
I stopped for a few minutes to gaze at the Thames before I walked back home to begin the final stages of my packing. It stunned me that no matter how many hours I devoted to the job, it seemed never ending. Finally, it was all done and I was able to await the arrival of my elves—Rosemary, my friend, arrived with her car, from Battersea and a little later, Chriselle’s friend, Rahul, joined us too. We began loading my boxes (about eight of them in all plus 3 large suitcases and a bureau—how on earth did I accumulate so much stuff???) at about 7 .45 pm but we were not done until after 10 pm because though I am only moving about a ten minute walk away from my current place, the one-ways and the barriers erected between buildings made the journey convoluted and cumbersome. Still, I have to say that my friends were a pair of workhorses as we loaded all my stuff into the car and then into my new digs and carried the bureau like a pair of stalwart movers! Between the three of us, we got the entire job done and then we got out in search of dinner, but not before the pair of them expressed their awe at the place into which I have moved.

Moving into my New Digs:
Indeed, my new digs have to be seen to be believed. From a tiny one-bedroomer, I have entered a sprawling loft-like apartment whose “living room”, as Rahul put is, “is larger than a football field”. My own room is cozier though and has a lovely, very spiffy attached bath. The place is tastefully furnished, crammed with medieval sculpture and modern abstract art (Andy Warhol and Maggi Hambling among a host of contemporary artists), Polynesian carvings and a whole whale vertebrae. It is a very classy place overall and I know that I will enjoy finding my way around it as I rattle around on my ownsome.

Because it was almost 10. 30 and none of us had eaten, I decided to take them out somewhere for dinner but Carluccio’s where we went first, at Smithfield Market, was closed for the evening and at Rahul’s suggestion, we drove far off towards Old Street, close to where he lives, to the heart of Vietnamese London where we finally settled down in a restaurant and ate steaming bowl of Pho, the noodle based soup. My Hot and Spicy Prawn Pho was just that—hot and spicy! Rosemary sniffed her way through her Chicken Pho while Rahul had beef with bamboo shoots and mushrooms. It was late, really late, when I returned to the flat, feeling a bit uneasy about the strangeness of my surroundings and the vast size of the rooms.

With so much unpacking to do the next morning, I decided to call it a night but not before I had a long chat with Llew on the phone. Since we hadn’t talked all day and he wanted to know how my move went, it was a long call, so that it was after midnight when I finally switched off my bedside light and hoped for a good night’s sleep.

Bonjour France Encore! To Calais and Back…then Dinner at Sofra.

May30

Saturday, May 30, 2009
Calais, France

I awoke at 6 am to check my email as I had a couple of things to do (such as shower and eat brekky) before I left my house at 7. 50 to stroll down to Theobald’s Road where I met my friend Sushil for our trip to Calais. We started punctually and were all set to hit the coast when, less than three mintues into our drive, I realized that crossing the channel meant an international journey and I had left my passport at home! Oh no!!! I uttered a cry. Sushil looked at me and said, “What?” I responded, “Oh my God…I’ll need some form of indentification, won’t I?” as if I were speaking to myself. “Your passport!” he said…and next thing I knew, we were making a U-turn and a huge detour to get back to my place (which, fortunately, was only two minutes away). I ran upstairs, pulled it out from my bag and was down and in the car again in two ticks–but, boy, was that a close shave or what!!??!!

So back on the road again, this time heading east as Sushil hoped to beat traffic, the GPS insisted on taking us over every side street instead of putting us on the motorway, but a painful half hour later, we were entering Kent and heading on to Folkeston. Yes, we were going to make it after all, we thought.

But when we arrived at the boarding dock for the Euro Tunnel, we discovered that check-in for our 10. 32 train had closed five minutes before we arrived there. No harm, no foul. We were placed on the next train at 11. 32 which gave us enough time to use the facilities and wander around the duty free area. Within 10 minutes, we were going through the ticketing and immigration formalities (ah, thank goodness it was not at that point that I realized I had no passport with me!) and then we were entering the train.

Now, I had started this journey with the mistaken notion that our car was going to be loaded on to the ferry and that I would glimpse the white cliffs of Dover again! I was SO mistaken! In fact, Sushil had tickets for the Eurotunnel train that uses the same tracks as the Eurostar (which is a passenger service while this one is exclusively for vehicles). I have never seen a train like this one and it was a very exciting and very different experience indeed. Your car enters what looks like an endless goods train. It is basically a very long stainless steel box with very small windows. There are two tiers to the train which means that smaller vehicles can be loaded on two levels. Coaches can also board the train.

In a few mintues after the train started, prompt to the last second, it disappeared underground. It was time for a nap and both Sushil and I pushed our seats back and tried to sleep. Half an hour later, we were emerging into France, driving out of the train and using the GPS to find our way to the large supermarket called Auchan where Sushil intended to do his shopping. It was then that I realized I could do some shopping too. And when I saw the prices…boy, was I amazed and delighted! The food prices were so low (compared to London ones) that I thought I was back home in the States again!

Naturally, despite the fact that I have been trying to empty my fridge and freezer in time for my move, I ended up buying a number of French gourmet goodies that I know I will enjoy in the remaining few weeks of my stay here in London: rocquefort cheese, all sorts of pate, mackerels in mustard sauce, smoked ham and even tubs of chocolate praline ice-cream! Sushil dashed around madly with a purpose, making three trips, to fill his car.

By the end of an hour, when I had browsed enough over the rest of the supermarket, we sat down to have lunch at a bistro: a typical French meal of steak-frites with a glass of Stella Artois beer (as it was far warmer in France than it was on the other side of the Channel).

And then we were doing the reverse journey: boarding our train again for the return to England, passing through immigration and arriving at Folkestone, where we drove westwards towards Sevenoaks to the home of Owen, one of Sushil’s Anglo-Indian friends, who had agreed to be interviewed by me.

Interviewing another Anglo-Indian in Farmingham, Kent:
This is probably the furthest I have traveled to interview an Anglo-Indian and Owen is probably one of the most unusual Anglo-Indians I have interviewed so far for my study. He arrived in England at the age of 16, met and married his English wife Barbara in Sussex where he grew up on a farm, completed his A levels then went on to University to gain a Bachelors and a Masters Degree in Engineering and had a brilliant career with the American Ford Motor Company that posted him all over Europe for the next forty odd years. Owen’s English grandfather was a physician in the British army in India which brought the family a great deal of prestige and privilege–privilege that allowed him to have the best education money could buy at Cathedral School in Bombay where he grew up. His daughter is also a physician (the first second-generation Anglo-Indian with whom I have become acquianted in this country who has entered the medical profession as a doctor).

With his wife of nearly thirty years, Owen lives in a charmingly decorated English country home with the most enchanting garden at the back filled with roses and hanging baskets and a bird bath! As if to blend perfectly with this image of the English idyll, Barbara brought out a typical English tea: scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam, chocolate biscuits and a large bowl of hulled strawberries and cups of English tea and there we sat in the garden enjoying this lovely afternoon meal while the birds twittered around us and the distant sounds of a race course reached our ears from over a hill that loomed high up right where their tiny garden ended.

