Saturday, May 30, 2009
Calais, France

I awoke at 6 am to check my email as I had a couple of things to do (such as shower and eat brekky) before I left my house at 7. 50 to stroll down to Theobald’s Road where I met my friend Sushil for our trip to Calais. We started punctually and were all set to hit the coast when, less than three mintues into our drive, I realized that crossing the channel meant an international journey and I had left my passport at home! Oh no!!! I uttered a cry. Sushil looked at me and said, “What?” I responded, “Oh my God…I’ll need some form of indentification, won’t I?” as if I were speaking to myself. “Your passport!” he said…and next thing I knew, we were making a U-turn and a huge detour to get back to my place (which, fortunately, was only two minutes away). I ran upstairs, pulled it out from my bag and was down and in the car again in two ticks–but, boy, was that a close shave or what!!??!!

So back on the road again, this time heading east as Sushil hoped to beat traffic, the GPS insisted on taking us over every side street instead of putting us on the motorway, but a painful half hour later, we were entering Kent and heading on to Folkeston. Yes, we were going to make it after all, we thought.

But when we arrived at the boarding dock for the Euro Tunnel, we discovered that check-in for our 10. 32 train had closed five minutes before we arrived there. No harm, no foul. We were placed on the next train at 11. 32 which gave us enough time to use the facilities and wander around the duty free area. Within 10 minutes, we were going through the ticketing and immigration formalities (ah, thank goodness it was not at that point that I realized I had no passport with me!) and then we were entering the train.

Now, I had started this journey with the mistaken notion that our car was going to be loaded on to the ferry and that I would glimpse the white cliffs of Dover again! I was SO mistaken! In fact, Sushil had tickets for the Eurotunnel train that uses the same tracks as the Eurostar (which is a passenger service while this one is exclusively for vehicles). I have never seen a train like this one and it was a very exciting and very different experience indeed. Your car enters what looks like an endless goods train. It is basically a very long stainless steel box with very small windows. There are two tiers to the train which means that smaller vehicles can be loaded on two levels. Coaches can also board the train.

In a few mintues after the train started, prompt to the last second, it disappeared underground. It was time for a nap and both Sushil and I pushed our seats back and tried to sleep. Half an hour later, we were emerging into France, driving out of the train and using the GPS to find our way to the large supermarket called Auchan where Sushil intended to do his shopping. It was then that I realized I could do some shopping too. And when I saw the prices…boy, was I amazed and delighted! The food prices were so low (compared to London ones) that I thought I was back home in the States again!

Naturally, despite the fact that I have been trying to empty my fridge and freezer in time for my move, I ended up buying a number of French gourmet goodies that I know I will enjoy in the remaining few weeks of my stay here in London: rocquefort cheese, all sorts of pate, mackerels in mustard sauce, smoked ham and even tubs of chocolate praline ice-cream! Sushil dashed around madly with a purpose, making three trips, to fill his car.

By the end of an hour, when I had browsed enough over the rest of the supermarket, we sat down to have lunch at a bistro: a typical French meal of steak-frites with a glass of Stella Artois beer (as it was far warmer in France than it was on the other side of the Channel).

And then we were doing the reverse journey: boarding our train again for the return to England, passing through immigration and arriving at Folkestone, where we drove westwards towards Sevenoaks to the home of Owen, one of Sushil’s Anglo-Indian friends, who had agreed to be interviewed by me.

Interviewing another Anglo-Indian in Farmingham, Kent:
This is probably the furthest I have traveled to interview an Anglo-Indian and Owen is probably one of the most unusual Anglo-Indians I have interviewed so far for my study. He arrived in England at the age of 16, met and married his English wife Barbara in Sussex where he grew up on a farm, completed his A levels then went on to University to gain a Bachelors and a Masters Degree in Engineering and had a brilliant career with the American Ford Motor Company that posted him all over Europe for the next forty odd years. Owen’s English grandfather was a physician in the British army in India which brought the family a great deal of prestige and privilege–privilege that allowed him to have the best education money could buy at Cathedral School in Bombay where he grew up. His daughter is also a physician (the first second-generation Anglo-Indian with whom I have become acquianted in this country who has entered the medical profession as a doctor).

