Tag Archive | Liverpool

Hiya Hadrian!

Oct3

Thursday, October 2, 2008
London

Just when I was contemplating whether or not to splurge on the special exhibit at the British Museum titled “Hadrian: Empire and Conflict”, Robert Pinkerton from NYU’s Programing Department emailed to let me know that they had extra tickets and could join them. Could I indeed!

We assembled outside the Bedford Square Gardens–about 10 students and Prof. Jane Beckett who teaches Art History and whom I got to know rather well on our recent trip to Liverpool. I was excited because Llew and I had just visited Hadrian’s Wall , a month ago, on the border between Scotland and England. We had also visited the Milecastle at Birdoswold where a Roman Fort once stood and where ruined remains can still be seen. Despite having scaled the Wall, there was little I knew about Hadrian and this exhibit certainly filled that void.

Of course, for me, one of the greatest joys of visiting the special exhibits at the British is the opportunity to gaze upon the Reading Room in which Karl Marx once sat for weeks on end and scribbled his tour de force, Das Kapital. Now that the Reading Rooms have moved to the new British Library at St. Pancras, we’ve lost this historic gem of a room, But the ceiling has been beautifully refurbished and renovated so that it sparkles in the dim light, its gilded ribbing standing out against the soft egg-shell blue of the background. Its dome towers above like that of the Parthenon or the Duomo in Florence and it did not surprize me to see a mention of the similarities between these world-famous domes at the exhibition as Hadrian was a great lover of architecture and added many magnificent buildings to the Rome of his time.

Born in AD 76 and reigning between AD 117-138, Hadrian is easily recognizable (among all Roman emperiors) by his beard and the crease in his ear-lobe, which detail is found in all depictions of the emperor in stone as well as in metal. There are two splendid busts in the exhibit, one a collossal one of Hadrian himself, found in huge fragments rather recently in Turkey, the other of Antinous, his male lover and one for whom he had a deep and abiding love though married to Sabina. The couple had no children and after his death, Hadrian who was himself the adopted son of the Emperor Trajan, went on to adopt Marcus Aurelius who also reigned over the Roman Empire.

Lots of sculpture, some portions of his famous Wall, fragments of the autobiography he wrote towards the end of his life, olive oil amphorea and a really superb recreation of his villa in Tivoli outside Rome, made up the bulk of the exhibit. It wasn’t particularly wonderful but it was very enlightening and I am glad I went.

As I was walking home after a long day (I had taught two classes during the day), I passed by the London Review of Books Bookshop and Cafe and noticed that there was a reading in progress. I poked by head in and discovered that John Banville (Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea) had just finished a reading from his new book, a mystery entitled The Lemur. Thanks to my new cell phone, I called Llew immediately to find out if I should purchase a signed copy for him as Banville sat down to sign books for his fans–most of whom had come with a pile of his earlier publications.

Then, I got home and over dinner I watched Marion Cottilard present her Oscar-winning performance as Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose. I did not enjoy the movie at all as I think it needs to be seen on the big screen. However, I adored every single song, especially the title Song La Vie En Rose, one of the classics among modern French melodies, as well as several others that I recognized and can hum but whose names I do not know. However, her performance was very impressive indeed and I am sure if one saw it on the big screen, the effect would be numbing.

Tomorrow afternoon, I leave for sunny Spain (“Say Viva Espana”!) and am looking forward to nice weather as I go out and discover Antonio Gaudi’s remarkable work in Barcelona.

I’ll be back in London on Tuesday. Until then, Adios!

Two Relatively Uneventful Days

Sep30

Monday and Tuesday, September 29 and 30, 2008
London

Spent almost every minute of the last two days at home, save for this evening (Tuesday) when I stepped out to our NYU campus to see This is England, Shane Meadows’ brilliant film about Thacherite England during the Falklands War.

Yesterday was beautifully sunny. Tempting though it was to get outdoors, I had too much catching up to do after my weekend in Liverpool. Checked my Barcelona itinerary for this coming weekend, making my easybus booking to Stanstead airport and back, wrote my Liverpool travelogue (which I put on this blog), downloaded, edited and captioned all my photographs, made a few pending calls, etc. and before I knew it, my day was done.