More conversation followed about Owen’s interesting background and then we adjourned into the living room so that I could continue with the interview. Owen is expansive and voluble and tends to go off at a tangent very easily. Given that Sushil was in a hurry to get back to London, I had to reign him in frequently and bring him back to the main thrust of my questions. But I found him deeply reflective and highly articulate and he was a very interesting person to talk to. As I have said repeatedly, every single one of the Anglo-Indians I have spoken to has a different story to tell but with Owen I was definitely speaking to someone that I would describe as ‘elite’–though Owen doesn’t see himself in this guise at all.

Dinner with Tim and Barbara:
In less than an hour, we were back in Holborn with Sushil dropping me right outside my building.

My lovely neighbors Tim and Barabra had just returned from their travels in the States (Seattle and Yellowstone National Park). They received a raucous ‘Welcome Back’ hug from me and catching me in the elevator vestibule on the third floor, they asked me to join them for dinner to which they were headed. As I really wanted to spend some time with them before I left the building, I merely dashed inside my flat, left my food puchases in my freezer and fridge respectively and was off with them. En route, we stopped off at my new digs at Denmark House as I wanted Tim (who is an IT specialist) to see if he could set me up on the internet. When we arrived there, he noticed an ethernet box to which I could gain a connection and when we returned home after dinner, he gave me a really really long cable that would allow me to connect from the main desktop computer in the office there to my laptop computer in my room. I am hoping, however, that I will have wireless internet services in a day or two in the new place.

Then, off we went for dinner to Exmouth Market, off Farringdon Road, a part of London that I will now have to discover as it will become my new stomping ground. It is a lively, vibrant part of the city and was full of youngsters as there is a community center of sorts attached to the local Holy Redeemer Church (we coudd not figure out whether it is Catholic or Anglican though Barbara pointed out that it could become the church at which I will attend servcies). Of course, I have decided that tomororow, being Pentecost Sunday, I will attend service at the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields at Trafalgar Square as I have not been there for a service yet (though I have visited it and have actually attended a musical concert there, a few years ago, when my cousin’s son Sudarshan took me off to listen to Talvin Singh create fusion music that was very good indeed).

We settled down for dinner at Sofra Greek restaurant–whose Piccadilly branch I had been to a few months ago with my friend Rosemary and her friend Lizzie. There we ordered a variety of cold and hot mezzes (hummus, broad beans, imam bayildi and then chicken on wooden skewers, lamb kofte, battered squid) which was served with very tasty bread. We had started our evening with beer and ended it with desserts to share: marinated apricots stuffed with cream cheese and chopped pistachios and cherry cheese cake. Tim had a Turkish coffee which seemed to be made up entirely of a concentration of coffee grounds! Over dinner, we chatted about their most interesting travel experiences in America which, as usual, kept me laughing.

When we arrived home, they invited me to their flat to take a look at some of their pictures of Yellowstone and to see the video that Tim shoots from the most interesting angles. These he played with his TV set while Barbara showed me her shots of wild Alpine flowers and animal bones! Then the video of Old Faithful began to play and I saw the steaming hole in the ground from which boiling water periodically gushes up. What is wonderful about these videos is that you not only have the incredible sights of the geyser shooting up but you had the animated exclamations and cries of the onlookers that were more entertaining that the sight itself! I left them some of my books and asked them to keep the ones they wanted and return the rest to me–I will donate the unwanted ones to the nearest Oxfam in Bloomsbury.

Then, I was home, so heavy of heart because I would be spending my very last night in this darling flat that I have grown to love so deeply and which will always be tied in my mind with the happiest of memories. Far from being lonely here, I have been fully engaged and in this incredibly productive space, I have done SO much writing throughout this past year! Indeed, as I leave it, I know that I will be leaving a small part of my heart at High Holborn and I promise that no matter how often I return to London (as I hope to do frequently in the years to come), I will always visit this building again–as one would return to a beloved monument in a beloved city!

And on that nostalgic and very sentimental note, I dropped off to sleep.

The Amazing Roman Amphitheater in the Guildhall Art Gallery

May30

Friday, May 29, 2009
London

I am finally getting to the end of The Order of the Phoenix (which is turning out to be the most challenging book I have ever read!). After my morning laptop routine (checking email, proofreading my blog), I had my breakfast (croissants with the last of the preserves in my fridge as I am still in clear-out mode). I showered and headed off to my office at Bedford Square.

The paperwork goes on despite the fact that I am now officially done for the year. I had loads of papers to print out in connection with expense reimbursements. Next, I spent a good hour trying to get more Anglo-Indians to give me dates for interviews and succeeded with about six more. I badly need about ten more Anglo-Indians to make this research project valid, so if you are an Anglo-Indian and you are reading this blog, I need your help. Please try to get me some more folks who would be willing to speak with me in the next six weeks. I would be most obliged if you would email me and let me know where and how I could contact these people so that my study will become valid.

I had intended to spend one hour in my office but when I looked at my watch, two of them had passed! The corridors at our NYU campus are quiet, almost deserted with all our students having returned to the States. Life seems very different now on campus and the silence is somewhat deafening. I enjoyed working in my lovely basement office with the sun streaming in and watching the rest of the world (and the red buses) go by and I am pleased that I can continue to use this space all summer long.

Off to the Guildhall Art Gallery:
Then I was on the Number 8 bus headed to King Street and Cheapside where I hopped off; but not before I picked up a Meal Deal at Tesco (1 Prawn Sandwich, 1 packet of crackers plus 1 bottle of water at 2 pounds must be the cheapest deal in town!) and sat down to eat on a stone bench facing the ornate Guildhall with other office-goers and pigeons for company. As I gazed upon the Guildhall I realized how similar it is, architecturally speaking, to the guildhalls I had seen in Belgium–both in Brussels and in Bruges. It appears almost church-like but then you realize that there is no cross anywhere to denote any religious significance.

When I had finished eating, I walked into the Guildhall Art Gallery which is free to visitors every Friday. I went through security and then mounted the steps of a building that though built only in the early 1990s blends perfectly in design with the much older Guildhall in whose premises it is located. There is a certain austere grandeur about the Main Gallery which is lined with oil portraits of the Lord Mayors of London who functioned from this building before the new Thames-side one was designed and built by Sir Norman Foster–the oddly-shaped glass cone that feels as if it is collapsing on one side like a misshapen pud!

Anyway, these Lord Mayors are all dressed in their ceremonial robes which include ermine fur-lined cloaks and scepters–almost royalty! It is always great to walk through the centuries through these portraits and to see how fashion changed as time went by–the 18th century folks always distinguished by their elaborately powdered wigs,the 19th century guys with their luxuriant facial hair! There is a rather forbidding Carrara marble sculpture of Baroness Thatcher who looks for all the world like the ‘Iron Lady’ she was nicknamed. The Hall is dominated by a battle scene by John Singleton Copley entitled ‘The Deafeat of the Floating Batteries 1783-91′ featuring the Siege of Gibraltar–which is depicted in several canvasses all over the place. Among the ones I found more interesting than the others was the Diamond Jubilee celebration for Queen Victoria in 1903 in which Her Majesty, splendid in her widow’s weeds and seated in the golden carriage, arrives at the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral where the special service was conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury while all of Victoria’s “foreign’ (meaning European) relatives looked on.

