I entered London with my own baggage, the baggage of my Indian origin. From East India Company to the British Raj and then the Quit India movement, till 1947 August 15th the stories are endless. The first East India Company that set foot on Indian soil for business was a Dutch company, the rest followed them. But it was the British who stayed back and the rest is history. Socio political history always leaves back a mark on the generations who live through it and also on the generations who come after.

I was born in a free India but to parents and grandparents who had lived part of their life in the pre – partition and pre-independence India. Our history has not bound us to bitter memories alone, it has also shaped us in many ways than we would like to admit. Since then we Indians have resurrected our country to another level, keeping the sacrifices of our freedom fighters in mind. We have reconstructed our country and moved on with time. As I entered England for the first time, I held on to this feeling of being an Indian very strongly, lest it gets snatched away! But no, that cannot be. I carry my roots, my culture, my skin colour, my heritage , my passport, my identity with pride and dignity.

Moving on to Chalk and Cheese journey, our train pulled into London Station on a bright and clear spring morning in the month of May. Chalk and Cheese stepped out of the station and in grand style Chalk hailed a hackney carriage for his lady. No matter how much I would have loved a horse driven carriage but it was not to be. The black cabs of London were also called hackney carriage. Lady Cheese was learning a few new things in this English country trip.

Chalk and Cheese were extra happy on reaching London for a very special reason. Our daughter, our ‘chalk-o-cheese’ was waiting for us in London. She was visiting her friends in Cambridge and Oxford and had planned to join us in London. Chalk and Cheese were excited like two children who have finally been united with their parent ! Roles were reversed. When your children start parenting you in their small little
ways, there is something soothing and comforting about letting go of the reins in their hands.

Letting go has its pros and cons too, specially when you have an over enthusiastic girl guide and two semi tired parents. My little girl gave us exactly ten minutes break at the hotel to catch our breath and then commanded “let’s go”. She had reached London five hours before us but behaved like she had been a Londoner all her life . She was wearing an oversized orange coat, a pair of well worn out walking shoes, a sling bag around her neck and a big big smile on her face. Sprinting ahead of us in her orange coat she looked like our Kessari tour guide. Chalk and Cheese started following their darling Kessari travels through the streets of London.

The daughter, aka.. Kessari travels takes us to The Regent Park and makes us climb up the Primrose hill. A panoramic view of London greets us at the top. William Blake the poet who lived in London had written: “I have conversed with the spiritual sun. I have seen him on Primrose hill.” We sat there for sometime, not conversing. In silence, we looked into the skyline, the London skyline. Come tomorrow and we had plans to see London city and more.

The Queen was gone, the new king had taken his throne, coronation week was over and London city was getting back to normal. Our tour guide (an elderly lady and a devoted fan of everything Victorian) shared a royal secret with us. She told us that we were very lucky because all the royal jewelry had been brought back from the Royal palace after coronation and would be on display for tourists in the Tower Of London,
adding that only she knew about this piece of information. But standing in a very long queue to enter the Jewel House it seemed that a lot of other people were also privy to this royal secret!

Chalk, Cheese and daughter entered the Jewel House to see the display of royal jewelry, The Kohinoor and The Crown. Everything glittered, the gold, the rubies, sapphires, emeralds and intricately cut diamonds. But we are Indians, our eyes thirsted for The Kohinoor. We cannot ever forget how Maharaja Ranjeet Singh had parted with the Kohinoor, our Kohinoor. Every Indian sees a sparkle of India’s glorious past in the twinkle of that one piece of diamond. We also stood in front of the Kohinoor for those few extra minutes, trying to see the glimpses of centuries in those fleeting minutes.

A city is so much like a book. It has its own story. The roads, alleys, buildings, people, food, travel, all of them are like individual characters telling us a story. The more you walk, the more you learn about a place. We walked from Big Ben (not before standing there, craning our necks to look up in amazement at the big clock tower) … to Trafalgar Square. On our way, 10 Downing Street made us stop in our path for a
while, after all we do have an Indian connection in there, don’t get me wrong, I was only thinking about Sudha Murthy!

Later in the day met a very dear girl from India who lives in London now. It is very impressive to see how happily young people make a new place completely their own. We had dinner together at ChinaTown. China town because Chalk and Cheese were craving for some good chinese food, that familiar sweet and sour taste which would strangely give us home food comfort.

Like a typical tourist I entered random shops picking up souvenirs while impatient Chalk and Kessari waited outside. We walked around Trafalgar Square, we combed through Covent garden markets. Sometimes we got lost, sometimes we were happy to find a red bus back to the hotel. We were very impressed with London’s public transport system. The underground metro and the red double decker buses were certainly very convenient mode of traveling. Our dear Kessari made us walk, travel and eat like locals.

Sightseeing cruise on Thames took us along the city and under the, London Tower Bridge, Waterloo Bridge and Westminster Bridge. The British don’t pronounce Thames like you and me do. Their H is silent. I learnt to pronounce their Thames their way, and now I want them to pronounce Ganga the way we do at home and not call it Ganges! Seeing the London Bridge our age old nursery rhyme is bound to play through the mind …

“London Bridge is falling down…
Build it up with gold and silver,
My fair lady.
Gold and silver we’ve not got,
We’ve not got, we’ve not got,
My fair lady. “

This nursery rhyme revolves around the dilapidation and the rebuilding or repairing of the London bridge time and again. Wonder where they went in search of gold and silver? Anyway, my story is about our travels with our dear Kessari. Chalk, Cheese and daughter were yet to see the castles of England, the Roman remains of Bath, buried centuries at Stone henge, a visit to Shakespeare’s house in Stratford-upon-Avon. Our anniversary was coming up, and the daughter had planned a day for us. All this and more in the next London chapter.

To be continued…..