Another interesting aspect about yesterday was watching a crew of city maintenance guys at work. Sometime during the weekend, in my absence, someone mowed down two adjoining telephone booths across the street on which I live. When I poked my head out in the morning, I saw them still standing but dangerously tilted backwards, a pile of shattered glass lying all around them. By about 10 am, two sweepers had the glass neatly swept into a pile. About noon, the maintenance crew arrived with two trucks, one of which they pulled up on the pavement, the other they left on the road. They erected a protective barrier around the booths and set to work.

I had no idea what they intended to do. Did they propose to repair the booths? Little did I expect them to do what they ended up doing. As the afternoon wore on, the irritating sounds of drilling wafted up to my windows and I shut them to be able to continue working in peace. From time to time, I stuck my head out to see how far they had progressed. By 5 pm, they had achieved nothing very substantial. At 5. 30pm, they stopped to eat their meal from styrofoam containers, not having done very much at all.

Then, after 6 pm, work began in earnest. One of the trucks contained a crane and to my astonishment, they hauled up each booth and got it to lie horizontally on the truck. When both booths were on their backs on the floor of the truck, they began to work on the pavement. This continued until about 9 pm. by which time darkness had fallen and the human traffic on the pavement dwindled down to almost nothing. Since the truck covered the spot, I could not see what they doing. At any rate, by 10pm, I retired for the night, leaving them still at work.

When I awoke this morning, it was as if the telephone booths had never been there at all. The only tell-tale signs on the pavement were five flagstones that had been neatly placed in the spot where the booths used to be. They were new and whiter than the dark brown flagstones surrounding them. It had taken the crew one whole day to get the work done, but at the end of the day, they had done a great job, even if they lingered through normal working hours in order to push the clock after 6 pm allowing themselves, undoubtedly, to claim overtime allowances. I realized that maintenance crews are the same all over the world. Working without supervision, they make a packet swindling the municipal administrations everywhere in their attempts to squeeze as much money out of the system as possible. Sigh!

This morning dawned wet and overcast and I was glad I stayed home to prepare my classes for Thursday. In the evening, I walked to campus and saw Meadows’ movie that can boast some masterful performance particularly from Thomas Trusgood, the 10 year old kid who had never acted in his life until he appeared at the audition and told the casting director that he would do the film for five pounds. It was exactly that brand of cockiness and braggadocio that the director wanted his character Sean to portray and the rest is history. The film is so superbly directed that at no point do you believe that the characters are acting–they are naturalness personified and I was riveted throughout. But for the difficulty I had following those Nottingham accents–which, incidentally, lent terrific authenticity to the script–I loved every second of it and would heartily recommend it to anyone interested in seeing quality contemporary British cinema.

I am also pleased to have found out that the weekly TV program is available with the Sunday Mail which I purchased on Sunday in Liverpool in order to get my hands on the free CD that came with the paper–Ten Tenors singing some of the most famous arias of all time. The bonus in the magazine inside was ten pages of recipes from Nigella Lawson’s new book and some mouthwatering pictures of the domestic diva who was also on the cover. I seem to be slowly entering into the spirit of my new life in London what with discovering its Sunday papers and learning to recognize its celebrities–Jamie Oliver, Kylie Minogue, Lawrence, Llewellyn-Bowen, Charles Saatchi and Sienna Miller. I am afraid I might suffer reverse cultural ignorance by the time I return to the USA.

Another warming thought is that my next door neighbor Tim, a software designer, knocked on my door this evening to invite me to lunch on Sunday in his flat that he shares with his wife Barbara Cookson, an attorney. I had to sadly decline as I will be in Barcelona for the weekend, but I promised him that I would get in touch upon my return. I also found a message awaiting me on my machine (or ‘answer phone’ as they say in the UK) from my friend Michelle wanting to know if I was getting on OK. How thoughtful of her!

Who said the English are reserved? I don’t seem to be doing too badly myself in making and keeping friends here.

Liverpool at Leisure (Continued)

Sep29

Sunday, September 28, 2008
Liverpool

Another glorious day! The Liverpudlians were pleased. They informed us that we had brought the good weather with us.

