Thursday, January 15, 2009
London

I do not have Internet connectivity at home, which is the most frustrating thing in the world! As a result, I could not check my email as soon as I awoke this morning (at the slightly less unearthly hour of 4. 50 am now, not 3. 30 am!). I used the time to finish reading Scattered Seeds, an anthology of photographs and short essays edited by Dorothy Dady, containing profiles on diasporic Anglo-Indians in various parts of the English-speaking world. I had the pleasure of meeting Dorothy in Richmond in November when she gifted a copy of her book to me. Reading the material it contains carefully has been a deeply enriching experience and I hope that she will now assist me in networking with the many Anglo-Indians of all ages based in the UK whom she had the occasion to meet through her work.

At 8.45 am, when I finished reading the book, I finally got out of bed to eat my breakfast frittata (with a sausage and coffee—I am trying to avoid carbs) and take a shower. By 10 am, I was heading out the door and walking to Fleet Street to take the bus to Trafalgar Square as I wanted to see a bit more of the 17th century European paintings. Trying to locate them through the basement online catalog took me a good half hour and left me with another half hour to browse through a couple of the galleries before I hurried to the Reception desk in the Sainsbury Wing to catch the 11. 30 am “taster” tour of the collection, which was given by a docent named Elizabeth Allen. I was rather disappointed by the tour because it covered only 5 paintings and dwelt on them in so much detail as to become rather uninteresting after the first five minutes. She chose to present The Battle of San Romano by Paolo Uccello, an Altarpiece of the Madonna and Saints by Andrea Mantegna, The Finding of Moses by Nicolas Poussin and a version of the same subject by …. And Turner’s Hercules Deriding Polyphemus, which is considered the Number One item in the entire collection. A great deal of time was spent on the history of the museum and the manner in which the collection came to be accumulated and I often feel that viewers can always read this up on their own. It seems a pity to waste time while they are in the galleries on such extraneous information.

Then, I was hopping into a bus to get to Bloomsbury for the NYU Orientation Lunch for sophomores who have arrived in London for their spring semester. The luncheon that was held in The Venue in the ULU (University of London Union) building did not, thankfully, comprise the small tea sandwiches that I have grown to expect on every such luncheon menu. Instead, there was a decent hot lunch with Chinese Noodles with Mixed Vegetables, a Vegetable Lasagna and really good Chicken with Cashews in a Mushroom and Wine Sauce. Dessert was Lemon Cake and Chocolate Cake but having fuelled up on lunch, ( I was starving by the time I filled my plate), I merely tasted the cake and decided to forego the pleasure. The luncheon was a chance to meet my colleagues again and catch up with them and to force myself to think about the return to the grindstone next week.

After lunch, I spent about an hour in my basement office catching up on my email, which I finally managed to retrieve. I discovered that there are only 2 students registered to take my South Asian Civilization course. However, since one of them needs it to fulfill a degree requirement, it cannot be dropped. Dean Schwarzbach has suggested that I run it as an independent study course rather than a formal course, which means that it is now left to me to restructure it entirely as I see fit. I will probably meet with the students informally in my office in tutorial setting and I shall assign readings and movies to be watched by them in their own time. I am excited to have the opportunity to teach a course in this way—apart from the fact that this will now free up my Tuesdays leaving me with a regular teaching assignment just once a week.

Since there was still daylight outside my basement window, I decided to take a bus ride to Hampstead Heath in order to be able to view London by night from Parliament Hill (so-called because Guy Fawkes and his fellow-conspirators met here to plot the overthrow of Parliament in the Gunpowder Plot and intended to watch the building blow up from this high vantage point!).

The Number 24 bus from Bloomsbury took me to Camden Town, which allowed me also to discover where the famous Camden Lock Market is located—perhaps something I shall explore tomorrow as I hear that it is mobbed on weekends. In less than half an hour, I was at Hampstead Heath and on asking for directions, found my way up Parliament Hill to a fine peak studded with wooden benches from which the sparkling lights of London’s landmark buildings made an appealing sight. Despite the fact that darkness had fallen, there were still enough people on the Heath walking their dogs and the setting reminded me very much of Salman Rushdie’s novel Fury as the male protagonist lives in Hampstead, as also of a number of movies I have seen in which scenes were shot on Hampstead Heath. I really did enjoy my twilight foray into this lovely park and I intend to return to it again when the weather turns warmer and the days are longer.

Back on the Number 24 bus, I arrived in Bloomsbury where I caught another bus home. To my disappointment, I discovered that while I am able to receive messages, I cannot send any. I also cannot access the Web from home. Deciding to make the most of the rest of the evening, I began scrap booking—putting into an album the pictures and other memorabilia that I collected on our August trip to Yorkshire and Scotland. Since I arrange all my photos in albums of uniform design—all with burgundy covers–I managed to bring one back with me from the States during my Christmas trip and it is this one that I can now fill with my clippings. I spent a good hour and a half doing this before I decided to get myself some dinner.

Jetlag is still dogging me and I find myself nodding off by 8 pm and awaking at 5am. Hopefully, I will be able to return to a more stable routine soon.