When you descend to the lower floors of the Art Gallery, you come upon some really interesting art work that goes beyond portraiture. There are works by the Pre-Raphaelite School, for instance, and a particularly striking one is by Dante Gabriel Rosseti entitled La Ghirlandata painted in 1873 (of Jane Morris, wife of his friend and fellow Pre-Raphaelite William Morris, with whom he was secretly in love) and a number of really lovely oil paintings by English painters of whom I have never heard. One outstanding one entiteld The Music Lesson by Frederick, Lord Leighton (of whom I have heard, of course) portrayed womanhood in two of its most exquisite forms–through twin portraits of an extraordinarily beautiful woman and an unrealistically pretty child busy with a lute. Their clothing is ethereally Oriental and proof of the impact of the Middle East upon Leighton’s imagination. (I feel sorry that his home in the heart of London is under renovation and will be closed until October of this year. I shall have to visit it on a future encounter with this city!). The gallery is beautifully laid out with most of it constructed underground, so that you descend lower and lower into its depths as you progress into the 20th century. There are also some abstract works in the Modern section.

Making the Acquaintance of Trevor Chamberlaine:
Then, I found myself in a section of the museum where I made the acquaintance of a contemporary British artist of whom I never knew before–Trevor Chamberlaine. He has a retrospective special exhibition going on right now entitled ‘London and Beyond’ and it was quite the most heavenly part of my day. Considering that I have spent the best part of the last year combing every last secret corner of the city and traveling widely all over Europe, this exhibition seemed like the cherry on my sundae (and I said in the Visitors Book). Indeed, Chamberlaine’s unique talent has captured London in its many moods (yes, including times when it is shrouded by mist and sprayed by rain) from ‘Shopping on Old Brompton Road’ (in oils) to ‘Thames Towpath at Richmond’ (in watercolors). Having been to almost all these places, having personally treaded upon the cobbled stones of all these streets, having traversed her riverways and looked upon her infinite variety from a number of perspectives, I was in Paradise as I walked through this Must See exhibition. If you love London at all, if you relate instantly and warmly to realistic depictions of spaces, if you like your art plain, uncomplicated and immediately comprehensible, this exhibition is for you. All I can wish is that I had enough money to take home a little piece of Chamberlaine’s work with me to the States to always remind me of the most marvelous year I have had here.

And it is not just London or other parts of the UK that Chamberlaine has presenged. Indeed, in five rooms, he has taken us on a tour of the world, his subjects ranging from the bazaars of Old Tehran, Iran, to the smaller villages of Armenia; from the Ganges and her ghats at Udaipur to the curlicued wooden buildings of Prague and Krakow. While waterscapes are definitely his forte (and there are many beaches, lakes, ponds, even fountains), Chamberlaine’s perspective encompasses the globe and his curious mind is captured by people in a variety of garb (from burquas and colorful saris to pin striped suits). Get to this exhibition really quickly and take home a clutch of images that will always remain in your heart as I know they will remain in mine.

London’s Recently-Discovered Roman Amphitheater:
So I thought I was going to see some paintings themed around the administration of the city of London. Imagine my shock when I found myself entering the archeological remains of what was London’s long suspected Roman amphitheater–discovered only when the foundation for the Guildhall Art Gallery was being dug! Helllloooo!!!! I mean just imagine the excitement that might have ensued at the time (the early 1990s). A Roman amphitheater in the heart of London! Who Knew???? Here they are imagining they are in the process of building a new art gallery for our times when suddenly they come upon the sand and stones of two millennia ago–with so much of the original circular wall still standing. I bet they were stunned!

So to understand how significant this find is one ought to remember that the Romans conquered England in 43 AD and called their settlement on the rainy island Londinium. By 47 AD, they had established a base here and by 70 AD they had built an amphitheater exactly like the ones that are still standing in Rome (the Coliseum) and Arles (France) and Verona! It was long suspected that Londinium would have had an arena used for gladiatorial combat but nobody knew where this once was located! So this find, I would imagine, would be one of the most significant archaeological digs of the last century in London!

At any rate, the space is now fully protected by CCTV and there are dire warning everywhere that you are not to pick up a pebble if you do not wish to risk prosecution! As you walk deeper into the arena, sound effects automatically emerge (from sensors that detect your presence) and you are transported to an amphitheater complete with blood-thirsty thousands cheering on the gladiators (who, might very likely, have been battling wild animals given the Romans’ penchant for violent ‘sport’). For me, this is such a good example of the manner in which London reveals itself to me wondrously, one layer at a time, so that I often feel as if I am peeling away at the insides of an onion.

Success at the Post Office–At last!
I made it back to the Holborn Post Office at exactly 3 pm (having had Becky make me a few address labels in the morning) to attend to my boxes of books that were still sitting in their premises waiting for my arrival and the labels of which they had run out yesterday. Once again, the same Scots clerk (I LOVE her accent) helped me with the transaction which took all of half an hour!!! Can you imagine? I had to handwrite each address label (though I had fixed printed ones) and Customs declarations forms and then it was done–all 168 pounds of books and printed matter were sent back home to Southport, Connecticut, a total of 30 kilos. I have a lot of files which I have retained as my research will continue in my new flat when I shall spend a lot of time at the British Library (probably accumulating a lot more paper–darn!!!)

Back home, I tried to finish up all my packing as I am taking a joy ride to Calais, France, tomorrow, with my friend Sushil who is making a ferry crossing for some sizeable purchases in France. He has asked me to accompany him and so here finally is my chance to see the white cliffs of Dover once again, up close and personal. I had last seen them about 12 years ago when Llew and I had crossed the English Channel by ferry en route to Normandy where we had spent time with our friends there.

I am amazed at how much stuff I have accumulated in one year. I mean it is just never-ending. The boxes keep filling, my suitcases (all three of them) are full and I am wondering how I could possibly have accomplished this move if it were not for Chriselle’s friend Rahul who will be arriving at 7 pm tomorrow directly from a trip to Amsterdam to help me out and my friend Rosemary who will be lending me the services of her car!!! I mean, how could I possibly have done this? Truly, I have to be so grateful for all the help that has come pouring my way in the past year and I marvel, once more, at the hand of God that works in the strangest of ways. I mean I made contact with Rahul only two weeks ago when Chriselle was here and now I am relying on him to help me move!!!

I was really ready to do nothing more than write (my May newsletter) by the end of the evening and though I went into bed by 10 pm, I did not sleep until nearly midnight as I was still at work on my laptop writing away until the day ended.

Jubilee Walk Complete At Last!

May28

Wednesday, May 28, 2009
London

With only five days to go before I move out of this Holborn flat, the countdown has begun. I spent most of my day packing. In the morning, I made good headway with The Order of the Phoenix (still determined to finish it in the next couple of days!), then proofread my blog. I ate my cereal breakfast while watching TV and then started the arduous task of sorting through all my papers and files with the aim of getting rid of a lot of paper to reduce my moving loads.