Breakfast at the Holiday Inn was a Continental affair–Carb Central with Caffeine thrown in for good measure. I had slept like a baby and jumped up on discovering that it was 8 am. I knew that if I snoozed for another ten minute, I’d miss our ferry ride.

An hour later, showered and having repacked, I was at the YHA in Liverpool, stashing my backpack into the bus and walking across the main road towards the ferry dock. We boarded the 11 am ferry across the Mersey that the commentary informed us was “one of the most famous ferry rides in the world”. Indeed, there has been a ferry across this river since the 12th century.

From the get go, it is easy to see why this city became the second most prosperous after London, Indeed, there is every sign of commercial activity on its waterfront, culminating in the Three Graces, the name for the trio of buildings that give the city its most recognizable waterscape.
We had heard the story of the famous Liver Birds (I had always wondered where that TV show from the 70s got its name!) atop the Royal Liver (pronounced Lie-ver) Building. They were made by a sculptor who meant to create a pair of eagles since those formed the seal of King John who have the city trading rights. Only he had never seen an eagle himself, so ended up creating a bird he had frequently come upon–a cormorant! The two birds, fixed on top like giant weather wanes (one staring upon the horizon for incoming sailors), the other turned towards the city and representing the sailor’s search for the pubs, so the joke goes!) is an instant landmark. Right besides it, is the Cunard Building built in imitation of a Venetian pallazzo and next to it is the domed expanse of the Liverpool Port Headquarters. Just behind it is the red and white striped “streaky bacon” building that houses the offices of the White Star Lines, the ones that managed the Titanic. It was from the balconies overlooking the main street that the announcements about the sinking of the Titanic were made to the hundreds who had congregated below to find out the fate of their loved ones, many of whom had been aboard as part of the ship’s crew.

Along the Mersey are the huge warehouses through which the country’s merchandise once passed and cargoes from all over the world were unloaded. A running commentary gave us peaks into the history of the Mersey and the role it played in the development of Liverpool. I was able to catch only occasional snatches of this as an unruly group of pensioners who seriously believed they were at their own private party made boisterous jokes and dissolved into loud and annoying laughter at frequent intervals right in front of me. Despite changing my seat and moving closer to the speakers, I only caught an occasional passing gem. As Billy Bryson says in his book Notes from a Small Island, you do have to listen to Gerry and the Pacemakers sing Ferry Cross the Mersey (at least I think that’s the name of the song, but it could possibly have another title) as the boat sails along, but I thought it added to the charm rather than proved annoying. I half expected to see Bryson standing somewhere on board and grinning cheerfully at me. The ferry made two stops on the opposite side of the river allowing passengers to disembark to see the historic heritage trail on the other side in Bootle and Birkenhead before it returned us to the Dock in fifty minutes.

With three hours to spare before we boarded the coaches to take us back to London, I rushed off along Victoria Street to the massive Neo-Classical buildings amassed around the Empire Theater. The Beatles Story on Albert Dock was an incessant attraction and I wondered whether or not I should fork out the 12 .50 pounds to see it. Then, I decided to go to the Walker Art Gallery instead where I spent the next hour taking in its small but very significant collection of paintings and sculpture dating from the Medieval period to the present. It certainly does have some arresting work in the form of Reubens, Rembrandt self-portraits and a very interesting clutch of Pre-Raphaelite Paintings including several by Frederick, Lord Leighton. It also carries special exhibitions and while I was there, it featured the prize winners of the John Moores Art Prize, some of which were revolutionary but memorable.

However, to my mind, the highlight of this museum is the City Scapes exhibition by contemporary artist Ben Johnson whose portrayal of Liverpool was quite the most stunning thing I saw on my entire trip. Using a complicated technological process that involved the taking of hundreds of photographs and the creation of countless graphic images, Johnson and a team of artists have re-created Liverpool with its landmark buildings and its singular skyline in the same way that he has done images of Hongkong, Jerusalem and Zurich–all of which were also on display. I truly wish I had more time to linger and understand the process that went into his creation of this wonder, but I needed to see the interior of the George Concert Hall and I also contemplated entering the World Museum to see a special exhibit called The Beat Goes On.

