Lunching with MPs and Of Ghosts and Greasepaint

Tuesday, March 10, 2009
London

Awaking at 6 am is late for me these days!!! I had always imagined that when I came to live alone in London, I would have daily lazy lie-ins, never dreaming that I'd awake long before the first rays of light reached my window blinds. Still, I'm not complaining. I do not feel sleep deprived and I have been enormously productive. When I do occasionally feel fatigued as I did last night, I respond to my body's signals by switching off the light (sometimes as early as 9. 30 pm) and going off to bed (though midnight is pretty standard for me).

I am sure now that my short nightly sleep spells have to do with the warmth of my bedroom. Under the down comforter, it is deliciously cozy, but it also can get oppressively hot as the night wears on. Arben, my concierge, had told me way back in September that 7 High Holborn does not get any cross ventilation unless one has a corner flat--which mine is not. This explains why air-conditioning is so essential in this building and comes as a standard built-in ammenity.

On the upside, this has meant that I have not had my heating on at all all winter long! I know...it is hard, if not impossible to believe, given the kind of winter London had this year, i.e. worse than usual. The double glazing in this flat is apparently so superbly effective that while it does shut out all the traffic noises along High Holborn that are pretty loud, let me assure you, it also conserves heat and keeps this flat toasty all day and all night. I have not had to spend anything on heating...I mean nadda, zilch. That alone has made this flat extremely economical to live in; but it does mean that come summer, I will be sweating it out rather copiously.

After reading The Goblet of Fire for an hour, I began to grade student essays--first drafts (most of which require a colossal amount of work!). At 7. 30 am, I finally got out of bed to brew a cup of coffee and eat my breakfast (yogurt and muesli with honey). I made a call to my nephew Arav (and spoke as well to my brother Roger) and then to my parents in Bombay. Then, I realized that I was running out of phone credit and needed a top up. Llew called me about 10 am and we had a chat as we updated each other on everything going on in our lives.

Then, after doing my stretching exercises (I need to get back to my exercise routines again that have been severely disrupted by all my travel) , I began work on the lecture I shall be giving in Italy next week. It is a comparison of the manner in which Pakistani novelist Bapsi Sidhwa's work Cracking India evolved from page to screen through the film 1947 Earth made by Canadian-Indian filmmaker Deepa Mehta. The first draft kept me busy until
11. 45 am when I took a shower and left for my lunch appointment with Michelle Misquita Rafferty at 1 Victoria Street, in the office of the Dept for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) where she practices Constitutional Law.

Michelle and I were undergrad classmates at Bombay's Elphinstone College... so our friendship goes back a long long way. Both she and I majored in English Literature and though she does not know it, she was a source of great inspiration to me. I was so impressed by her dedication to her studies that I emulated it and, without intending to do so, constantly ran in competition with her for the highest marks. I have always believed that were it not for Michelle and Marie-Lou Menezes and 'The Two Sharmilas' (Mukerjee and Chatterjee) who were in my batch with Shoma Sen and so many other truly brilliant classmates that I had the good fortune of knowing, I would never have been spurred on to give of my best efforts in college or produce the kind of results that propelled me towards a career as an academic.

Michelle, surprisingly, did not go the academic way. She did not register for her Masters in English as Marie-Lou and I did. Instead, she became a journalist in East Asia, first spending many years working with a travel magazine in Hongkong before she emigrated to London and read Law. For the past few years, she has been a government solicitor working with British Parliament. I am extremely proud of her and the shape her life has taken and I continue to be inspired by her achievements--not to mention how deeply privileged I feel to be able to call her my friend.

We've met only occasionally since I arrived in London as she is grappling with a whole load of personal matters. Still, when she suggested we meet for lunch to catch up, I decided to carve out the time, despite my pressing schedule this week as I do not know when she will next be free to spend time with me. She had once mentioned that her cafeteria is considered the best among those run by government offices and it was something I had to prove myself.

A Far from Institutional Lunch:
So off I went on the Tube on a rather mild morning to her building which I have passed a million times on foot and in buses, little knowing that she worked in it. Michelle came down to greet me and after I had gone through security routines and been presented with a Visitors Badge, we made our way down to the cafeteria. It was buzzing as it was close to 1.00 pm.

Michelle was right--if the food was as good as it looked, I was in for a treat. Indeed, it appeared far from institutional and when I saw the fillet of tuna resting on a square white china plate (as in the posh restaurants) in a balsamic-olive oil dressing surrounded by healthy vegetables, I knew at once what I would eat. For dessert, I picked a Chocolate Nut Torte and when I went to pay for this lovely meal, it cost me less than five quid! Ah, the joys of the subsidized lunch!

We caught up all right over each mouthful and, as Michelle had informed me, I found myself in the company of some sitting Members of Parliament who were either enjoying their lunches or relaxing with the newspaper. I have to say that my cultural ignorance of the UK does not allow me to recognize these folks, so Michelle introduced them to me in guarded whispers. "That is Pat Mcfadden", she hissed, and then a little later, "and there is Gareth Thomas". I have to say that these names meant nothing to me but it was fun to look at these British politicians anyway!

A Self-Guided Walk around the Theater District:
In about an hour, I bid Michelle goodbye and decided I would take one of the walks in my Frommer's Book as the weather induced me to stay outdoors. I chose one entitled "Ghosts and Greasepaint" that commenced at Piccadilly Tube Station. I reached there after changing two buses and found myself at the Statue of Eros which had attracted a number of French student groups.