It was while I was chatting on the phone with Llew that Robert from the real estate agency walked in with a prospective new tenant, a Chinese undergraduate student. They took a look at the place while I apologized for the mess as there are boxes in every room. However, they were out rather quickly and I was able to return to my packing.

When I was satisfied that I had done enough, I decided to eat an early lunch, then go out and enjoy the lovely day–indeed it was warmer than I can remember and I felt as if I were in Southport in the middle of summer! I grabbed a copy of my Jubilee Walk map and off I went intending to mail out the books I had packed yesterday later in the afternoon.

Because I had to return a book to the Holborn Public Library, I went past Gray’s Inn today instead of taking Gray’s Inn Road as I normally do. The wine pink roses are in full bloom in the gardens surrounding the sculpted figure in the first quadrangle and I couldn’t resist taking pictures because with my charger back in my possession, I can now take photos again. It was when I crossed a passage at the left of the quadrangle, that I saw the spacious Gray’s Inn Gardens and I realized immediately that I had seen this place before, a few years ago, when I had begun my walking tour of Legal London. I had not been able to enter the gardens then as the large wrought iron gates were locked; but today, I could enter at my leisure and spend a while sauntering through the lovely flower beds along with the large number of office-goers who were munching their sandwich lunches on the benches and the lawns. How lovely it is to know that I have these gardens only a few steps away from my home! All this time, living here on High Holborn, I did not know that these gardens existed or that they were so close to my building! Of course, I had to make the discovery just five days before I move out!!!

Once I gave my book in, I walked to Holborn Tube Station from where I began the last bit of the Jubilee Walk–Part 7. Considering that the entire walk is 14 miles long, I walked an average of 2 miles in each installment. The walk today took me into Great Queen Street past the massive Freemason’s Lodge and on to Drury Lane. From there, it was just a hop across into Covent Garden where I found a food market in full swing–of course, I could not resist enjoying a few ‘tasters’–there were all kinds of savory dips and oils and spreads and full scale lunches that could be had for the asking. Having eaten my lunch, however, I only had room for a few nibbles but the majority of them were delicious.

And then on I went along King Street to the Royal Opera House and the side street that leads on to St. Martin’s Lane and then Charing Cross Lane. From there, it was only a few steps to the Half Price Theater Tickets Booth at Leicester Square where I had begun the Jubilee Walk a few weeks ago. Interestingly, the film at the Odeon Theater had changed–it now showed Angels and Demons. I decided to take a different route home and walked along The Strand pausing frequently to window shop before I found my way back to my building.

I have to say that I’ve had the best time on the Jubilee Walk. It became a mission to spot those silver disks set in the pavements and though I never did find the lone golden one that is somewhere in the East End, I was pleased that I had traversed some of London’s most beloved routes and seen some of her most recognizable monuments on this quest. There is one more item can can now tick off on my List of Things to Do in London!

Disappointment at the Post Office:
Then, with the help of Arben, my concierge, who brought me a dolly, I carted my five boxes off to the Holborn Post Office in the Ryman’s stationary shop in my building. The lady who informed me about Global Priority Mail for books and printed matter helped me again today but discovered, to her embarrassment, that she did not have enough labels to affix to my packages! She told me to return again tomorrow when she will ensure that she gets more labels. I returned home with my task unfinished and another item that I will have to complete tomorrow!

Back home, it was packing time again–this time all my closet items went into the largest and roomiest of my suitcases. When almost everything was finished, the doorbell rang. It was Elizabeth from the real estate agency who had called around to find out if all was going well with my move and if there was anything that required her attention. It was nice to meet her finally after the year-long correspondence we have had via email. She did not stay long–just wanted to ensure that I had no outstanding bills and wondered if I would care to give her a forwarding address.

After she left, I felt downcast again–those withdrawal symptoms manifesting themselves rather strongly. I sat down to have an early dinner and watched some TV still disappointed to know that there are a lot of things that have yet to be boxed.

Still, as Scarlett O’Hara put it, “Tomorrow is another day…”

St. Bart’s Hospital Museum and Some More Packing

May27

Wednesday, May 27, 2009
London

I did all kinds of everything today–as the old song goes. Awoke at 6 .oo and continued reading The Order of the Phoenix–My God!–that book is just endless!

Checked my email and continued writing by blog–as I had left it half done last night being just too exhausted. Time flies, doesn’t it, and between eating my cereal breakfast and watching a bit of Breakfast TV, it was time for me to get outdoors to meet Margaret from St. Bartholomew’s for the insider’s view, she had promised me, of the Hogarth Staircase leading to the Main Hall of the Hospital at Smithfield.

A Secret Revealed–Hogarth’s Staircase:
Margaret was waiting for me at 10.00 am outside the church as we had planned. It was drizzling today and very breezy indeed and the temps had plunged a good few degrees lower than the last few days. My umbrella was useless against the wind and I quite gave up drying to stay dry as I was clearly fighting a losing battle against Nature.

So I was grateful when she led me to the Main Hall that skirts the lovely quadrangle around which the hospital is built (of what I now easily recognize as white Portland stone). And what a treat awaited me as soon as she pushed back the heavy door. There, overwhelming me by its magnificent presence, were the walls running alongside a wide staircase that was completely covered right up to the ceiling in a life-size painting. In fact, there were two of them–one on each wall. One featured ‘The Good Samaritan’, the other ‘Jesus healing the Lame at the Pool of Bethesda’. As in all Hogarth’s portrait’s the faces are alight with expressiveness. The background landscapes were painted by George Lambert who specialized in painting theaters sets for Covent Garden shows.

There is a wonderful story behind the paintings that is worthy of being recounted. When the Governors of the Hospital wished to create a fitting entry hall to serve as access to the Main Hall above, they sought the services of an Italian painter. Hogarth who had made a reputable name for himself as a painter of portraits was so outraged that she wrote to the Board offering his services for free. The offer was accepted and Hogarth set to work creating murals that were completely different from the socially satirical ones in which he had specialized (his Rake’s Progress series, for instance, adorns the inner secret chamber of Sir John Soanes’ Museum). The governors were delighted. The sick persons featured in the second mural were actually based on patients at the hospital.

There is also a great deal of incidental ceiling and border adornment around the walls for which, Hogarth, of course, is not responsible. But the fact that so stunning a piece of work remains virtually unknown to London’s visitors is amazing to me and I felt privileged to have a look at it.

A Medical Museum–St. Bart’s Hospital Museum:
On our way out, we passed by the Museum of St. Bart’s (for St. Bartholomew’s has, for long, gone by this nickname). Margaret suggested I visit it and since entrance was free, I went for it. And then, I was just blown by what I saw. I mean this is what never fails to astonish me about London. Apart from the nationally known and state sponsored musuems which every tourist sees, around every street corner there is some tiny, practically unknown museum whose entry is free and which is almost never visited by anyone. And yet, the contents of these museums are just breath taking. Not only are they extremely well run and well maintained, but they have collections that are the stuff of which fantasy is made. Yesterday, I was at the Bank of England Museum and today, I stumbled across this one at St. Bart’s. Surprisingly, no guide book had mentioned it and while such a great deal is made about the Church of St. Bartholomew the Great and its literary associations (with Ben Jonson’s play Bartholomew Fair, for instance), this lovely little place has gone completely unsung.