Well, the George Concert Hall, the imposing Neo-Classical building in yellow sandstone with its towering Greek pillars, was closed to the public because a special event on Brides 2008 was on. Well, I am no bride but I was determined to sneak a peak at the floor that is set with Minton tiles and I was going to make that happen no matter what. As it turned out, I found an entrance that was less secure than the rest and in I nipped and what a sight awaited me there! If you think the outside is imposing, try taking in the interior. It was one of the most ornate things I have ever seen with chandeliers, intricate plasterwork, classical Greek paintings, a bunch of sculptural figures, the famous Minton tiled floor and an abundance of other decorative details, too numerous to describe. I also managed to get a few cake samples being distributed by the wedding cake makers who had stalls inside the show case and were eager to distribute them.

My next stop was the World Museum where I headed straight up to the second floor to see the exhibit on the musicians who since the 1950s put Liverpool on the music map. While most of the world is aware that the Beatles were born, first made music and were discovered in Liverpool, few know that Gerry and the Pacemakers and Cilla Black also hailed from Liverpool and contributed to the “Merseybeat” for which the city has been known over the past fifty years. In fact, it was GIs from America arriving in Liverpool during the war who brought rock and roll with them to the city and infused it with the beat to which it kept swinging for the next half century. This was made known to me through all kinds of musical memorabilia from the period and what’s more, it was all free. Now I could have seen The Beatles Story and paid good money for it, but instead here I was looking at Beatles memorabilia (the medals worn by the group on the Sergeant Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Album, the grey suits that manager Brian Epstein had designed for them to give them a wider, more sedate appeal, etc.) and soaking it all in while also looking at dresses worn by Cilla Black and a whole host of other musicians of that era. It was truly wonderful and I loved every minute of it.

Out on the street, I dashed into Subway past busy Queen Street full of Sunday shoppers and their bulging bags to pass by the famous Cavern Club where the Beatles had their start. Though long closed, this is another stop on the Beatles Tour and I was glad I caught a glimpse of it. Then I bought myself a hero to eat in the coach and just managed to make the long walk back to the YHA.

The coach journey back to London was uneventful (I slept through most of it anyway) and gratefully used the facilities at the Warwick motorstop before we arrived in the city about 9 pm.

Liverpool is undergoing the kind of resurgence of which most cities can only dream. My visit to it was fruitful and exciting and left me with the fullest satisfaction of having seen a city through its ups and downs and of having experienced its fluctuating fortunes. I can only hope that the students whom I accompanied on this trip enjoyed it as much as I did.

Liverpool at Leisure

Sep29

September 27, 2008
Liverpool, UK

The last time I had been to Liverpool was four years ago to present a paper at a Conference at Liverpool John Moores University. My exploration of the city had been a slapdash affair with the two churches covered–the towering, stupendous Anglican Cathedral that dominates the city’s skyline and the Metropolitan Catholic Cathedral, at the other end of the same street (Hope Street).

This time round, I took in the city at leisure and had an opportunity to explore its magnificent buildings, sample its world-class art and delve into its varied history. Of course, I also did the ‘touristy’ things such as taking the ferry across the Mersey (which never fails to bring to my lips that inane song from Gerry and the Pacemakers) and peaking into the men’s loo at the Philharmonic Pub, one of the UK’s most opulent and containing the only listed toilets in the entire country.

So, let’s start at the very beginning–which as Rogers and Hammerstein remind us in The Sound of Music is “A very good place to start”. We boarded our coaches at the NIDO student dorms and were outward bound at the crack of dawn (6. 30 am to be exact). Needless to say, the coach was like a graveyard with every passenger dead asleep as it inched through fog that was truly as thick as pea soup for miles and miles out of London and into the heart of the Midlands. It brought to mind the opening chapters of Dickens’ Bleak House and I wondered if all we would see in Liverpool was the Fog! We made a pit stop about three hours later for some welcome hot beverages and breakfast pastries and pressed on again, arriving in Liverpool in record time at about 12 noon. Since we were ‘free’ until 2 .15 pm when we were required to re-board the coach for our guided City Tour, I raced off to the waterfront at Albert Dock to visit the Merseyside Maritime Museum which Lonely Planet says “should not be missed”. (I must add that I spent some of the time in the coach reading up on what to see and do in Liverpool and am I glad I did!)

