Tag Archive | Brighton

Hello Dr. G!

Sep26

Friday, September 26, 2008
London

My friend, Dr. G, alias Firdaus Gandavia from Bombay, is here in London! I am so thrilled to see him! But for the fact that he was traveling from Brighton this morning and arrived at my place only at 12. 45, we could have taken the Oxford Tube and hotfoooted it to Oxford where we first spent a memorable summer 22 years ago.

Still, I had to be content with the one day he could spare with me in London in-between his travels in Portugal, Brighton and Hampstead. Felcy, my new maid, arrived this morning to clean my flat so it was quite spotless by the time Firdaus appeared. I had rustled up a salad in an attempt to finish up all the vegetables in my fridge since I am away for the weekend in Liverpool. So in went the lettuce and broccoli, blue cheese and walnuts in a mustard vinaigrette. I pulled out a Beef Lasagne from the freezer and two pots of stickey toffee pudding which I served with Sainsbury’s custard.

We caught up over appetisers–Waitrose fruit bread served with Gorgonzola cheese and hummus and Praline Spread from Le Pain Quotidien and glasses of red wine. Our meal was delicious and before long, we were off, intending to walk up to Hyde Park and to spend an afternoon on the Serpentine. Alas, that did not happen as our rambles were rather slow. I took Firdaus to campus to show him our NYU premises and my basement office and as we dodged the shoppers on Oxford Street and found the odd items he was seeking in Marks and Sparks, we realized that it was time time for him to return to his friends in Hampstead.

So we turned back and I said a goodbye to Firdaus, hoping to see him again in Bombay this coming January. After his departure, I sat on the phone with the helpdesk at Optimum Online and think that I have managed to synchronize my Outlook and webmail and, hopefully, now my online correspondence will go more smoothly. This took over an hour, after which I packed my backpack for my trip to Liverpool.

Rosemary called this morning to invite me to join her and a few friends for dinner at Malabar Junction this evening and I gladly accepted. And because I do not fancy the idea of waking up at 5 .15 am tomorrow to board the Liverpool coach at NIDO at 6 am, I requested my student Sarah Walsh to permit me to spend the night in her room as she has no roommate. She gladly agreed and Rosemary will drop me off to NIDO tonight. So glad that everything has been sorted out.

I am looking forward to a good time in Liverppool though my back pain is rather disabling and I am taking Crocin and applying Iodex to find relief. The weather promises to be fabulous all weekend long, so we should have a good time in Beatles Country!

My Kind of Day

Sep22

Monday, September 22, 2008
London

I had the kind of day that can only be described as perfect. Did a batch of laundry and cleaned my flat–still can’t believe how quickly I can finish that. Have finally mastered the brain behind the washer-cum-dryer concept and now my smalls are no longer getting fried and my clothes are emerging bone dry and do not need to get to an ironing board before they can be placed back in the closet.Yyeess!

Spent a few hours of the morning networking with my Anglo-Indian contacts and organizing the many names and addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses that are now pouring into my possession from all over the UK as people are helping me make connections. I will be spending at least one morning at my office this week sitting on the phone and making follow-up calls to set up interview appointments. I’m so glad that I had a breakthrough with Marina Stubbs in Brighton yesterday as that seems to have set the ball rolling.

Then, I made myself a sandwich lunch with everything that was in my fridge–multi-grain bread, hummus, olives, tomatoes, Stilton Cheese and Gorgonzola Cheese–and walked out into a very sunny afternoon. I headed straight for one of my favorite places in London, the National Gallery. Of course, I decided to take the scenic path there, past Covent Garden which had attracted only a few visitors until I arrived at the Jubilee Market which I discovered to be a covered antiques market. Of course, I could not resist spending a half hour browsing among the vintage jewelry and china bric-a-brac before I pressed on towards the Museum.

Part of my museum musing was also work as I need to identify the ten or fifteen paintings I will place on my own tour when I teach my Writing class at the Gallery on October 9. So heading straight for the research computers down in the basement, I spent the next half hour identifying the exact locations of a bunch of them based on the book I am using to study the works–The Guide to the National Gallery by Homan Potterton. It is my aim to go over every single one of the paintings in the Gallery in the next one year and I intended to study two or three rooms at a time. Well, I started at the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries and finished five of them, feasting my eyes upon the fabulous Piero della Francescas, the Giovanni Bellinis and the Andrea Mategnas in the Gallery’s collection while also studying some of the Albrect Durers.