Among the more interesting things I saw today on this walk was the interior of the Criterion Restaurant which has a most stunning ceiling made entirely of gold mosaics and polished full-length mirrors which must create, I am sure, a truly superb eating experience. The Victorian restaurant also has a literary connection as it was in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's work "A Study in Scarlet" that Dr. Watson met, for the first time, an eccentric character by the name of Sherlock Holmes. Of course, I enjoy this kind of literary trivia that these walks provide.

The title of this walk derives from the many theaters through which it passes and the stories of the many ghosts who dwell within their interiors. I learned about ghosts who haunt the Theater Royal Haymarket, for instance, where a production of On The Waterfront is currently on and in which two of the UK's finest Shakespearean actors Ian Mckellan and Patrick Stewart will shortly be playing the roles of Vladimir and Estragon in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. I feel strongly tempted to book a ticket to see this version, just because these actors are the best in the land. But I have seen this play on more than one occasion and it is not really one of my favorites. I have a problem with all Theater of the Absurd but this one particularly bores me. In the earliest version I saw in Bombay, many years ago, Nasserudin Shah and Benjamin Gilani had played the key roles and yet I did not connect with the lines. I doubt that Mckellan and Stewart will make me do so.

I continued through Trafalgar Square and entered the Church of St. Martin's-in-the-Field and was reminded of my cousin's son Sudarshan Rodriguez as I had seen a concert with him about five years ago in the interior of this church featuring fusion musician Tavleen Singh. I did not remember what a beautiful plaster ceiling this church has.

Then on I went, past the Garrick Theater which also has a resident ghost and where I had once seen Patricia Routlege (Hyacinth Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances) play an American shareholder quite superbly in a comedy called Solid Gold Cadillac! This took me to a lovely street called Cecil Court that was full of antiquarian book stores (I think Llew will love this place and I must take him to it on his next visit) where I saw a real live tarot card reader dressed in Victorian clothing sitting in a window and reading the palm of a client! How very weird!

I also browsed through perhaps the neatest antiques store I have ever seen in my life--a place called Mark Sullivan's which specializes in Victorian literary pieces such as the busts of writers and royal commemorative keepsakes. Everything was so perfectly displayed on neat dust-free uniform shelves that marched around the entire store and when I told the store owner how unique his store was, he was delighted by the compliment and promptly gave me his very unusual business card!

At the Lamb and Flag Pub, one of London's oldest, I heard about John Dryden's brush with a bunch of thugs who almost killed him. At this point, I was told to go right past the gates of St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden, but because it looked so unusual and so inviting, I simply had to enter it.

On doing so, I was surprised that the walk hadn't insisted on a visit because the church, designed by Inigo Jones, no less, is an absolute gem both inside and out. It is entirely brick-clad, very symmetrical (there are two bells embedded in the sides flanking the main entrance) and set in an adorable garden in which spring had plainly arrived, for there were hosts of golden daffodils and crocuses that brought wonderful gaiety to a rather drizzly afternoon. Inside, the walls were covered with memorial plaques to so many actors, playwrights and producers who had made their fortunes at Covent Garden-- some names that were familiar to me were Sir Charles Chaplin, Vivienne Leigh, Sir Terence Rattigan. I still can't understand why the church is not a part of the walk. Had my innate curiosity not got the better of me, I would have missed this delight in the heart of Covent Garden. The entire hidden square within which St. Paul's Church is set has facades of buildings that could easily belong to the 18th century. Indeed, it seems that if you want to see some of the oldest architecture in London, you need look no further than the tucked-away recesses of Covent Garden.

The walk ended on Maiden Lane at the stage door of the Adelphi Theater where another ghost story kept me enthralled. However, my attention was drawn to a very unique restaurant on the opposite side of the street called Rules which turned out to be London's oldest, established in 1798. Again, a host of theater and literary personalities have frequented this place over the centuries including Charles Dickens and Sir John Betjeman who described the interior on the ground floor as "unique and irreplaceable and part of literary and theatrical London...
Its paintings, prints, busts, bronze figurines, red plush seats, stained glass as well as the playbills and theatrical relics some of which often go back to earlier than 1873, make it a restaurant very much as it was when it was first newly furnished in 1873. It is the gradual accumulation of the last and previous centuries". Interestingly, on it's website, I found an endorsement for this restaurant from Candida Lycett-Greene, the daughter of Betjeman and Lady Penelope Chetwode (whom I had the opportunity of meeting many years ago in Simla in North India). It would seem as if Rules was very much a Betjeman family hangout!

Indeed, when I peeked into the restaurant, I was completely charmed by its collection of animal heads, stag's antlers and the like, not to mention photographs, playbills and all such theatrical memorabilia that grant a place the sort of ambiance that makes it distinctive and individualistic--a sort of older version of New York's famous Lindy's (renowned for its cheesecake)! It was beautifully lit with brass chandeliers and tiny lampshades (old world mood lighting!). I glanced at its menu and found it to offer a selection of typically British dishes, with an emphasis on game (there was woodcock and rabbit, for heaven's sake), most of which is sourced from its ownership of the Lartington Estate in the High Pennines. I would love to eat at this place someday...God willing....and perhaps even catch a glimpse of some theatrical legend of the future (maybe when Llew next gets here).

I took the bus home and spent the evening continuing work on my Sidhwa lecture, grading more papers and then organizing myself some dinner--pasta and mixed vegetables that I pulled out of my freezer--pleased that I had combined work and leisure in a rather novel sort of way today.