The day was gorgeous with golden sunshine pouring down upon me–such a relief from the overcast skies and the frequent drizzles we’ve dealt with for days on end. Walking towards the Museum through the portals of the wonderful Albert Dock with its quadrangular design and its solid rust-colored columns that form alleys now filled with shops and restaurants, I arrived at the Museum where free admission allowed me to spend two amazing hours.

On the third floor was a good deal of “Liverpool Pottery”, a collection of Delftware, porcelain and plainer china that passed through the docks in the city’s heyday. This took only a few minutes to survey before I descended to the second floor to see the Slavery Museum. This superb exhibit details the enormous role played by Liverpool in the “triangular trade” during the 17th and 18th centuries before England finally abolished the hideous practice. While my knowledge of American History has informed me about slavery in the USA, there was so little I knew about the role played by Great Britain in this regard and I was fully enlightened by the time I left the exhibit. Tracing the earliest origin of Blacks in the UK through the many slaves who were transported across the Atlantic on slaving ships that plied in West Africa and forcibly took the natives captive to the role played by Africans in contemporary life, this exhibit attempts to do two things: tell the horror stories so that history will never forget them and restore to this injured race some of the pride and dignity that has eluded them for centuries. I found it deeply absorbing and thought-provoking.

One floor below was the exhibit on the many famous ships that were made in Liverpool, a famous center for shipbuilding, including the Lusitania and the Titanic. In fact, these exhibits were so stirring that I walked through them in a blur, my tears filled with tears which spilled down several times, much to my embarrassment. I guess the movie Titanic has made so graphic so many of the concepts we only knew in the abstract, about the ship’s history, its famous passengers, its lifestyle, etc. Seeing mementos of the ship and its ill-fated voyage, reading the letters of its passengers, seeing pictures of the few survivors, filled me with such a deep sense of sadness that I cannot quite explain my despondency in words. Hearing also the hymn “Abide With Me” which the ship’s musicians played until the ship went down (taking every single one of them with it) was just too much for me to bear and I was crying rather copiously by this point.

On my way back, I toured the Piermaster’s House, a small two-storey bungalow that has been restored to reflect the interior of the home in the 1930s. Since I always love to poke around homes and since the 1930s are of particular interest to me, I was so glad I nipped in out of curiosity for the space was quite enchanting indeed and transported me back to the life of a man who spent his life clearing ships on their entry and exit from the Liverpool Docks at the time when business was brisk and global commerce was the city’s mainstay.

Of course, I could not possibly pass by the Liverpool Tate without taking a quick round of its three floors and browsing through its permanent collection. The Tate Liverpool contains a great deal of interesting works, including several Picassos and a whole room devoted to Andy Warhol especially his varied portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Chairman Mao. Upstairs, there were many significant pieces of sculptures by Giacometti, Henry Moore and Brancussi among others. If you are a fan of Abstract Art, the Liverpool Tate will not disappoint. The galleries were not too packed which allowed the art-lover to truly take in the work in a very unhurried, very relaxed environment.

Then, I was back at Albert Dock, and with Margaret, our superb English Guide in tow, we wound all around the city, taking in the various aspects of it from the astounding grandeur of such buildings as the George Concert Hall and the Central Library to the campus of its famous universities, from the main roads on which are located the well-known churches to the homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Liverpool’s most famous sons who grew up on the outskirts in very pretty houses called Mendips and on Forthlin Road (both now owned and managed by the National Trust). There is so much to see in this place and with everything spruced up to support its selection as the Cultural Capital of Europe for the year 2008, every attraction is open to the public for free. What an amazing opportunity to browse into its wealth of cultural attractions!

We got off at Penny Lane to take pictures of the quiet road that The Beatles immortalized in their song. I was amazed at how empty and nondescript it was at the edge of Liverpool University and Sefton Place until Margaret had the coach drive around the junction of Penny Lane with Smithdown Road and explained that the song is all about the shops scattered at the roundabout. It was at this junction that Lennon and McCartney used to meet as kids to catch the bus into town. There are references to the barber at the roundabout who knew the names then displayed pictures of all the clients who passed through his doors (including Lennon, McCartney and George Harrison when they were kids), the circular bus shelter where people took refuge in the rain (this is in rather poor shape today), the bank and the fire station. “There”, as the song’s lyrics put it ” beneath the blue suburban skies”, I tried to imagine what it must have been like for these talented youngsters to go about their business little knowing how enormously they would change the world with their homespun lyrics and their childhood memories. Indeed, if you are a Beatles fan as I am or if you grew up to the sound of their lyrics ringing in your ears as I did, you will love Liverpool and will spend a great deal of your time on the tour recreating, if only in your imagination, a world filled with youngsters who swung to the Mersey Beat of the Swinging Sixties.

