Day 2:
Diya, my friend from University, and her diminutive husband
Shaun, took a train to London from Sheffield to attend the races at Ascot and
visit the perambulating Basu family (us). We agreed to meet at the British
Museum at the sensible hour of 12 PM, because we were getting over our long
journey, and Mia was still very under the weather from her cold.
We reached at 12-30, anticipating a lot of tsk-ing about
Indian Standard Time, only to hear Shaun had fallen ill and that they would be delayed.
One doesn’t wait around with a toddler straining at the
leash. (Purely a figure of speech; though I got over my horror at the idea of
child leashes once Mia developed the habit of dashing off the moment you let go
of her. Walk a mile in a parent’s shoes, and all the things that shocked you
seem sensible very soon.)
So we decided to begin our tour of the sprawling British
museum sans our friends. The Pompeii exhibit was the reason why Diya and Shaun
had proposed meeting here in the first place, so we headed there first. Tickets
were sold out till 4 PM, so we decided to explore the rest of their extensive
collection instead. To quote an Englishman I spoke to there, “Everything that
we stole from the rest of the world.”
This was a week before the MoMA episode, so we innocently
believed we had Mia’s vote for this course of action.
We ended up quickly rolling a loudly wailing stroller from
one hushed, venerable room to another, as though the target was to have been in
every room rather than concentrate on the artefacts. Luckily, photography was
allowed here; and Jeet took enough pictures for me to pore over at length back
in Bangalore and consider myself satisfied that I really had been to the
British Museum.
Shaun and Diya arrived when we were in the gift shop, by which
time Mia had given up on us and gone to sleep. We quickly decided to head to a
pub to have a pub lunch (and perhaps some tea for Poor Shaun). In quick
succession we rolled a sleeping Mia through one door of The Lolloping Lion, then
The Prancing pony, The Sleepy Hunter, The Ugly Duckling and the Frolicsome
Ferret and out the other as all the tables were taken. We finally found a café run
by a battalion of Russian-accented bodybuilders. We decided we would let Diya
do the ordering because we didn’t speak Russian-English or Bodybuilder.
Lunch of excellent lasagne and coffee done, Shaun went off
to keep his date with the museum while the rest of us struck out towards Covent
Garden. I have rarely encountered a more charming spot; with its bazaarish
ambiance and the relatively inexpensive little curios. This time we brought
away a stubby, disgruntled-looking Queen Victoria about the size of my thumb.
(Yes, yes ‘Anglophile’, etc…point me to such an adorable little Tipu Sultan or
Aurangzeb who looks like he had a bad fish for lunch, and I‘ll be glad to add
to my collection.)
We located the Tintin shop, and took such a while deciding
between the Tintin figurine in a space suit and Tintin and Snowy looking amazedly
at an enormous mushroom that Mia decided to hurry us up by trying to grab all
the bow-bows (figurines of Snowy) she could see. “She’s not very well and it’s
nearly naptime…” I explained as I restrained my flailing offspring. The butch
lady at the counter raised her eyebrows in a ‘I-really-don’t-give-a-crap, if-she-breaks-it-you-bought-it’ look. Tintin with the
mushroom thingy it was then and out we hurried, where Mia reverted to patient
tourist baby mode (albeit a slightly snotty one).
Even though we’d had a full meal about five minutes ago,
Diya announced we should go to one of her favourite places in Covent Garden, a
place frequented by the British since Arthurian times, praised by Shakespeare
in Corialanus, and Jane Austen in Emma. The Masala Zone. Though I sneer at most
Indians who land on foreign shores only to frenetically ask around for the
nearest dal-chawal joint (We were approached by two such individuals outside
the Staten Island Ferry in New York, looking decidedly malnourished); We had a
good chinwag over the excellent chaat platter and masala chai; and all four of
us licked our spoons clean. Mia did such a thorough job with her spoon that I
worried about erosion.
Unfortunately Diya and Shaun had to catch a train soon
after; so after a few hurried pictures together and hugs we made our way back
to the lovely home of our hosts – tired but happy.
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