So imagine how much the literature buff in me was thrilled by the knowledge that it was in the quadrangle of this hospital that the fictional Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s story A Study in Scarlet met the fictional John Watson and uttered to him the famous line, “You have just returned from Afghanistan, I perceive?”–much to Watson’s amazement. Holmes, it turns out, was associated with this hospital, probably as an assistant in the chemistry labs though he had started his career as a medical student. Naturally, there is a paperback copy of the book with this sentence underlined and turned to the page on which it appears.

For the next one hour, I took myself on a tour of a space that was totally fascinating, even though I have to say that medicine is not quite my cup of tea. However, History is. And in this hospital that has a history that goes back 9 centuries when it was founded by the monk Rahere, there is a great deal of it. I saw grants and charters for instance with the sealing wax dating from the time of the Tudors for it was Henry VIII who granted the hospital the charter that allowed it to bring succour to the poor and the suffering. I saw loads of ancient documents hand written with quills on parchment. I learned that the earliest ‘doctors’ and nurses’ were monks and nuns in convents (the use of the word ‘sister’ for a nurse derives from the fact that the earliest nurses were Benedictine nuns). I saw 16th century devices used for such treatments as cupping and drilling holes in human skulls and 18th and 19th century amputation kits that included saws! Needless to say, my knees often went weak at the sight of these operations. I discovered that the first female doctor graduated from medical school in 1841 but following protests from her male counterparts, women were not allowed into medical school until well into the mid-20th century! I learned about the history of nursing–a profession that in the Victorian Age attracted women from the lowest classes because the work expected from them was mainly menial. It was only the efforts of the suffragettes that led to the establishment of nursing as a trained profession requiring many years of study.

I found the entire visit worthwhile and will recommend it to my physician friends. Anyone associated with the healing and curing of human beings will find this place a treasure trove of fascinating material.

I returned home to continue with my packing and I am happy to say that I am slowly getting there. I did not realize how time consuming it would be to pack my London life away and move it along! Fortunately, I have given myself ample time to accomplish this, so I am not stressed by the endeavor.

Lunch with Rosemary:
At 12. 50, I took the Tube to get to Goodge Street to meet my friend Rosemary who had made plans to meet me for lunch at 1. 20 pm. at a place rather picturesquely named the Squat and Gobble at the corner of Tottenham Street and Charlotte Street. I was seeing Rosemary after ages–what with all my travels and her recent one to India and last week to Yorkshire, we simply hadn’t connected. Rosemary and I had a quiche and salad (both of which were really yummy–I have to say that I am still amazed at how far British food has come) and just chatted away nineteen to the dozen about all the goings-on in our respective families.

Rosemary has kindly offered to help me move on Sunday by bringing her car over. This is a real God sent. I discussed with her the saga of trying to find someone to ship my bureau-desk to the States and her sane response was that if nothing happens until Sunday, she can just move it in her car and I can keep looking for a way to get it to Acton after Sunday. I was just so hoping I would manage to move it directly from my place at Holborn instead of lugging it to Farringdon and having to move it from there.

On Campus Again:
After lunch, I walked to NYU’s campus at Beford Square and discovered some more interesting historic information along the way. Lady Ottoline Morell (the renowned patron of poets such as W.B. Yeats) lived not even a few meters from the entrance to our campus on Gower Street–and right across the road was a plaque that announced that the pre-Raphaelite Movement was founded in this house! I mean just think about it: two of the most influential literary and artistic aspects of 20th century life (one a person, the other a movement) are sitting cheek by jowl on the same street just a few feet away from where I stomped all year round. Talk about the history that lies embedded in the paving stones of Bloomsbury! It really does stop me in my tracks–quite literally!

I did not realize that I would spend as much time as I did on campus–between handing in grade breakdowns, clearing up my office and packing things away, making calls for more interviews with Anglo-Indian subjects (as well as one call to my father’s cousin in Putney whom I had last seen 22 years ago), three hours passed. Then, it was time to get back home and continue packing and finally deciding which books and files and notes I will retaim and which I will discard. I have a load of books to give away and one of my NYU English colleagues told me that the Oxfam at Bloomsbury takes donations. I will probably have to take a cartload off to them.

I also made a call to Genevieve to thank her for my camera charger which arrived in the mail today. This gave me a chance to joke with her adorable boys–Louis, whom I have nicknamed the Macho Man and little Amaury. It was great fun chatting with them in French again!

After a shower and dinner, it was time for me to write this blog, then spend a while with Potter and his friends before going off to bed.

Packing & Posting, An Organ Recital and the Bank of England Museum

May26

Tuesday, May 26, 2009
London

Life returned to legal London this morning as Holborn sprang up like a phoenix from the ashes of the long holiday weekend. As folks rushed in and out of the Tube stairwell to the closest coffee shop or their electronic offices, I continued reading The Order of the Phoenix, then went to my kitchen to do some cooking. I pulled out all the items from my freezer and the vegetables I bought last evening, and concocted two pasta dishes: with Ham, Asparagus and Peas and with Peppers, Mushrooms, Tomatoes and Prawns. With the addition of my home made chicken stock and single cream, they both turned out rather well. I filled them into my Tupperware containers in small lots (the better to freeze them with) and then turned to the serious business of getting packed.

I spent simply ages on the phone trying in vain to find out how my vintage desk could most economically be shipped to the States. I had very little success as both Fedex and UPS informed me that they simply do not have boxes large enough to accommodate my bureau. While they are willing to pick up from my residence, they needed me to do the packing.

Finally, at the advice of Matt, the dealer who sold me the desk in Hampstead, I zeroed in on Hedley Humpers, a company that specializes in shipping antiques around the world. They gave me a quote that hit the roof but they will deliver right to my doorstep in Connecticut, they will create a special wooden crate made to measure for my bureau-desk and they will take care of the packing so that I need not worry at all about breakage. It seemed like a good deal and I have to now figure out how to get the bureau to their warehouse in Acton as that will save me a hundred quid!

Martha arrived on duty this morning and brought me a load of boxes in different sizes. With Arben’s help, I was able to figure out the exact dimensions of my purchase. In the midst of the growing load of boxes that are rapidly filling with my books, I rushed off at 12. 15 to take the bus to the Church of St. Lawrence Jewry, near the Guildhall for one of their 1.00 pm Tuesday afternoon organ concerts.

St. Lawrence, Jewry, Church:
It didn’t take me long to get there at all. A quick canter from the bus stop to the Church got me inside a magnificent Anglican Church that has been around on this spot since the 1100s. Named for the martyr who was tortured over an iron grill, the second part of the Church’s name derives from the fact that it is located in a part of London that was once the heart of the Jewish ghetto (that is before all Jews were driven out of the city by Edward I).

The church was destroyed completely during the Great Fire of London in 1666 when Christopher Wren redesigned it. Worship continued in the church until the mid-1940s when it was, once again, almost entirely gutted by the blitz. Reconstruction using Wren’s original plans then began but the church no longer functions as a parish. Instead it is a guild church of the Corporation of London and there is a special seat in the very front reserved for the exclusive use of the Lord Mayor of London. Go for it Boris!