Then, our coach was taking us towards Crosby Beach where another treat lay in store-a look at the unique life-size sculptures by Antony Gormley, one of the UK’s best-known contemporary sculptors and creator of the colossal Angel of the North sculpture that I had seen on the motorway while leaving Newcastle three weeks ago in Llew’s company. Gormley’s “Another Place” sculptures consist of 150 figures, apparently cast from his own body, staring out at the tide and watching the waves come in. At high tide, the waves swirl all around his toes and as I watched the sun set over the Atlantic, I was so moved by this sight–the sight of so many rusted statues of full-grown men looking across the horizon towards Another Place.

Back at Albert Dock, I had enough time to check into the Holiday Inn Hotel at the waterside and was delighted with the view from my window that overlooked the Dock and the outlines of the city’s three most famous buildings about which we would learn the next day on our ferry cruise across the Mersey.

After a quick shower and a much needed stretch on my bed, I was ready to go to dinner at the Youth Hostel where I enjoyed the chicken curry served over couscous and the first decent Chocolate Cake I have eaten in the UK–it was rich and creamy and chocolatey the way Chocolate Cake is meant to be.

While the night was still young, I was determined to return to the Philharmonic Pub, the best-known of Liverpool’s many watering-holes, to see the ornate male loos that are filled with dazzling ceramic tile, marble wash basins, stained glass detail on the walls, etc. As it turned out, our attempt to find a table in the “Gentleman’s Lounge” was successful and as I sat with James Weygood and David Crout, the administrative staff at NYU, I admired and took many pictures of the bas-relief on the walls, the beaten copperplate engravings, the solid mahogany fireplaces, etc. This elaborate pub stuns at every turn and in its Victoria excess it is certainly worth seeing.

I feel asleep that evening tired and very satisfied with what had been an extraordinary day and I looked forward to awaking on the morrow to another full and enlightening day.

Hello Dr. G!

Sep26

Friday, September 26, 2008
London

My friend, Dr. G, alias Firdaus Gandavia from Bombay, is here in London! I am so thrilled to see him! But for the fact that he was traveling from Brighton this morning and arrived at my place only at 12. 45, we could have taken the Oxford Tube and hotfoooted it to Oxford where we first spent a memorable summer 22 years ago.

Still, I had to be content with the one day he could spare with me in London in-between his travels in Portugal, Brighton and Hampstead. Felcy, my new maid, arrived this morning to clean my flat so it was quite spotless by the time Firdaus appeared. I had rustled up a salad in an attempt to finish up all the vegetables in my fridge since I am away for the weekend in Liverpool. So in went the lettuce and broccoli, blue cheese and walnuts in a mustard vinaigrette. I pulled out a Beef Lasagne from the freezer and two pots of stickey toffee pudding which I served with Sainsbury’s custard.

We caught up over appetisers–Waitrose fruit bread served with Gorgonzola cheese and hummus and Praline Spread from Le Pain Quotidien and glasses of red wine. Our meal was delicious and before long, we were off, intending to walk up to Hyde Park and to spend an afternoon on the Serpentine. Alas, that did not happen as our rambles were rather slow. I took Firdaus to campus to show him our NYU premises and my basement office and as we dodged the shoppers on Oxford Street and found the odd items he was seeking in Marks and Sparks, we realized that it was time time for him to return to his friends in Hampstead.

So we turned back and I said a goodbye to Firdaus, hoping to see him again in Bombay this coming January. After his departure, I sat on the phone with the helpdesk at Optimum Online and think that I have managed to synchronize my Outlook and webmail and, hopefully, now my online correspondence will go more smoothly. This took over an hour, after which I packed my backpack for my trip to Liverpool.

