Well... looks like I managed to dodge the deluge, riots and the terror in Mumbai by stepping out of this city for a week...ironically carrying with me a book titled "City of Gold"- a biography of Bombay....
Anyways let me start at the beginning....as most might know already I have resigned from ELP ... and I am taking a one month break before joining the grind machine once again with the top law firm in Mumbai....so off I went to UK for a holiday....now most might wonder why I spent money to go to a place that I had already been to before.......it was partly to connect with a city that I had lived in for a year...and partly to see places that I did not have a chance to see while I was in the UK (mainly due to student budget constrains)..... I still remember my flight to London as a student on an Air India flight... I felt so at home on the flight- in fact I thought we had reached Ahmedabad instead of London cos of the many Gujus on the flight (no offence to my Gujju friends..but guys you are everywhere)...
so there I was touring UK after a period of two years....rekindling all my memories... the special (and mostly importantly cheap) place called "Lolita" where I used to eat delicious "Shawarma" in.... the No 15, 23 and 7 buses that I used to take to LSE everyday....the grocery store I used to shop in....LSE.... etc etc... also managed to make a trip to Lake District and Scotland...
the one thing that always surprises me about UK is their ability to market every simple event as a geat event... there are plaques everywhere commemorating an event or honouring a resident ... for instance "Alexander Graham Bell lived here" or the "queen stood here and delivered a speech in 1993" or "the king fell down from a horse here and lost two teeth (both of which are kept in the museum nearby)" etc etc... in India it is a different story altogether- most often we dont know where anything happened ....I discovered Tilak lived somewhere in Crawford market after living in the city for about 4 years.......
another characterstic that amazed me was their ability to preserve their natural beauty...the natural beauty of Scotland is preserved by a trust which runs on the charity and contributions made by the citizens..... an amazing way to get the locals involved in....
ofcourse there are things that baffled me as well.... for instance in Lake District we trekked up about 4 kms to see what was called the "mysterious stone circle"...which to me appeared to be nothing more that simple, unimpressive, ordinary stones arranged in a circle....leading my friend to comment "maybe the tourism department got the stones and arranged it here to make it a tourist attraction"... well you cant rule that out also...but that didnt prevent the chinese, japanese and european tourists from taking pictures of it....well to confess even I did (see above)...and one of the main tourist attractions in Lake District was the satellite image of baby Ospreys (a kind of a bird-yeah even I heard that for the first time) which had apparently started breeding after a loooooooong break of 5 years....so the place was crowded with kids and families who had driven up to see the live satellite images of the ospreys babies...not to mention the osprey Souvenirs that were being sold....hmmmmm I wonder whether I could make some money off Bunty like that(my erstwhile housemate - a pigeon who just loved shacking up outside my bathroom) ....
All in all a very enjoyable trip.... I really feel lucky to have been able to do this....Now I am off to Kerala for two weeks where I will be languishing against the backwaters.... Ofcourse it being the top 10 holiday destinations of the world is
an added incentive....
P.S.- All this was ofcourse marred by the bomb blasts in Mumbai... I knew most of my friends dont take the train at that time so I was ok...but it still shocked me for a while....in London they were observing the 1 year anniversary of attacks on the london tube and here I was sitting and watching my city getting struck by terrorist attacks.... comparing both, my friend in london pointed out that its amazing how little we saw of the police at the scene of the blasts in Mumbai..... Well Mumbai and its residents- heres to you once again....
No comments:
Post a Comment