A large number of people had already taken their seats and awaited the beginning of the recital. I had the time to inspect the more significant details of the church such as its sparkling ceiling with elaborate gilded plasterwork, the splendid carved oak screen (the work and design originally being undertake by Grindling Gibbons, of course), the reredos with its smallish painting and the marble baptismal font at the back that dates from the 1540s. The spanking new stained glass windows (made in the 1950s) feature a number of saints from the Christian pantheon while at the back, there is a very evocative window that memorializes the work of Wren and Gibbons. The pews are also quite wonderfully carved and I was very pleased to find an opportunity to see the interior of this church as the concerts are the only occasions on which it is opened to the public.

The Organ Recital:
A large number of London churches hold free lunch-time concert recitals and they are a very good way by which to get into these historical venues. At the Church of St. Lawrence Jewry, the concerts are named in memory of one John Hill who played this church organ at all services while spending 40 years of his life as a banker at HSBC. Following his death, the bank offered sponsorshop for these recitals which bring young international organists to London as Hill was always keen to introduce new talent to the public. The concerts held on Tuesdays in May and June have attracted a large number of organ enthusiasts and sitting right behind me was Steven Green, Group Chairman of HSBC Holdings.

Mareile Schmidt was the featured organist today. She was a tall, very slender woman with a lovely smile. She currently teaches music in Koln, Germany, and it was with a heavy but very charming German accent that she introduced her program–ingeniously it was themed around the Biblical line: “And the Spirit of God moved on the surface of the Waters”. Hence, all her pieces had water connection. She chose compositions by Handel and Bach and lesser-known composers such as Louis Vierne, Jeanne Demessieux and Olivier Messiaen whose atonal work was very reminiscent of the compositions of Phillip Glass–not surprisingly, he is a Modernist.

The concert lasted 45 minutes and was a very enjoyable experience for me as this is the first time ever I have attended an organ recital. Apart from hearing the instrument played in church during servcies, I have never heard it played purely for listening pleasure and I have to say it was a lot of fun.

When it ended, I had a chance to inspect the interior features of the church and its architecture and then made my way out towards the Guildhall Art Gallery which lies in the same complex. Only I discovered that though I thought I lived within the old ‘City of London’, my taxes are paid to Camden–and, as such, I wasn’t allowed free entry. The clerk told me to return on Fridays when entry is free to all.

The Bank of England Museum:
Since I was so close to the Bank of England, I decided it would be a good time to take a look at its museum–besides, I had always wanted to set foot inside the bank. Only, I made a funny discovery! The building that I had long thought was the Bank of England building wasn’t so it all–it was the Royal Exchange Building now filled with luxury stores such as Loro Piana (who sell beautiful cashmere stoles, Hermes whose silk scarves I covet and, as I found out for the first time, Jo Malone whose cosmetics and fragrances are my passion!). I had to spend some time browsing through this marvelous space before I crossed the street.

Sir John Soanes’ Bank of England building lies catty corner to the Neo-Classical grandeur of the Royal Exchange Building on her own little island. I haver to say that it looks more like a fortress than a bank–which I guess is what it is when you consider all the gold bullion stashed in the vault way down in the bowels of the earth beneath the bank’s foundation.

I found the entrance to the museum easily enough, discovered that it was free, and then spent the next couple of hours wrapped up in the process of learning all about the history of banking in England. It was in 1694, for instance, that the Bank of England came into existence through the goldsmiths, who had, until that time, made extensive loans to merchants and the Crown. You can see them in their black top hats and cloaks looking for all the world like a bunch of Flemish aristocrats, in the many early paintings in the museum–this is not surprisingly as it was among the Dutch that banking first originated. These goldsmith’s notes, originally receipts for coin deposits, circulated freely as a form of paper money (because they carried the words “or bearer” on them meaning that they could be passed on from one person to the next). This is why paper money is also referred to as a “note”! These indeed became the forerunners of the banknotes we use today. I found this early information fascinating.

As I walked through the history of the bank, I found out about the sorting and destroying of soiled or defaced notes (something I once did personally in the Cash Department of the Reserve Bank of India in Bombay where I had worked while pursuing graduate studies). I saw the powdery remains of destroyed notes–grey-green confetti–in a glass case. I saw an early chest, dating from 1700, a forerunner of the modern-day bank vault. I saw the Bank’s silver and, perhaps most fascinatingly of all, I saw a bar of gold bullion weighing 13 kilograms (which, I discovered is 2 stone–so now I finally know that 1 stone is 7 kilograms or 14 dd pounds. The English still funnily enough weigh themselves in stone and I have always wodnered what to make of this measure of weight!). It was so heavy that I barely managed to lift it up. Yes, you could actually handle this gold bar–imagine how awed kids must feel in this space!

I understood what is meant by the Gold Standard which was adopted in Great Britain in 1816. It formally linked the value of a pound sterling to a fixed quantity of gold and a new coin, called the sovereign (because it featrued the head of the monarch on it) was circulated the following year. This gold standard played a key role in international trade throughout the 19th century and was finally abandoned in 1931.

Of course, a lover of literature and literary history like myself will usually find some gem in every museum that most takes her fancy and the Bank of England’s Museum was no exception. I made the startling discovery here that Kenneth Grahame who started his career in the bank as a humble junior clerk made his way up the ladder and in 20 years (at the age of 39) became its Secretary. It was while he worked in the bank (just like T.S. Eliot worked in a bank while writing poetry!) that he wrote his books, the most famous of which is, The Wind in the Willows, one of my most beloved of story books as a child. There is a whole section devoted to Grahame which includes a signed first edition of the book (Llew would have loved that) as well as correspondence between him and key figures of the bank. It was with some sadness that I learned that he resigned rather suddenly (his letter of resignation is on display) and though he cited failing health and nerves as the reason for his decision to do so, the real reason was that he was bullied by one of the bank’s Directors, one Walter Cunliff whose full sized portrait in oil hangs on a wall in the lovely Rotunda, perhaps Soanes’ best interior feature in the building with its beautiful caryatids (sculpted Greek goddesses) that encircle it.

I also realized that there is so much similarity in the bureaucratic hierarchy of the Bank of England and the Reserve Bank of India. The head of both banks, for instance, is known as the Governor, and both boast a Board of Directors–they are called Executive Directors in India. Again, I suppose this should not have surprisied me considering that we inherited a system of banking from the British together with those of jurisprudence and education, post and telegraphs, railways, customs and excise, army and police.

A cartoon explains where and how the bank received her nickname–The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. It came from a cartoon that appeared in a contemporary newspaper that satirized William Pitt The Younger’s liberal war-time spending that requried him to dig deeper and deeper into the pockets of an ageing old lady. The cartoon is on display in the museum together with life size caricatures of Pitt and his arch opponent Charles Fox who debated with him endlessly in the House of Commons on the sagacity of the incurring of so much national debt.

