Facts n Fiction

Sunday morning, as usual, I got up lazily after 10AM, that too because of a knock on the door, it was my Manager who had brought Ganpati prasadam for us. It was Ganesh Chaturti – first day of the Ganpati festival. Had it not been for our Manager, we would have got no clue of this, in the foreign land. We then started discussing about how things are there back in India on this particular day, only to be disrupted by our empty tummies shouting for tea and breakfast. Later during the day, we planned a visit to The History Museum. I had had enough of stones, monuments, crystals, animals, birds and so on during previous day’s visit to Oxford. Yet, I accompanied the group thinking it was better than getting bored at home. Going around the glass cases in the museum showcasing stones and crystals seemed like a repetition, my legs were aching already; my eyeballs were almost to fall out looking at the old stones, of which I understood nothing, at one point calcium, lime, potassium appeared ...

Relishing the sweetness of modaks and festivities of Mumbai in my dreams, I woke up with the alarm clock shouting into my ears at 6.30 AM on the Saturday morning. I was headed to Oxford (yes the Oxford of the much renowned Oxford University) with couple of my other friends. As planned, we started in time and the journey was pleasant – I slept nicely in the car for most part of the journey :-D. We took a nice tour around the town and it was refreshing. The architecture and the landscapes are astonishing – see it, feel it, believe it. I got to see some colleges of fame, the cathedrals and the parks, and got an insight to their history as well – too confusing now, can’t remember most of it, as it was full of Williams, Henrys, Edwards and so on. Took a round of some adjoining museums, I would explicitly cite something about the Pitt Rivers Museum. It houses over 500,000 archaeological and anthropological collections since its foundation in 1884. Looking around the items was an experi...

Last week, Friday, ended little dull. No, it wasn’t a hectic work week. It wasn’t something that made me utterly homesick either. Friday evenings are usually something that I enjoy the most. With a beer tin my hand and headphones plugged onto my ears I walked towards a park for an evening stroll. It was a bit tough to enjoy the songs, and surprisingly the beer as well. Wanting to divert my mind, I called up a friend in Mumbai and talked with him for several minutes. Out of the blue I hear a screeching loudspeaker in the background, disturbed, I asked my friend about it. ‘Arey wo Ganpati ka preparations hai na, Sunday se Ganpati chalu ho raha hai’ (kindly excuse that, he is a catholic :-]), came the reply. Ah! Yes, it was the time of the Ganpati festival back there in India; and Mumbai must be ringing with excitement. ‘So much I miss that environment’ , I thought. No, I am not a religious person who does daily prayers or worships. However, Ganpati festival has always made me feel excit...

It is a little over a month that I am here in London and surprisingly I haven’t missed much of my many past years in India (read Mumbai and Pune), and I still am not – I am not going through any of those home sick kind of feelings, not yet at least. Nonetheless, during nothing-to-do times, certain things keep calling me back home, all of which may really sound absurd and evidently they are: The Hindi Galis – I really really miss the hard hitting, punching, and one-tight-slap-like our vernacular galis. It seems like it has been ages that I have heard the real Maa-Bhen stuff, or even used my favourites “chu…” and “IZ” tags. There are no street fights here, no any careless crossing of roads and hence no furious drivers, no frustrated rickshaw drivers or bus conductors, and thus the tedium. Chinese ka gadi – I have loved the food here, especially the bakery items, the yoghurts (the Greek style one is just yummy), and most of the non-veg stuff. However, at times I pine for the tangy...

So our King Khan, Mr. Shahrukh is detained at an airport in the US and the Master-Marketer has blown the issue out of proportion. It seems that the name “Khan” was the root of the problem and the Bollywood superstar was questioned for couple of hours. Then; SRK shocked, politicians telephoned, embassy people run for rescue, new channels blabber away with breaking news of racial profiling, and Bollywood crazy-emotional people give all sorts of galis to the US officials. Shahrukhji, you could be the world for some and God for many, but that’s in India. On a foreign land, you are just one among many who land at the port of entry and for the officers you are just another traveller. It is quite acceptable of the officers who were diligently performing their duty, the law & security regulations there, probably see one and all with equality, unlike what happens in our country. You may a great personality here in India but certainly not a VIP in some other country. It is not always neces...

From the time when I started my journey to London and amidst making lists of “what-to-do” and “what-not-to-do”, one thing that constantly sprawled my mind was to see the “London Stock Exchange” (LSE), I am kind of obsessed with stock markets. Also, a close friend cum stock market analyst partner of mine had battered enough LSE into minutest of my brain cells. I had to see the London Stock Exchange, one of the largest stock exchanges in the world! My busy and tiring schedules kept pushing my LSE plans away, and they had now drifted so much that the expiry day, last Thursday of the month, was fast approaching :-]. I had to close my call, not that I would have been indebted to huge sum, but rollover is something which I had never practiced. Tuesday morning (yesterday), I decided that I will go and see the London Stock Exchange. Out of terrible excitement and curiosity to see the London Stock Exchange, I had finally located it on the road map. In the evening, after completing my day’s work...

Finally! After all the nail-biting delays and amidst the nervousness, confusion and excitement, I reached London - my first international trip. Frankly speaking, I could not believe for initial 2-3 days that I am in London. Every time I travelled the areas around my office and place where I am currently staying I felt that I was in Mumbai, South Mumbai to be precise, everything resembled so well, almost, tall buildings, double-decker buses, trains, platforms, people rushing in and out of the platforms (like what I have seen at Churchgate station in Mumbai). Gradually, however, I started getting the feel of London with so many white people around walking around in business suits, chilling temperature, and shops that displayed price tags in pounds. I am here finally; for all who know what it took me to be here will understand this better. A week old in London, I have adjusted pretty well and doing quite fine, I have been hogging on non-veg everyday – meat of all sorts with curry, rice, a...