London Town

Leaving behind the heat and masses of India, I sailed over the Middle East and Eastern Europe to be dropped in India’s colonial forbearer; England. However, as I was transferred through the London airport I was struck by how many Indian faces surrounded me. True, I had just landed in an airplane filled with both English and Indian families all from Indian descent, but after waiting in an hour-long snaking customs line, I emerged to find the entrance hall nearly a carbon copy of Delhi’s. Bleary from the trip and a couple of high altitude glasses of wine I stared out at the many searching eyes and mass of families waiting to catch sight of their loved ones. Wait, did I leave India?

I hopped on the tube, relishing the cool rush of air, even enjoying the occasional shivers, and looked out of my window into the night. Beneath the each platform sign was the platform names typed neatly in Devanagri (the script for Hindi and several north Indian languages). Surrounded by people of Indian and Pakistani decent, chatting in British English, Arabic, or Hindi, I marveled at the ease and lack of tension between all the people on the train of all colors and backgrounds; another New England.

Emerging from the train I found a myself hailing down the famous English taxi and hopped in, shuddering off a few sprinkles of rain (thank the lord!) and was whisked off to meet my mother in a cozy B&B in Bloomsbury called The Academy. We spent a couple of days there, starting our trip with the Tate Modern, which rivaled the SF MOMA for it’s permanent collection, layout, and shows and beating the NY MOMA (we both agreed). The openness, FREENESS (as in no money) and layout of the museum was wonderful, and I found perhaps too much comfort reentering a culture that had also gone through a cultural renaissance vis a vis modern and conceptual art. What a gift.

We then made our way through narrow, wet streets through lines of clean, beautiful buildings to Westminster Abbey and then St. Martin’s in the Field, where my great-grandparents on my grandfather’s side were married. Amazingly on this pilgrimage into my mother’s and my lineage, we stumbled upon approximately 100,000 people (mostly Indians) celebrating Diwali in London’s main public square outside the British Museum. We were both so happy to see such a diverse population in London and cultural embrace in the old colonial center - at least in the limited spaces I occupied. Making our way back to the B&B, we had a pint in a local pub and prepared ourselves to shove off to Amsterdam. We will be back in London in a few weeks where I look forward to spending another couple of days exploring more of London’s bustling neighborhoods. The order and cleanliness, not to mention the cool weather, have been welcome changes from the hot and chaotic subcontinent, and I will be enjoying much, much more of that from London all the way to Istanbul over the next three weeks.