"We are such stuff as dreams are made on" -- The Tempest // The Newb of The Tube

We’ve been living in London for exactly a month now, and still I am not yet past the phase of pinching myself to see if this spectacular life is some construct of my too-vivid imagination. If it is, dreaming has never been better. And, in many ways, London is a surreal fantasyland. It’s the chimera of the Underground that has transfixed me particularly of late.

This can't possibly be real life.

People are hurtled through subterranean passages, careening on wild metal carriages that snake beneath famous streets and buildings above, all in the name of getting from A to B. It seems I spend most of my time on the Tube (in reality the ratio is 1/12 of my average day, right between walking up and down stairs and monopolising the toaster). It is fascinating to be a daily part of something so microcosmic as the London Underground.

Business people, travelers, immigrants, party girls (though I don’t enthusiastically suggest taking the train dressed for a neon rave if you’re at all phased by blatant stares), and thieves (no, seriously, a group of men the other day boarded at Tottenham Court Road lugging a flat-screen telly, its wires sticking out in a most hurried, suspicious manner) are ferried every minute to every inch of London.

Me and Casey after attending the neon rave of fresher's week.

However, these are the more colourful, rare instances on the Tube. Otherwise, what shocks me most about the Underground is how utterly silent it is. A single car, about 53 feet in length can be, and often is, stuffed to full capacity (which, legally, is 152 people) and still, I am able to discern which song a passenger several feet away from me is listening to on his iPod. Walking down a crowded corridor, too, I am met, not with the expected chaotic cacophony of hundreds of bustling travellers, but with the solitary ricochet of a chorus of the cool, clicking heels that carry their stone-faced wearers to each platform. There is something to be said about the British “stiff upper lip.”

Yesterday, I sat my first lecture at City University. It is an introduction to sociology. The professor is a bit militant, but our first lesson was thought provoking. He mentioned the Tube, and also remarked upon its detached passengers, from a sociologic perspective. The phenomenon is known as “civic indifference” and stems from a place of customary courtesy. According to Dr. Webster, it’s a well-known fact that if you talk on the Tube you are with a friend or from out of town. And, while it is true that I normally fall into both categories, if your face is six inches from mine and we are grasping the same pole, it would be nice if we acknowledged one another’s existence.

 Therefore, I will make it a goal to strike up a conversation with a random, safe-looking stranger on a Tube journey in the near future. Maybe I’ll get that stiff upper lip to crack a smile.

Voldemort.

Creeping on Ralph Fiennes after seeing him star in The Tempest for my Shakespeare course.

“Sitting in an English garden waiting for this sun; if the sun don’t come, you get a tan from standing in the English rain.” -- The Beatles

We had our first proverbial English rain last week, not that I mind, however. I adore the rain, frizzy hair, cute ‘brellies (of which I am now a proud possessor), soggy green grass and all. The English, as a people through history, are pretty big on their gardens and the gray skies and chilly drizzles that make them as fecund as they are. But what I have found even more interesting, is what seems to be growing in England’s cultural plots. The flora of customs is varied and sometimes indistinguishably entwined. Some of it is carefully cultivated, nurtured from brave green nascence, and tied to the old wooden stakes of tradition, and some of it grows unchecked, the societal weed that bursts through cracks in the once scrupulously tended solid-brick garden walls of London and struggles for a peek at the shy sun.

The beautiful garden at my home stay in Woking

Last week, Arcadia took its students to a Hindu Temple in the plain, outskirts neighbourhood of Neasden. At first, my classmates and I were thoroughly befuddled at the purpose of this particular excursion, traversing tubes and light rails and junky suburban drives, it wasn’t until we rounded a bend on an ordinary lane, watched only by the vapid eyes of brownstone houses and the odd CCTV camera, that we were faced with a magnificent, imposing, marble temple, sprung ivory and intricate out of the drab surroundings. The temple visit was on our agenda, I assume, to illustrate the overwhelming influence Indians have had over England. When we were asked at orientation what the national dish of England was, our responses of bangers and mash or fish ‘n’ chips were incorrect. It is Chicken Tika Curry. The Mandir temple was built in the 90s so that English Hindis could hold on to their faith far away from their cultural home. In the garden of tradition, the temple is well tended by community leaders, fertilized with the adaptations to and acceptance of modern life, and it is thriving. The Mandir, as well as many other religious orders (like the New Apostolic Church, which I attended two Sundays ago at the request of Patrick Elsing, who sought out the local branch of his home faith), has managed to find its niche in London’s multifarious jungle, but only because of prudent planning and nurturing. Some other areas of cultural growth is purely wild, uncultivated, and spawned from ancient, long-forgotten seeds embedded deep in London’s history. And these, too, change the shape of the metaphorical garden path.

Pat's New Apostolic Church

The Mandir Temple

Riding home on the DLR from Neasden’s temple, I witnessed another type of culture entirely. This one was angry, thorny, and seemingly immune to society’s usual weed killer. Two men of African descent sat opposite me and my friends on the afternoon train. They spoke wildly and passionately and we tried to ignore their hateful voices. They preached truculently on racial stereotypes, and in professing that all their misfortunes were based on the colour of their skin, I believe they perpetuate those very stereotypes, an thus, discriminations. The older of the men ranted that all throughout history, blacks have been the group most targeted. However, if 
you look through the annals of time, I believe you will find barbarism is something that confines itself to humans in general, genocide by and of every form and color. It is an abhorrent but very present part of this great thing we call civilisation. It upset me to see these men so indignant and so unhappy to be living in this country that I have come to love and not realise how privileged they are compared to so many others.