There are scores and scores of bank notes and coins in ther museum, each set portraying the heads of the monarchs under whom they were minted. In the adjoining shop, you can purchase sets of coins (they make valued christening gifts) and all sorts of items connected with banking, including a lovely set of old fashioned nib pens that I loved. The place was crawling with kids who found something or the other to catch their fancy and there were so many excited exclamations all around me as I surveyed the exhibits. It is truly an interesting place to visit and I would strongly urge anyone even remotely associated with banking to visit this museum. Many thanks to the anonymous reader of this blog who drew my attention to this museum and recommended that I visit it. I am very grateful indeed.

Packing and Posting Nightmares:
Then, I was back home, worrying about all the packing I had to do and books I had to ship out. On impusle,I decided to go down to the Post Office which is just six shops away from the entrance of my buuilding, with one of my 5 kg. boxes to find out how much it would cost me to mail it to the States using their Special Rate for books and printed paper. The line at this Post Office is always long and it took me about fifteen minutes to get to the counter, when I discovered, to my utter horror, that it would cost me 45 pounds per box! Can you imagine? I doubled checked with the clerk that it was the Special Rate she was quoting and when she said yes, I beat a hasty retreat out of there thinking that I really ought to be far mroe choosey about which books I will mail–especially if I want to have enough of my shipping alloowance leftover to mail the desk I bought.

Well, I returned home when it occured to me that perhaps there is a better rate for sea mail (or what is called Surface mail in this coutnry). I tried to find the information online through the Royal Mail website but did not succeed, so back I went to the Post Office, I stood in the queue for another 15 mintues and discovered, from the same clerk, that there is such a thing as Priority Mail which will allow me to ship a maximum of 30 kgs of books and printed material for 168 pounds in one lot. That makes it a little cheaper and I decided to go for that. I will now have to reopen my boxes and become far more judicious about which books I will take back with me and which ones I will leave behind.

Surveying my New Digs:
I merely had the time for a shower before I had to set off again, this time to keep my appointment with Jack who was going to hand over the keys to me of the new place into which I will be moving at the weekend. He was waiting for me outside the gate and we spent the next hour in the flat as I learned the ropes–which keys go where, how kitchen applicances worked, how to turn the boiler on and off, how to work the remote controls on the TV and the DVD player and the blinds, how to log on to the wireless internet (did not succeed there as I need to make some adjustment on my computer which baffled both of us). I think I have all the information now under my hat and much as I am sorry to leave this cozy little one-bedroom flat, I am excited to be moving into a penthouse that is filled with modern art and medieval antiquities. Indeed, there is a Maggi Hambling oil painting right above my bed–a rather strange portrait of someone surrounded by a cloud of smoke that emanates from his own cigarette!!! The canvas is three-dimensional–there is a pack of cigarettes attached to it with the legend Smokers Die Younger very prominently displayed on it. I became acquainted with the work of Maggi Hambling at the National Portrait Gallery where her self-portrait, done in her funky signature style, presents her with a signature cigarette dangling from her fingers. This space is Huge, my apartment being the only flat on the entire floor, and I can’t imagine myself rattling around on my own in it. But, like everything else, I suppose I will get accustomed to it slowly.

Back home, I felt really tired again (I am certain these are withdrawal symptoms) as I have rarely felt depleted of energy. I ate my pasta dinner, sent out a few urgent email responses, then got into bed and went straight to sleep.

Bloomsbury on Jubilee Walk (Part 6) and Dinner with Friends

May25

Monday, May 25, 2009
London

Holborn was lifeless as May Bank Holiday Monday dawned. I stayed in bed for a long while catching up with The Order of the Phoenix as I am determined to finish it by the end of this month. The trouble with books that weigh a ton, as the later Potter books do, is that they are not mobile–I simply don’t want to carry them around with me anywhere–which means I only read them at home by my bedside. This is why it is taking me forever to finish this one. My blog and my email kept me busy for the next hour and it was only much later, which Holborn continued to remain stubbornly silent, that I ate my cereal breakfast while watching the last bits of The Breakfast Show.

Needless to say, I finally had to get down to the sad task of beginning my packing. I felt oddly lethargic–a clear sign that Withdrawal Symptoms are beginning to manifest themselves at the thought that I will have to leave from her at the end of this week. It was with deep reluctance that I packed up all the clothes I do not believe I will need for the next two months and put them into one of my suitcases. I probably will not need to open this one at all. With my wardrobe pruned down to the barest minimum, my clooset now looks very empty indeed.

Packing up my kitchen things was a lot more challenging. Checking my freezer to find out how best to clear it up, I discovered two lots of plain cooked wholewheat pasta and I realized that I will need to shop for some ingredients so that I can cook them tomorrow and take some cooked food off with me to my new place which I can then place in the freezer there, I hope. I am also emptying out my fridge…so but for milk and my preserves, there is not much else left in there.

I badly need boxes to clear up the rest of my stuff–stationary items, my costume jewelery, loads and loads of paper (how DO we accumulate so much of that stuff?) and a few books that I will need for the months of June and July. Martha and Arben are off today, so I must catch them tomorrow as Martha has promised me some boxes. I am weighing all my books and files as I place them in the boxes I do have with me as the guy at Royal Mail informed me that there is a special rate for books and printed material packed in boxes that are no longer than 60 cms, no more than 90 cms overall and that weigh no more than 5 kgs each (I am making mental conversions all the time as my America digital bathroom weighing scale is marked in pounds and ounces!).

After lunch (pasta with vegetables and a cup of soup–still trying to finish supplies in my pantry), I decided to read some more Potter and felt more lethargic. Before I knew it, my eyes had closed and I was taking a nap–something I haven’t done in ALL these months! (more Withdrawal Symptoms, I guess). Luckily, I awoke within the hour and decided to go out and continue my Jubilee Walk Adventures–Part 6 of them.

Jubilee Walk Adventures–Part 6:
This bit took me through my own backyard, so to speak, as I began at next-door Brownlow Street which, I discovered is no wider than an alley and into a most delightful street called Bedford Row. This one is lined on both sides with typical London Georgian terraced housing and on this delightful spring afternoon, with the flowers from the tress that line it having shed their white petals all along the footpaths, it looked absolutely heavenly. There was a spring in my step as I pranced along and made another discovery–Bedford Street ended on the Theobalds Road side just opposite my friend Sushil’s building–and I would be seeing him in the evening! So, in other works, I found another way to get to his place instead of walking along Gray’s Inn Road. I just love it when I make these sudden discoveries!

I pressed along Great James Street and arrived at a Blue Plaque that announced the residence of detective story writer Dorothy Sayers whose mysteries starring her creations Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, I have enjoyed a great deal on DVD through my Westport Public Library. Sayers had an extraordinary life for a woman of her time and her personal life was fraught with the keeping of a secret–a terrible one in those days (the early 20th century)–of the hiding away of her illegitimate son. Though she did go on to marry, she never openly acknowledged the existence of her biological son (her only child) though she did have a close correspondence with him and made him the sole beneficiary of her estate in her will.

Born to a clergyman father at Christ Church College, Oxford, and to a mother who was rather advanced in years when Dorothy was born, meant that while she was able to study modern languages at Oxford and graduated with an MA (becoming one of the first women to receive the degree through Somerville College), she was also terrified of what her personal scandal would do to them. They died never knowing that she had given them a grand child! Her child was, for all intents and purposes, given up for adoption, his true parentage never made known to her closest family members. It is astounding to me that while carrying this enormous burden she was such a prolific writer and produced some of the earliest womens’ detective fiction of our time. To be able to stand on the very street on which Sayers spent so many creative years of her life and to know that she was married at the Holborn Civil Court just a few meters away (because her husband was a divorcee with two children and, therefore, could not marry in church) was oddly inspring to me and I discovered even more bounce in my step as I continued the walk.

