221 B Baker Street

I will be able to check off one item from my bucket list today. I finally DID visit 221B Baker Street today, the most famous address in this world! Our original plan was to visit the tower bridge today but we got on the wrong tube. When we saw that the next station was "Baker Street", by no means could we not get down!

The house looked so familiar to me, like I almost knew what to expect! After Mr. Lestrade let us through the front door, we climbed 17 steps to go to their drawing room, Holmes' tobacco stuffed Persian slippers were there, his letters stuck by a knife on the mantle, his chemicals in one corner on a table, the bright polished silver coffee pot on which he could see the reflection of Dr. Watson examine Mortimer's walking stick, even the bullet pockmarked VR on the wall!

I have always imagined Sherlock Holmes like this

Then we went to see Homes' and Watson's bedrooms. Holmes was reading a book on bee keeping and it had a book mark in there. He had photographs of all those notorious criminals on his bedroom wall. there was also his box for makeup which at times came so handy! Dr. Watson's room was typical of a doctor with books on medicine and anatomy. There were his pictures on the wall, one was of him in Afghanistan.

Everything were in perfect order! It just looked like they were out for a walk and might be back any time now. They would come, leave their overcoats and hats and sit in the two comfortable chairs on either side of the fireplace. Then over a pipe or a drink they'll talk about the latest mystery that they are solving...

Here we go...Victoria and Albert Museum and my thoughts on Harrods

Our flight timing was really great at helping us avoid a jet lag. We both slept very well and was not at all tired when we landed. We were just hungry! We got into a black cab and drove towards the Rembrandt Hotel at South Kensington. The black cabs have a totally modern interior but the outer shell has stayed on the same from time immemorial! Same about the red double deckers. They are no longer from Leyland, these were all Volvos but they look just the same!

Victoria and Albert museum

South Kensington felt so much like the Park Street/Esplanade area of Calcutta! Complete with a 'metro station' if you will :)

After having authentic fish and chips with mushy peas for lunch near South Kensington tube station, we walked over to Victoria and Albert museum which was literally across the street from our hotel.

The structure of the museum has an uncanny resemblance to the Indian Museum in Calcutta (our dear old Jadughar) but this one was HUGE! Those innumerable galleries about art, sculpture, Renaissance, middle age...that too divided into different parts of the world absolutely overwhelmed us! We realized promptly that it is impossible to tour the museum if we want to stop at every exhibit, so we started to skim over the displays. I know it is a grave injustice to the people who carefully collected those items and to those who maintain them. But I am sorry! It will take us months to tour London in that way!

After completing our round at the V&A museum, we started walking along Thurloe place towards Harrods. Google maps had told me before that Harrods is only 8 minutes away, so we decided to see what that world famous store was like.

On the way we saw a National Geographic store. We had no idea that Nat Geo had stores so we got in that. It was a pretty decent little store with maps and magazines and wildlife stuffed animals. We liked it. It was exactly what you'd imagine a Nat Geo store to be like :)

Thurloe place, near Harrods

Harrods looked very good from outside. A grand facade from the old days... I imagined Beatrice from
"Rebecca" entering it to buy the lamp she gifted her friend's daughter on her wedding. But it was not really that impressive inside. First of all there were too many people. There were gourmet chocolates and caviar and what not on the first floor, and upstairs were clothing and stuff. I expected them to be costly, yes, but when I saw a pen worth 4000 pounds, it was too much! I guess that's how people "waste" money. The worst thing in there was a hookah bar! Probably the last thing I expected to see inside Harrods. It was so middle-eastern, totally unlike the image we have of London. The smell of the tobacco made me almost sick. So we left the store. Definitely not our type!

We walked back to the hotel and then we realized how tired we actually were. I remember going to bed at 7:30. The jet lag part kicked in later as we both got up at around 2:30 in the morning feeling so fresh. But we were hungry too...so we ate the leftover fish and chips!

The city and the people

In Bengali, the words "bilet" (meaning England or Great Britain) and America come together in common conversation. "Bilet-America" would mean the western world and in most cases it is used like this - "In Bilet-America, no one would let you throw trash on the streets" or "in Bilet-America, people cannot afford to keep domestic helps". As the words go together while growing up, we had the notion that the places are similar. Later, when I knew that the places are NOT similar, there grew a fascination to compare them. I couldn't help it...

Here are my findings...

The city

Very crowded...too many people going about the city all the time, in the underground, on buses, there is never a dearth of people. Looking at parts of Oxford Street from the double decker I had a hard time convincing myself that it was NOT Calcutta.

The streets are old and narrow and quite unclean at places, especially near the tube stations. There are a lot of "rubbish" on the stairs of the underground.

House of H. G. Wells

The houses are quite small compared to here. The buildings look massive but they are separated into things like town houses that share common walls. And mind it, those are old. It's not that the city now doesn't have much space, this concept came from the nineteenth century.

