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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