How amazed I was to discover that I had actually walked parallel to Gray’s Inn Road all the while and was soon at the huge red brick facade of St. Pancras Station on Euston Road! And there just a few steps ahead was the British Library. Of course, everything was closed today, but there were much activity on the streets as I spied so many other visitors taking self-guided walks–the various books and maps they have in their hands and the manner in which they gaze up in wonder at buildings to take in architectural details always give them away!

Back through the maze of tree-shaded streets I went, arriving at lovely squares and flower-filled gardens such as Cartwright Gardens and Argyle Square and then I was passing by the Coram Fields Foundling Home Gardens (which adults can only enter in the company of child!–a lovely reversal of regulations) and then Brunswick Square and Gardens where so many folks lay sprawling on the grass taking late-afternoon naps or propping themsevles against tree trunks to read. I thought I really ought to be doing that too–making the most of this glorious spring sunshine by whiling away some time in the city’s gardens reading. I will never stop admiring the ingeniousness of the architectural concepts that led to the creation of these marvelous Georgian squares and gardens that pepper the city of London so liberally and give it such a distinct ambience. The only American city I know that comes close to this in structure and development is Savannah, Georgia, where architect James Orglethorpe created a city in which stately homes and gardens were built to surround a number of squares that allowed more greenery to flourish.

Before arriving at St. Pancras Station, I had passed by a really massive church–the Parish Church of St. Pancras–that has Egyptian caryatids as part of its exterior design , exactly like the ones to be found on the Erectheium near the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens. I discovered that Sunday Communion Services are held at this church at 10 am and I shall try to make every attempt to attend a service here sometime.

It was not long before I was leaving Euston Road behind me to walk down Gordon Square where I passed building after building belonging to the University of London (and which reminded me so much of the vast number of New York University buildings that have taken over Greenwich Village in Manhattan) and arrived at the other end where I found the most beautiful honey-toned Gothic Church. However, I could not find its entrance so I do not know its name. But curiosity did get the better of me and I promised myself I shall look it up on the net. Set in a quiet and very pretty square called Byng Square, I had begun to suspect that this church was in the vicinity that Virginia Woolf and other members of the Bloomsbury Group had once called home. In fact, the name Gordon Square began to ring a bell in my mind and I became determined to explore the houses set around the typical green lawn surrounded by wrought iron railings where I spied it: a dark brown plaque at No. 50 that announced that it was in this home and in the srruounding houses that the members of the Bloomsbury Group had lived in the early part of the 20th century. In fact, just besides this house, on the right was a Blue Plaque announcing the residence of Lytton Stratchey (I do love the film Carrington in which his asexual relationship with the artist Dora Carrington, played by Emma Thompson, is beautifully retold) and on the left hand side is a Blue Plaue announcing the residence of economist John Maynard Keynes. Even if I were to live in London for a decade, I would not tire of these facts upon which I stumble so suddenly as I take my walks through the richness of its literary history.

Then, I was skirting the Woborn Gardens directly behind the Birkbeck College building in which I held my afternoon classes all through the year. Cutting through the back of SOAS and the British Museum, I then decided to end my walk and get back home, past the large Sainsbury at Holborn from where I bought fresh vegetables and some cream for the pasta I will fix tomorrow.

Dinner with Sushil and his friends:
And then I was home, getting into the shower and dressed for my evening rendez-vous with some new friends that my friend Sushil had organized. He had sent me an email while I was in Lyon inviting me to dinner at Ciao Bella Restaurant on Lamb’s Conduit Street after drinks at his place at 6.30 pm. So off I went, walking through the Bedford Street shortcut I discovered this morning.

At Sushil’s place, I met Owen who happened to be an Anglo-Indian and a very worthy subject for my research inquiry. Owen lives in Kent and had driven a long way to join us. Just a few minutes later, along came Mike and Nirmala and over red wine, I got to know them a little bit. Owen and Mike were classmates of Sushil at Cathedral and John Connon School in Bombay and, therefore, went back a long long way, They were actually contemporaries of Salman Rushdie and remembered him well during their junior school years at Cathedral. Nirmala’s late brother was Rushdie’s batchmate as was the brother of yet another person I met later at the restaurant, Cecil, who is a physician in Ealing. Cecil arrived with his English wife Ann and we made a very jolly party at the restaurant as I learned more and more about my new friends.

Over shared appetizers (bruschetta and a wonderfully tender Italian salami) and wine and Perroni beer, we made our entree choices: Having had pasta at home at lunch, I kept the carbs off and ordered a Saltimboca which is one of my favorite Italian dishes–escalopes of veal served with pancetta and sage in a mushroom sauce. It was absolutely scrumptious and I finished every large piece on my plate–it was served with the most perfectly done roast potatoes (nobody can do roast potatoes like the English) and mixed vegetables and made a very hearty meal indeed. Little wonder that no one had room for ‘pudding’!

I was kept most amused and entertained throughout my meal by Mike who sat besides me and told me stories about his early life in Bobmay where he had lived until the age of 18, his English parents having found work with a British company called Ferguson’s. He kept lapsing into idiomatic Indian-English so easily and used words as part of his conversation that only an Indian raised in India would understand and appreciate. For instance, he cracked me up when he referred to a man in an Bombay club who arrived there each evening to be surroudned by “his chamchas”. To hear this term emerge from the mouth of a white Englishman sitting right there besides me in an Italian restaurant in London was so hilarious that I couldn’t stop laughing. It became very clear to me then that you can take the Boy out of Bombay but you cannot take Bombay out of the Boy!

We talked a bit about what Owen described as my own “schizophrenic life” over the last 20 years–living in the West with one toe in India. He asked me how I possibly managed it. There was some discussion when I announced that mentally and psychologically I don’t believe that I have ever really left India at all! My connections with the land of my birth are still so strong because of the work I do there, my areas of research interest, my frequent travels to the sub-continent and the strong ties I have continued to maintain with a host of folks–extended family members and friends–out there. While several of them marveled at this fact, they did acknowlegde what I have come to realize–that for most Indian immigrants to the UK, despite the fact that the two countries (India and England) are so much closer to each other (than India and the US) and air fares so much cheaper, immigration to Great Britain meant a virtual cutting off of ties, a complete burning of bridges, as it were. This is something I cannot even begin to conceive of and I recalled Rushdie who has spoken repeated in his essays and to me in person about the strong pull he always feels towards India, no matter where it is in the world that he chooses to make his home.

We returned to Sushil’s place in a gentle drizzle after our excellent meal. It was just a couple of blocks away and over more red wine, we chatted until well past midnight when Owen gave me a ride back home. Bank Holiday Monday had turned out to be perfectly wonderful for me and as I return to more work and chores tomorrow, I hope to start the week on a productive note by doing some cooking first thing tomorrow morning,

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