Yet this resolute disapproval was slightly shaken this evening when I went to go see the play “Slave: A Question of Freedom” at the Riverside Studios. It follows the true, heart-wrenching, recent story of a Nubian Sudanese girl who was stolen from her village and made to work as a slave for 10 years. Even though Mende’s harrowing and lonely plight is now resolved, she feels that she still suffers knowing there are millions of others in forced labour today who do not have friends, nor memoirs, nor plays to alert the world to what they are going through. Therefore, is it the job of those men on the train to accuse the “white man” of oppressing his darker fellows to remind us that injustice between all people still rages on? Or do they worsen the situation by broadening those cracks in the garden wall that separates two distinct, but seemingly harmonious “English Gardens?” Should I continue to sit dumbly across from them and accept the inculpation for crimes our ancestors committed against each other? Or should I have the courage to speak up and point out that, although what’s growing in our respective gardens may appear vey different, it is the same “English rain” that falls on us all, and whether we use our gnarled, cultural roots as a crutch or a lesson, we are still born of the same earth, and should thus try to achieve the peace that all religions, no matter whom they pray to, seem to be working toward?

Windsor Castle seen through English ivy

"Took my feet to Oxford Street..." and thereafter ran.

I should have worn more deodorant today. Not just because of the relatively hot
weather (described as “cracking” by our enthralling sociology professor at
City), or even because of the thousand or so people cramming themselves into
Primark on Oxford Street, or in an act of camaraderie with the neighborhood
football team Malina and Casey and I stopped to watch during lunch – but
because the cold sweat of fear and panic.

Mom and Dad, the following disclaimer is mainly for you.

Now, please don’t anyone get
excited, because I am perfectly fine, in fact, probably all the wiser for
having experienced my earlier ordeal. I also fully own my specious decisions
and visions of infallibility, and have now vowed never to make similar mistakes
again. I think everyone should and will be faced with moments of equivalent
distress, and will learn a crucial lesson in the great test of growing up when
they challenge themselves to conquer them. The above hype aside, here is the
reason behind the perspiration:

Douglas Adams once wrote, in So Long and Thanks for all the Fish, that, “Hyde Park is stunning. Everything about it is stunning except for the rubbish on Monday mornings. Even the ducks are stunning. Anyone who can go through Hyde Park on a summer's evening and not feel moved by it is probably going through in an ambulance with the sheet pulled over their face. It is a park in which people do more extraordinary things than they do elsewhere.“ It was with this idyll  trouncing around in my Pollyanna mind that I set off down Bayswater Road, my “don’t-screw-with-me” face firmly in place, from the two-story, ultra-cheap fashion bin that isPrimark on Oxford Street, right by Marble Arch (a truly remarkable place,  so chaotic that, besides the unparalleled deals, probably resembles the outer
circles of Hell. And I quite like to shop). Sans map and mobile (really, I am an
absolute fool) I walked for a time within other’s groups as to not stand out as
alone. However when I crossed the street to walk alongside the Park’s wall,
walkers were less concentrated. Armed with only the mental picture of the map
of Kensington that has hung by my bed for the last two years and excessive
viewing of London on Google Earth, I continued along, knowing Bayswater would
eventually connect to home. But, Bayswater is a long street. And just as I was
considering veering off to make that famed stroll through the park, I noticed a
man, late 20’s, walking opposite me. I kept calm, looked bored, and clunked my
Docs steadily in front of each other. He halted 7 feet away from me and said,
“Hey you’re pretty cute, you know?” Oh God. Just keep walking. But I couldn’t,
there was a domed bus stop in my path that would force me to his side of the
pavement. I stopped short. “Umm, no thank you.” “Do you want to go do something with me?” “Really,” I played it jaded and disdainful. “You’re gonna do this? Come on…” He advanced, and,
abandoning all pretense, I hopped up and down, flailed wildly to hail a cab.
There wasn’t one in sight, I realized afterwards, but this public display was
enough to make him scurry off. I pounded down the pavement, and took the next left into Hyde Park. Looking for a way into familiar Kensington Gardens, I
tried a path that eventually led me to the Peter Pan Statue. I stayed there and
asked directions of two Scottish students on holiday to no avail and we snapped
each other’s pictures next to the J.M. Barry memorial, before I turned around
to consult the map where I came in again. I tried catching up to three teens
maybe a year or two younger than I, to ask them directions, but it was they, a
boy and two girls, who sped up and looked scared as if I was the one accosting people creepily in the evening. I finally called after them, defeated, and said, “I’m not trying to get you or anything,I just want directions." They sauntered over and turned out to be as much help as the Scots, and far les friendly. I took an educated guess on which path led to Round Pond in Kensington Gardens and, still spooked, caught up with an older Jamaican lady, walking alone. Joyce, as she introduced herself as, was as trustworthy and informative as I was hoping. I walked with her to Round Pond, offering my profuse thanks, and spied Jeremy Kramer. I ran toward him, arms outstretched with relief and gave him a huge hug. He had come to the park by himself to take some photos and happened to be sitting on the Pond bench directly in front of my path. I was so thankful to see a familiar face and someone who had a key to
Palace Court.


Serendipity, in the end, turned out to be on my side.
But this has taught me I can NOOO longer rely on something so fickle. London is
“monstrous” and monsters hide among its members. And although I fancy myself superior to your average sidewalk lurker, I’ll never take on the city stupid
and singlehanded again. At least not without more deodorant. Promise, Mom and Dad!