Then, I sat on a bench and watched a few fat pigeons forage for food among the tourists as I munched my sandwich and took the shortest route I could to Green Park Tube station to embark upon one of the guided walks entitled “Spies and Spooks in Mayfair” from my book entitled 24 Great Walks in London. I discovered a place called Shepherd Market, the heart of the ‘village’ of Mayfair, Crewe House, one of Mayfair’s last existing mansions (today the Embassy of Saudi Arabia), two beautiful churches (Grosvenor Chapel where “coffee and cakes are served in the garden on the first Tuesday of each month”) and the Jesuit-run Church of the Immaculate Conception with its ornate Gothic interior and magnificent statuary, a wonderfully tucked-away park called the Mount Street Gardens where, during the Cold War, KGB spies are said to have congregated and left notes for each other on the park benches, the Claremont Club in Berkeley Square which sits cheek by jowl to the homes once occupied by writer Somerset Maugham, soldier and administrator Clive of India and Prime Minister Anthony Eden.

The terraced house occupied today by Maggs Bros Antiquarian Booksellers at Berkeley Square is reputed to be the most haunted house in London. There are many stories about the many apparitions that have been sighted here and the awful fate that has befallen those who did sight them. I also passed the Red Lion at 1 Waverton Mews, which, the book says, is singer Tom Jones’ favorite pub. At South Audley Raod, I passed by my very favorite shop in all of London–Thomas Goode and Co. that stocks the most fabulous china, porcelain and silverware that I have ever seen. The store is like a museum and every time I am in London, I love to spend an afternoon just feasting my eyes on the works of art represented by the painted porcelain on display for those with heavy wallets to purchase. I feel so indebted to this book for taking me into the secret niches of London that I would never have encountered on my own and, as always, these walks leave me with renewed appreciation and affection for this city.

Then, I hopped onto the Tube at Green Park and headed for the School of Oriental and African Studies where, in the Brunei Gallery, public intellectual, critic and journalist Clive Bloom who teaches Political Science and Culture at New York University was giving a public lecture on “The Idea of Britishness”. The auditorium was packed with NYU students taking the seminar on contemporary British culture and I was pleased to join them as part of the audience. Bloom’s lecture was jocular and serious in turn as he spelled out the uncertainties of identity that have plagued Britons in recent years as the influx of immigrants have increased and cultural polarities have grown. He did make jokes about the British penchant of pin-up girls in their tabloids, their obsession with Victoria ‘Posh Spice’ Beckham, their new vocabulary (chavs –a working class person with Burberry togs and bling, gingas–red-heads), and their idiosyncrasies–the English see the wearing of baseballs caps indoors as terribly disrespectful and consider curry their national dish. He was intensely proud of the fact that Chicken Tikka Masala was created in the British Isles and is unheard of in India.

So as I walked home briskly at 7. 15, I told myself that this was the kind of day I visualized when I was first told that I would be spending a year in London. It had all the ingredients that for me, at least, spell bliss–antiquing, studying Masterpieces in oil, discovering the hidden corners of a city on foot, and feeling intellectually stimulated at a public lecture given by an extraordinary speaker.

Brighton Beach Memoirs

Sep22

Sunday, September 21, 2008
Brighton

I would imagine that no matter how often one has seen the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, the experience till astounds. It certainly awed me all over again. Driving with my students in a huge “coach” (British for ‘bus’) across Surrey and Sussex to the “coast”, I revelled in the English spirit of “going to the sea-side”. We were blessed by a gorgeous day, certainly one of the best I’ve seen since my arrival in the UK. It started with a crisp bite in the air that warmed comfortably as the sun climbed higher in the cloudless blue skies.

On Brighton’s pebbly beach-front, spades and pails were conspicuously absent as the beach is devoid of sand. Fat pebbles in shades of yellow and orange cover the beach punctuated by those ubiquitous appendages of British beaches–the striped deck chair in pink and blue! Early morning joggers and dog-walkers were still about when we arrived there to be met by Wilf, one of the blue badge guides who then took us on a walking tour of the city.

