A personal experience of a short journey to the capital of the only country on earth which adds an adjective to its name...'Great' Britain.
As with all the countries, the first impression starts with the airport. And Heathrow is not the best place to judge London. They are trying to improve, but the royal nature of (Great) Britain takes its own sweet time to get things done. Work is worship is what they taught us, but No-work-and-all-Beer is, guess what, God, so choose your fling! Somewhere in next 25 years they will be able to revamp the airport so that it doesn't look like Gulliver's island in front of Chicago's O'hare (yup, you cant miss the contrast). Till then, just pick your luggage if it manages to arrive in time and exit the terminal gates at the speed of thought. So i will live with it. However, to see a Sardarji at the opposite end of Immigration counter, talking in a cross between english, punjabi and maybe martian accent, was a pleasant surprise.
The few american cities i have been to - NYC, LA, chicago or houston - found all of them full (or maybe overloaded) with infrastructure. Compare the 'hugeness' and infrastructure with US cities and London will look like india's ex-capfuckedtain Ganguly who has just been done twice over by Greg Chappel. Lost. Tired. Sulking. Ok, so London can't compete on the infrastructure front. But the comparison doesn't end. London got something that gives it a proverbial edge which few US cities can claim - it has long dark history that still sells well. And most importantly it has people. Yup, people, crowd, janta. The most diverse of them all, and probably the City makes them, the kewlest of them all. Maybe, as french wud say, born with a 'right to have fun'! Will see later how.
The Apartment
As i alighted from the cab and entered the gates of Chelsea Cloisters, the service apartments where my company booked me...i felt like - this building doesn't look bad compared to US, so chill dude - seems like a nice place. Till i entered the apartment! Apartment? Sorry, its a miniature version of a "mini studio". A room that will explode if you try fitting in a king size bed there. A kitchen large enuf..well - imagine a changing room in shopper's stop, now fit in a fridge, washing machine and stove hob in it (so ya, space left for just nimble feet). And bathroom - well atleast it had some necessary segregation, just dont ask for a rackspace (c'mmon its london). If this doesnt bring out tears then - the TV was the size of yesteryear's radios playing all of 14 channels (half of them non-english with a weird 'welcome to sm arabian crap' feel). To top all this, it didn't come cheap for my firm! All this when i had requested my travel desk to give me a decent sized room. Screw decent, seemed like they swapped mine with a japanese midget's room!
And then the next day, reality dawned on me - this building was right in center of london - in an area where 'our own' Lakshmi Mittal lives (for those buried under sand for few years, he is biggest steel tycoon India ever exported), this is a place where they shoot "Made in Chelsea", a popular soap depicting lives of rich n famous, plays on channel 4, and this is a place after which they have named a football club that goes by the name of, well not too tough to guess, Chelsea! So i cud go all gloating over the area, but the room was pretty much pain-in-the-A. Long story short, my company chose to pay hell good amount just for the location, room had to go for a toss. But then i later figured out, this wasn't a one-off place, entire london is brutally squeezed on space!
The marriage
6 days after i landed there, they were having a marriage (Yes, they still believe in marriages).
But Who? Well, the people whom every Brit adores and makes fun of, but is still insanely proud of -The royalty of Britain. Prince William was supposed to married on Friday, so they gave it a day off, so that every white and his dog can hold a Brit flag and cheer up for their future king and his 9 yr long gf. Wow man, difficult to believe this happening in Britain. They still have a culture where people have their GFs for 9 years, and then get married to the same GF! See thats why they went to Canada for honeymoon..."Honey, we have had enuf sex for last 9 yrs, so WTF we are gonna do on a honeymoon, lets watch some Niagara water flowing...it might not be as boring"!. Anyways, PJs aside, this marriage was some excuse for our lazy bums to go out on Friday morning and stand at some place where somebody told us that sometime the bf and the gf would pass with their outlandish display of cars and guards. Reached Trafalgar square at 11, and boy, it was so crowded already that either we need to be standing on top of each other, or have spiderman powers to actually see something from behind so many white heads. But ya, it was good fun fest going on. Mayor of London was giving some speech there, 2 huge screens were showing what we could have watched in comfort of room, and many PYTs got an excuse to shed it all in late April sun. Wasn't that Sweet!