With his wife of nearly thirty years, Owen lives in a charmingly decorated English country home with the most enchanting garden at the back filled with roses and hanging baskets and a bird bath! As if to blend perfectly with this image of the English idyll, Barbara brought out a typical English tea: scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam, chocolate biscuits and a large bowl of hulled strawberries and cups of English tea and there we sat in the garden enjoying this lovely afternoon meal while the birds twittered around us and the distant sounds of a race course reached our ears from over a hill that loomed high up right where their tiny garden ended.

More conversation followed about Owen’s interesting background and then we adjourned into the living room so that I could continue with the interview. Owen is expansive and voluble and tends to go off at a tangent very easily. Given that Sushil was in a hurry to get back to London, I had to reign him in frequently and bring him back to the main thrust of my questions. But I found him deeply reflective and highly articulate and he was a very interesting person to talk to. As I have said repeatedly, every single one of the Anglo-Indians I have spoken to has a different story to tell but with Owen I was definitely speaking to someone that I would describe as ‘elite’–though Owen doesn’t see himself in this guise at all.

Dinner with Tim and Barbara:
In less than an hour, we were back in Holborn with Sushil dropping me right outside my building.

My lovely neighbors Tim and Barabra had just returned from their travels in the States (Seattle and Yellowstone National Park). They received a raucous ‘Welcome Back’ hug from me and catching me in the elevator vestibule on the third floor, they asked me to join them for dinner to which they were headed. As I really wanted to spend some time with them before I left the building, I merely dashed inside my flat, left my food puchases in my freezer and fridge respectively and was off with them. En route, we stopped off at my new digs at Denmark House as I wanted Tim (who is an IT specialist) to see if he could set me up on the internet. When we arrived there, he noticed an ethernet box to which I could gain a connection and when we returned home after dinner, he gave me a really really long cable that would allow me to connect from the main desktop computer in the office there to my laptop computer in my room. I am hoping, however, that I will have wireless internet services in a day or two in the new place.

Then, off we went for dinner to Exmouth Market, off Farringdon Road, a part of London that I will now have to discover as it will become my new stomping ground. It is a lively, vibrant part of the city and was full of youngsters as there is a community center of sorts attached to the local Holy Redeemer Church (we coudd not figure out whether it is Catholic or Anglican though Barbara pointed out that it could become the church at which I will attend servcies). Of course, I have decided that tomororow, being Pentecost Sunday, I will attend service at the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields at Trafalgar Square as I have not been there for a service yet (though I have visited it and have actually attended a musical concert there, a few years ago, when my cousin’s son Sudarshan took me off to listen to Talvin Singh create fusion music that was very good indeed).

We settled down for dinner at Sofra Greek restaurant–whose Piccadilly branch I had been to a few months ago with my friend Rosemary and her friend Lizzie. There we ordered a variety of cold and hot mezzes (hummus, broad beans, imam bayildi and then chicken on wooden skewers, lamb kofte, battered squid) which was served with very tasty bread. We had started our evening with beer and ended it with desserts to share: marinated apricots stuffed with cream cheese and chopped pistachios and cherry cheese cake. Tim had a Turkish coffee which seemed to be made up entirely of a concentration of coffee grounds! Over dinner, we chatted about their most interesting travel experiences in America which, as usual, kept me laughing.

When we arrived home, they invited me to their flat to take a look at some of their pictures of Yellowstone and to see the video that Tim shoots from the most interesting angles. These he played with his TV set while Barbara showed me her shots of wild Alpine flowers and animal bones! Then the video of Old Faithful began to play and I saw the steaming hole in the ground from which boiling water periodically gushes up. What is wonderful about these videos is that you not only have the incredible sights of the geyser shooting up but you had the animated exclamations and cries of the onlookers that were more entertaining that the sight itself! I left them some of my books and asked them to keep the ones they wanted and return the rest to me–I will donate the unwanted ones to the nearest Oxfam in Bloomsbury.

Then, I was home, so heavy of heart because I would be spending my very last night in this darling flat that I have grown to love so deeply and which will always be tied in my mind with the happiest of memories. Far from being lonely here, I have been fully engaged and in this incredibly productive space, I have done SO much writing throughout this past year! Indeed, as I leave it, I know that I will be leaving a small part of my heart at High Holborn and I promise that no matter how often I return to London (as I hope to do frequently in the years to come), I will always visit this building again–as one would return to a beloved monument in a beloved city!

And on that nostalgic and very sentimental note, I dropped off to sleep.