The city is seeped in history. Almost every corner would remind you of that. They have preserved this history beautifully. They don't let you forget that they have a rich history. And they always keep uplifting the Royal stuff. I don't know if it should come under the city or the people, probably both. The Times has half a page of news everyday about the Royal family, where the Queen went, whom she met with. Where Prince of Wales was, what he inaugurated the day before, whom did the Princess Royal give a "Royal Charter" to, etc. etc. etc. And they are very happy about it. The city is decorated with banners for the Queen's Jubilee and they are all eagerly awaiting William and Kate's baby!

What I personally liked about the city, other than the history is the transportation system. If you have a map and basic common sense, you can go anywhere you want to. The underground network is simply amazing. So are the red buses. I have used the underground a lot in Calcutta, but the one in London, with twelve lines and the lines under the river just bowled me over! I am extremely impressed by it. Changing lines is also very simple, you just follow directions...

The people

The people didn't impress me at all. I had to switch my mind to the Calcutta mode while going about the city... Unlike in the US, where everyone you see on the street smiles at you, the server at the restaurant welcomes you happily and everyone calls you by your first name, in London no one really cares! Everyone is very busy and when they talk to you, they call you sir or madam. They greet you with a curt "good morning" and no one would bother to smile at you or engage in small talk on your train ride.

BlackBerry Q10

Also, things are very formal. Men wear suit to work, they would carry briefcases and read newspaper in the underground. In the evening, they would religiously read the evening newspaper! Women are extremely well dressed and they don't wear jeans and tennis shoes to work. They wear very pretty dresses, formal ones to work and nice summer dresses else where with very pretty shoes and they all wear heavy makeup. I don't know if this is true for everyone in and around London or is a characteristic of the subset I saw.. but this bewildered me. Especially because I often wear destructed denim and flip flops to work.

Another thing I didn't like is the way they treat "the rest of the World". It is a common human belief that Americans don't know that the rest of the World exists, but I'd say the British are way worse. The guide who took us on the Lord's Cricket Ground tour was talking about the Australians as the "colonials"!!! Quite a few people I met also said derogatory things about Americans and there were two articles that I read on the weekend supplement magazines that came with The Times that said really bad stuff about American fashion and some celebrities. It's not that I personally think Paris Hilton to be a great person, but I wouldn't write an article and call her "the dumb blonde" when she hasn't done anything bad to me.

One thing though... there are a LOT of Blackberry users :D This I liked!

Introduction to en-UK

Queen's English....

When we were small, we were encouraged to read The Statesman and listen to BBC so that our English would improve. By English, we knew that is the "Queen's English". "American English" was not considered as something we should learn, maybe as a remnant of the colonial past, India still considered it good to imitate the British way of life.

South Kensington

I forgot about the difference in English after settling down in my US life. Words like "last name", "parking lot", "elevator" and "bell pepper" came easily to me. Funny thing is that when I speak in Bengali, I say "lift" but when conversing in English I say "elevator". While we were planning for the trip to London, we laughed about words like "lorry" and "car park" and about driving on the left side of the road. The first blow came the moment I put my foot on the British Airways flight. After telling the flight attendant that my seat was right next to Arnab's (who had just got the direction on where to go), he said, "lovely!"

Next was another flight attendant bringing a "trolley" and asking if we'd like to have a "cuppa tea".

In the "toilets" it said - don't flush "rubbish" and there was a specific place to dispose off "nappies"!!!

More is coming... I know. It's hard to believe that it is the same English language!!!

The London connection

Of all the things I love most in my life - from books to movies, cricket and cars, most of them, quite surprisingly have a London-connection. For example, Sherlock Holmes. He is one of the most loved fictional character (if not the most loved) in my life. While reading his stories over and over again, I have walked with him and Dr. Watson through the alleys of London multiple times. Also, of all the things I read in English literature other than Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women" and Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, I don't know if there is any other story from outside England that I love. Tennyson's and Wordsworth's poems, Conan Doyle's, Agatha Christie's, Jerome's and du Maurier's writings, Newton-Cavendish-Maxwell's theories and Nightingale and Livingstone's philanthropy have always made me go visit London.

There is another connection. That is of Calcutta.

The "other" Lansdowne Road

People from outside Calcutta may laugh at me when I say there are a lot of similarities between London and Calcutta. I wouldn't mind if you laugh, I don't blame you either. Looking at the state of Calcutta now, I understand that the crowded dirty streets by no means have any connection with London, but it had, once.

Long long back when the British established the foundation of Calcutta, they made it to mirror London. The same names of streets, the same structure of buildings are still present in Calcutta. I want to go see that too...It is difficult to explain how I feel in this regard, it makes me sad at times for my home city which has fallen from grace decades back...but we can't disregard the similarities...


Let's see what London has in store for us...