A Very Busy Day!

Wednesday, February 18, 2009
London

I was up again at the crack of dawn--at 6. 30 am--but did not have the time to do any reading in bed as I had to head out within an hour for my Physiotherapy session at UCL with Claire Curtin. I was early for my 8. 30 am appointment but was pleased to discover that I have improved a great deal since last I saw her. It seems that with the stretching exercises I have been doing, the shape of the arch of my feet has changed (hopefully, for the better!) and if I continue these stretches, I can hope to see more improvement. Claire showed me some new and more challenging exercises. I told her about my success with Alternate Bathing--while she did not nix it, she was not unduly enthusiastic either. She basically told me to do whatever it is that makes me feel better! She now wants to see me again after three weeks and has asked me to follow up with a call to the podiatrist to find out where I stand in the queue and if possible to see if they can fix up an appointment for me on the phone for my orthotics.

I took the bus straight from UCL Hospital to the SOAS Library so I could do some reference work with Frank Anthony's Book Britain's Betrayal in India. The library was almost empty when I got there at about 10 am--college students stir themselves slowly--and on consulting the online catalogue, I discovered that the book I wanted was in the Special Collections and for reference only. When I asked an assistant there to show me where the Special Collection was located, she informed me , to my huge disappointment, that Special Collections is closed on Wednesday because the library is short-staffed! I was so stunned! Imagine keeping a reference section in a university library closed because there is no one to work there! Such a thing would be unimaginable in the States!

I then decided to go into the stacks to get a book by Herbert Stark. When I tried to find that on the shelves, it was nowhere to be seen even though I had learned online that it was "Available". I thought that I was probably looking in the wrong section or that the book had been misshelved. I was almost tearing my hair out in frustration by this point but, just then, I saw a passing librarian and asked for assistance. She apologized and told me that many of the books had not yet been shelved as "there is a huge backlog". I was still trying to figure out what she meant when she led me to the Reshelving Section. To my horror, I saw several bookcases filled with books that had been returned days ago but which had not yet been returned to their respective shelves as they did not have the man power! This is completely insane, I thought. How is it possible for anyone to find books if they are not shelved correctly? I realized by this point that doing any kind of research in these libraries is going to take me much longer than it would take were I attempting to glean the same information in the US--so I better get cracking and bargain to spend a lot more time than I expected.

Since I was only two blocks away, I went next to the British Museum and decided to finish seeing the Highlights that I had begun yesterday. To my amazement, I found the Museum mobbed by every school-going kid in the country. Just as the area around Buckingham Palace was stormed by school-kids yesterday, so too the British Museum was buzzing today--a result of half-term break. The most popular galleries were the Egyptian Gallery where the Mummies are kept and the African and Native America Galleries where the giant totem poles and carved wooden eagles can be seen.

I had a bit of a fright when I entered an elevator to get from the Ground floor to the third. The elevator took off and then within ten seconds, kept bouncing up and down with a fearsome sound. The voice inside then said, "This lift is not in service". I was terrified for a few seconds as I was alone in the lift and have never experienced anything like this. I started to look around frantically inside the elevator for a button I could press to communicate with someone for help when the doors swung open and I was back where I started. I fled and decided that I was better off climbing the stairs!

Eventually, I did get to the relevant floors and spent a fascinating hour seeing the following items:

1. The Lewis Chessman (These exquisite carved ivory chess man are in the Sutton Hoo section). Each one is different and they are beautifully crafted.

2. The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial. (These treasures found in a mound in Dorset were buried with a Saxon warrior who is presumed to be a king. In addition to arms and armour, there are gold and silver objects, jewelery, and a whole horde of really amazing objects that were excavated at the time of the discovery).

3. Mosaic of Christ. (This Roman mosaic, found in a Roman mansion, is the earliest image of Christ in Britain. It is remarkably well-preserved).

4. Basse Yutz Flacons. (These large urn-like metals vessels are the finest survivals of early Celtic Art. They were used for the storage and mixing of wine in keeping with similar techniques that existed in France at the time).

5. Oxus Treasure. (This is a collection of gold ornaments that hails from Archaemenid Persia. The detailed metalwork is amazing).

6. The Flood Tablet. (This is a small stone tablet whose cuneiform script has been deciphered as hailing from the Babylonian civilization. It has been interpreted as describing a great floor that led to the building of a great ark that was filled with animals and birds--an incident that bears an uncanny resemblance to the account of Noah's Ark in the Bible. I was spellbound as I read about this on the explanation plaque near by).

7. The Royal Game of Ur. (This is a board game that was popular in the Middle East three thousand years ago. It was played with dice on a portable game board. Interestingly, a game called Asha, played in Cochin in Kerala, is said to have originated in this game--brought to India by the earliest Syrian Christians who hailed from this region--talk about cross-cultural global influences in the Ancient World...my God, this is stunning).

8. The Mummy of Katebet (This is one of the most popular items in the museum as kids seem to be bizarrely attracted to them).

9. Sphinx of Taharqo. (This is a smallish sphinx that has rather detailed features).

10. Samurai Armor. (This was found in the Japanese section but it was the least impressive of all the items I saw).

11. King of Ife (This is a small bronze head from the Yoruba tribe in Nigeria in Africa that shows the most delicate casting.)

I have to say that I was deeply touched by the images I saw everywhere of kids in the company of their parents. It took me back to my own childhood days in Bombay where I grew up. On Saturday evening outings, my parents took my brothers and myself to the Prince of Wales Museum in Colaba and it was probably there that my great passion for museums was first developed. I remember the excitement with which I looked upon the stuffed animals and birds in the Natural History section and the marvelous carved Gandhara art in other parts of the building. Bombay was such a different place in those days--the early 1960s. I remember the bus ride on a red double decker bus, so similar to the ones I have grown to love so dearly here in London. I recall the quietness of the Ballard Pier area on weekend evenings when the feverish commercial activity of the region ceased--so similar to my neighborhood of Holborn on weekend evenings. I can see so clearly the manicured lawns of the Museum and the sailors strolling around the dockyards having just disembarked from their voyages around the world.
How nice it is of these parents to spare the time to spend with their kids and to help create in their minds the kind of memories that I cherish today and am so grateful to my own parents for nurturing in me.

It was close to lunch time when I reached home to check and respond to email. Then, I shut my eyes for just a little while to take a cat nap as I had to step out again later in the evening to make my way to Charing Cross where I had scheduled a meeting with Geraldine Charles, the first Anglo-Indian academic I have met here in London. I arrived at our appointed spot rather early but whiled away the time at a local W.H. Smith store browsing through magazines. Geraldine arrived right on schedule and after we had settled ourselves in a Starbucks over coffee for her and a hot chocolate for me, we began our conversation.

Geraldine is different from most of the Anglo-Indians I have met so far in that she has made the study of her community as much an academic interest as it is a matter of familial curiosity. Her own probings into her family genealogy has led to her being invited all over the world to talk about Anglo-Indian families in British India. She gave me a ton of useful information and a number of photocopies of portraits from her family albums--all of which are priceless. Her clarity on the subject, her rather controversial views and her personal contact with eminent Anglo-Indians made for absorbing conversation and I was delighted, when at the end of our talk, she suggested we get together another time "for a curry at the Strand Continental Club". I told her I would love to do that and on that optimistic note, we parted company as she left to catch a long-distance commuter train.

Back home, I settled in front of the telly to watch Under the Greenwood Tree based on Thomas Hardy's novel of the same name, sent to me again by Love Films.com as the one they sent me a few weeks ago was defective. Thankfully, unlike most of Hardy's writing, this one had a happy ending.