Piccadilly
Piccadilly! The Times Square of London, or maybe even more. Its a place where you can spend
all your weekend (or weekdays, if u have all the time and money) just hopping between pubs and clubs, and you wont feel you repeated a single one. And since London has a vibrant desi community, its all too common to see bollywood nights happening all the time. Good bollywood music, 4 pounds for a vodka-coke, eventful crowd, and a bouncer who speaks hindi/punjabi while pushing you out at 2...its all there. And those who love salsa, london offers far too many places to practice your skills (or doubt ur skills lol). Decent bet is Cuban near moorgate which is filled with wannabe experts most saturday evenings, vodka is cheap, there is always smone to guide a lil, and you cant miss the fun when someone in your desi group tries to do hip hop steps on salsa music.
Beer
Its a beer country, and recession, depression or oppression, these brits are always on a binge. As we guys used to walk to the tube station every evening from our office, we will see scores and scores of people, wearing their office suits with a beer in hand. Culture thing. You can't go home before having few pints, or else, you are worse than a nigerian selling a rado (means what? "fake" is the hint)! 4.30 pm is starting time for people to leave office and by 5.15, mostly every non-desi office goer in the City has taken a seat in a bar and has given his day's fair share to the beer industry! Love the chivalry!
"Mind the gap please"
No, this is not one of the symbols you will click your picture with when you are here, but its a phrase that you will hear atleast dozen times a day if you are a Londoner. Its something you listen on its lifeline - the Tube - everytime a Train door closes. Ubiquitous to the point of being infringed in the conscious of 3 million souls who enter or exit those doors everyday. Nothing awesome. Just omnipresent like air in The City. Thats the London Tube. Like most things for Indians, the Tube is an eye opener - it tells that its possible to run a train every 2.5 minutes and still just manage to miss just 90 seconds in a year. It is possible to pack scores of living beings cramped in space of a train car running inside a 150 year old tunnel and still see the crowd having the decency of not hitting the butt or the boob of everyone around them. And biggest eye opener of it all - it is possible for people to stand at 3 inches from that svelte PYT (pretty young thing) and still not stare at her plunging neckline (no they aint all gay, just lil civilised). And trust me, every Londoner with a neckline worth flaunting, does flaunt it inside the train car (u know, summer heat!). So Tube is not the most sexy thing in London, but AFAIK, its definitely something that carries the largest concentration of sexy people 100 feet below the ground everyday at 9 and 6 - monument to south kensington and back..mark your watches!
Shops
Just a word of advice - don't ever ask any employee at a company store (for eg. vodafone or O2 store) to know any, anything about their offerings. All they are paid to do is to say 'I don't know' 25000 times a day to anything you throw at them. Naah, they ain't rude, just that they are too cool to know anything except the price of latest iPhone. For the rest, they are programmed to say 'Hey Michael, do you know anything about that usb data cardy thingy'. 'No mate, maybe he can check with Orange next door' will be the reply. And we think shopfloor execs in India suck at product knowledge!
Plus, the shops close at 6. So that all the shopowners and the shoppers can go and have some beer after a 'tiring' day. Royal people need some much needed rest after 6-7 hrs of guerriling ass-massaging and answering 'I don't know honey' to everything. Wow, luck do favors some.
Desh ka beta
Now comes the funny part. In India, its too common a sight to see people scolding their children for the mistakes they do. Kids are kids, and they have to be scolded, or maybe slapped too, depending on the offence they have executed. Not anymore. You, sir (or mam), cannot, will not and should not slap your kid while in Great Britain. Period. Else, the you-dont-know-what-will-befall-you scenario will occur. So it happened with a friend of a friend. Poor guy, a desi ofcourse, went to a fare with his 2 yr old son, and there the kid started cribbing n yelling and all - "i wanttttt toooo siiitttt on thattt ride daddd". Now, the ride queue was long and the poor guy was tired so he tried to pacify the kid. Kid being total desi at heart, wont oblige. Finally came a harsh scolding to silent the kid. And behold, a passing by cop heard that and came in the intervention! Whoa!? Realizing what he did, friend tried to persuade the cop to understand that kid is his son, and he was making trouble, and its ok for indians to scold their kids and all. Here came the reply - "Sir, he is not only your son. He is a child of the community. You cannot treat him like this or else we have to get involved." Wow, many indian kids, if had a choice, would have traded countries if they knew this while they were bringing their report cards home at the end of every term ;)
To sum it all, its a beautiful city. A lil squeezed but vibrant, alive and happening. You can't stop missing it till you write it down all in a blog. Alas, even then, you can't stop missing it. Believe me!