A very proper, very dapper “Grandad” (as he described himself), Wilf (short for Wilfred?)explained the history of the famous Brighton Pier whose amusements have grown more high-tech with every passing year. Today, the entrance is crowded with food stalls (“slush puppies”, ice-cream, fish and chips and as a concession to multi-culturalism, hot dogs from the States and crepes from their “neighbors across the Channel”). Once on the pier,there is every kind of arcade game to keep kids and teenagers amused, in case the beach fails to appeal.

We crossed the street with Wilf and walked towards The Lanes, a maze of charming narrow streets lined with one-of-a-kind boutiques and shops. The sidewalks were completely taken over by craft stalls as Brighton celebrated “Streets for People Day” that kept all traffic off and made the maze a pedestrian plaza. Freebies galore delighted passers-by (bike light, the Body Shop’s Soothing Mint Foot Cream (did you know that Anita Roddick who founded The Body Shop was a Brighton gal whose experiments were carried out in her home kitchen?), pens, pencils, recyclable water bottles. Wilf continued with our troupe in an untidy crocodile across North Road to the North Lanes where we saw edgier shops (‘Vegetarian Shoes’ carried footwear made sans leather or other animal products) and more creative eateries before arriving at Jubilee Square. The festive fair-like atmosphere gripped us all when we arrived at the modern Library building, surprisingly open on a Sunday, and arrived finally at the Brighton Dome, the enclosure that once coralled King George IV stables of horses. Finally, we arrived in the Pavilion Gardens with their many elephant topiary to which so many fascinated children clung.

The elephants were, of course, appropriate, as the onion domes, minarets and finials that decorate the confection that is the Royal Pavilion came into view. Everyone knows the history of Brighton but it bears repeating because it is so fanciful. When George IV was the Prince Regent (because his father George III was still alive but had been pronounced “insane”), he escaped the prying court of London to buy himself a small farmhouse in which he could dally with his mistress Maria Fitzherbert as he loved the tang of Brighton’s salt-air. Eventually, when his father died and he became king, he was able to hire the services of London’s best known architect John Nash who was instructed to turn the modest farmhouse into an Oriental zenana. Taking his cue from pictures he had seen of the Taj Mahal and other Islamic buildings, Nash obliged creating a completely incongruous building in the midst of the sedate beach settlement that under the King’s patronage became one of the most fashionable beach resorts of the day (robbing Bath of its former glory and clientele!)

As if the exterior is inadequately exotic, the visitor is struck dumb by the interior design and decoration that is indescribably OTT (Over The Top) in every respect. Because his love for the exotic did not stop with the Middle East and India but extended to China, the inside has been conceived in the design of the Far East. Bamboo is everywhere–on the banister up the stairs, edging the pictures moldings, etc. But, mind you, none of this is real. For this is a Palace of Illusion and all the bamboo you see is wrought iron painted to look like bamboo, all the marble you see is wood faux-painted to look like marble. It becomes a game, after the while, to figure out how much is real and how much is an affectation.

When we passed into the Banqueting Hall, the Saloon, the Music Room, The Long Gallery, the interiors were so lavish and so overwhelmingly gorgeous in the paintings, chandeliers hung over with ferocious dragons and coiled around with fierce snakes, in the candelabra, in the gilded dishes and the porcelain and the silverware and finally arrived in the kitchen from which 100 dishes emanated each day, we were well and truly speechless. We had a very good guide who lovingly explained every detail and made our tour special.

By this point, I was starving and went out in search of a bite, but looking at my watch, I realized that I had just enough time to look for the meeting place called Bills on North Street where I had made plans to meet with Marina Stubbs who would become the first Anglo-Indian I would interview for my proposed study on immigrants in the UK. I had such a hard time trying to find Bills and her that I was ready for a beer in the nearest bar by the time we did touch base. My interview went off really well and we ended up walking to her home where I was able to take her picture and meet her young son Samuel. Away from all the tourist traps, Brighton is an unpretentious little city with very modest homes. The interior of Marina’s home, very tiny by American standards, featured a very narrow hallway that led to a living-cum-family room. Up a narrow stairway were the bedrooms, but, of course, these I did not see. I was happy to get a glimpse into her domestic life which added an extra dimension to the impressions of growing of Anglo-Indian in the UK which she shared with me during our interview. She is also a writer and I was pleased to meet someone else who shares my love for writing. Best of all, I was happy that
my research has finally taken off and that I was able to combine work with a day of pleasure.