Rosemary called this morning to invite me to join her and a few friends for dinner at Malabar Junction this evening and I gladly accepted. And because I do not fancy the idea of waking up at 5 .15 am tomorrow to board the Liverpool coach at NIDO at 6 am, I requested my student Sarah Walsh to permit me to spend the night in her room as she has no roommate. She gladly agreed and Rosemary will drop me off to NIDO tonight. So glad that everything has been sorted out.

I am looking forward to a good time in Liverppool though my back pain is rather disabling and I am taking Crocin and applying Iodex to find relief. The weather promises to be fabulous all weekend long, so we should have a good time in Beatles Country!

Pani-Puri and Paan at Southall

Sep21

Saturday, September 20, 2008
Hounslow and Southall

My day began on the Piccadilly line headed for Hounslow East to see my Dad’s cousin, Sybil, whom I remember with great affection as having given me a memorable time when I arrived in London for the very first time 22 years ago. She lived then in a sprawling home called ‘Wheelspin’ in Guildford, Surrey. Alas, asthma, lack of exercise and dependence on a nebulizer has reduced her to a couch potato who spends her days staring at a TV screen and swallowing the soap operas (though, not necessarily, digesting them) and the competitive reality shows. Some things never change–she still watches Coronation Street and it was deja-vu for me all over again watching her watch the goings-on on the UK’s longest-running soap. Craving now for company, she kept worrying me to spend a weekend with her but I had, regretfully, to inform her that my weekends are all spoken for. Tomorrow I head for Brighton, the weekend after for Liverpool, the weekend following that to Barcelona, so I was glad I made the time to see her today.

Her ex-husband Joel picked me up at the Tube station and drove me, first to a gigantic Tesco from where I ended up purchasing some desserts as the prices were so laughably cheap compared to the the arm and leg prices I’ve been paying for all groceries at Marks and Spenser Simply Food and Sainsburys. And to my astonishment, I discovered that they sell packets of idli-sambar-chutney and masala dosa in the Tesco Freezer section! And at very reasonable prices too for Hounslow is London’s Little India! Joel picked up two packets and I feasted that afternoon on lunch in their 3-bedroom flat.

When we had caught up with family news on both sides–Sybil inquired after my family members in Bombay and I learned about all my distant relatives here in the US–she returned to her soaps while Joel followed the horse-racing at Eyre in Scotland, placing long-distance bets on horses that did not bring him any moolah at all. It seems he spends his days playing the horses and his nights at the poker table where he is quite an ace. The many poker trophies he has won at competitions attest to his expertise as a card sharp.

In the evening, after he had served me a mean upkari–studded with dal and mustard seeds and flavored with green chilli–Joel drove me to Southall, the Punjabi stronghold of London since the 1950s and allowed me to soak in the ethnic atmosphere of this colorful quarter. Rhinestone studded salwar-khameez suits, gold bridal jewelery, spices and condiments in the grocery stores, sweetmeats galore (fresh jalebis being fried on the streets were soaked in concentrated sugar syrup and sold straight off the boiling vat to salivating customers) and street food in the form of North Indian chaat was everywhere. I felt as if I was on the streets of Bandra, Bombay, as we stood and relished plates of pani puri made with just the right sweet-sour-spicy-salt combination, then soothed our burning tongues with the jalebis. I nipped into the grocery store (Tutu Cash and Carry) and bought some spices at prices that would put the English grocery stores out of business and some sauces (chilli sauce, soy sauce). Then, just when we were headed back to our car, Joel spied the paanwalla and wanted to treat me to a mouthful of betel nuts wrapped in two betel leaves. Having never acquired a taste for paan, I declined, but he got himself a sweet paan for a pound, then drove me back to Hounslow from where I jumped into a train that was full of new arrivals from Heathrow headed into London–some jetlagged and travel-weary, others chattering nineteen to the dozen obviously excited to be in London.

I recalled the feeling I had one month ago while on the same train and thought to myself–so much has happened since I arrived and yet, it is so hard to believe that a month has passed already! Time has certainly flown and I have done nothing substantial yet.

Got home exactly an hour later to find that my Anglo-Indian contacts are slowly responding to my initial queries. I have begun to set appointments to see them and tomorrow shall be meeting Marina Stubbs in Brighton.