Then, I was galloping off to meet our coach at the water front and spent the next three hours stuck in traffic so that we arrived in London all worn out. Back home, it was all I could do to vegetate in front of the “telly” watching the second part of Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the D’Urberbilles” that is on BBC One. As always, watching Tess’ plight in those horrible Victorian times is heart-breaking. I spent the next fifteen minutes chatting with Llew before calling it a night.

Thankfully, the blind man (pun intended!) arrived on Friday and fixed the blinds in my flat, so that I no longer need to fall asleep with an eye mask on! The darkened interior of my flat now make it feel so much more warm and cozy and offers privacy from the office building just across the street.

Pani-Puri and Paan at Southall

Sep21

Saturday, September 20, 2008
Hounslow and Southall

My day began on the Piccadilly line headed for Hounslow East to see my Dad’s cousin, Sybil, whom I remember with great affection as having given me a memorable time when I arrived in London for the very first time 22 years ago. She lived then in a sprawling home called ‘Wheelspin’ in Guildford, Surrey. Alas, asthma, lack of exercise and dependence on a nebulizer has reduced her to a couch potato who spends her days staring at a TV screen and swallowing the soap operas (though, not necessarily, digesting them) and the competitive reality shows. Some things never change–she still watches Coronation Street and it was deja-vu for me all over again watching her watch the goings-on on the UK’s longest-running soap. Craving now for company, she kept worrying me to spend a weekend with her but I had, regretfully, to inform her that my weekends are all spoken for. Tomorrow I head for Brighton, the weekend after for Liverpool, the weekend following that to Barcelona, so I was glad I made the time to see her today.

Her ex-husband Joel picked me up at the Tube station and drove me, first to a gigantic Tesco from where I ended up purchasing some desserts as the prices were so laughably cheap compared to the the arm and leg prices I’ve been paying for all groceries at Marks and Spenser Simply Food and Sainsburys. And to my astonishment, I discovered that they sell packets of idli-sambar-chutney and masala dosa in the Tesco Freezer section! And at very reasonable prices too for Hounslow is London’s Little India! Joel picked up two packets and I feasted that afternoon on lunch in their 3-bedroom flat.

When we had caught up with family news on both sides–Sybil inquired after my family members in Bombay and I learned about all my distant relatives here in the US–she returned to her soaps while Joel followed the horse-racing at Eyre in Scotland, placing long-distance bets on horses that did not bring him any moolah at all. It seems he spends his days playing the horses and his nights at the poker table where he is quite an ace. The many poker trophies he has won at competitions attest to his expertise as a card sharp.

In the evening, after he had served me a mean upkari–studded with dal and mustard seeds and flavored with green chilli–Joel drove me to Southall, the Punjabi stronghold of London since the 1950s and allowed me to soak in the ethnic atmosphere of this colorful quarter. Rhinestone studded salwar-khameez suits, gold bridal jewelery, spices and condiments in the grocery stores, sweetmeats galore (fresh jalebis being fried on the streets were soaked in concentrated sugar syrup and sold straight off the boiling vat to salivating customers) and street food in the form of North Indian chaat was everywhere. I felt as if I was on the streets of Bandra, Bombay, as we stood and relished plates of pani puri made with just the right sweet-sour-spicy-salt combination, then soothed our burning tongues with the jalebis. I nipped into the grocery store (Tutu Cash and Carry) and bought some spices at prices that would put the English grocery stores out of business and some sauces (chilli sauce, soy sauce). Then, just when we were headed back to our car, Joel spied the paanwalla and wanted to treat me to a mouthful of betel nuts wrapped in two betel leaves. Having never acquired a taste for paan, I declined, but he got himself a sweet paan for a pound, then drove me back to Hounslow from where I jumped into a train that was full of new arrivals from Heathrow headed into London–some jetlagged and travel-weary, others chattering nineteen to the dozen obviously excited to be in London.

I recalled the feeling I had one month ago while on the same train and thought to myself–so much has happened since I arrived and yet, it is so hard to believe that a month has passed already! Time has certainly flown and I have done nothing substantial yet.

Got home exactly an hour later to find that my Anglo-Indian contacts are slowly responding to my initial queries. I have begun to set appointments to see them and tomorrow shall be meeting Marina Stubbs in Brighton.