I was in London for all of two and a half days and while the trip was centered around an official event (an awards ceremony), I packed into the rest my jaunt through London institutions that have fascinated me for long. I managed to pack in that, a whirlwind tour of obeisance to the home of Sherlock Holmes, the home of the BBC, the British Museum, and the Lord’s Cricket Ground.
The “institution” that I have held a fascination for, for as long as I can remember, is the British accent. Perhaps this is a throwback to an atavistic colonial hangover, perhaps this is a nostalgic romp through my childhood memories of listening to the BBC on the giant radio in our living room, perched on my dad’s knee, or perhaps this is simply the aristocratic cadence of that accent. Whatever it is, I found myself eavesdropping during the subway rides on the few fellow passengers who were having a conversation, not because I found their discussion of office politics wildly fascinating, but because it was being carried out in that British accent. Like a true Londoner, and a penny-pinching one, I mostly spurned the allure of the black cabs, even though they would have thrown me back to any of my favorite BBC sitcoms, As Time Goes By or the IT Crowd, where the main characters were always hailing these cabs and they would conveniently appear on command. Instead I took the subway to most of the places I was going to.
All big cities take great pride in their subways, perhaps as justification for the years of disruption that their construction had inflicted on them. The pride in the case of London comes not from the grandeur or even efficiency of the system, but from an unreasonable, but endearing, love for an institution of the city. So I labored my way through route changes, train delays, and heaven forbid, having to take an above-the-ground bus, all announced through the unintelligible audio announcement system. But every time I navigated one of these subway snafus, I felt a little bit more like a local.
I made the pilgrimage to 221B Baker Street, the home of the fictional Sherlock Holmes. The deerstalker-clad chap at the entrance to the house gave me the license to be my gushing self. It was not that crowded, a sign that the world has moved on to newer detectives and so I was left relatively alone for a few milliseconds in parts of the rather small building. For those milliseconds, I could close my eyes and smell the waft of the pipe smoke or hear the peremptory command from Holmes to his housekeeper Mrs. Hudson. The gift store in the building turned out to be the ideal place for me to spend the very last British pound and pence that I had with me. I bagged a Holmes tie, an invisible ink pen, a bust of Holmes, and a deerstalker hat. With the possible exception of the tie, I do not see myself or anyone in my family using any of the rest of these.
I raced to the Lord’s Cricket Ground just before it closed. It is billed in the signage at the entrance as “the most famous cricket Ground in the world” (capitalization included). I could see some merit in the claim with this being the proverbial birth place of the sport; I still disagreed in favor of Eden Gardens, for purely nostalgic reasons. At the Lord’s, I got to see from close the green turf, peek into the dressing room, and stare at the score board. I saw etchings memorializing the Indian Cricket World Cup win of 1983, a feat that I claim to remember, but realistically could not have. I saw Sourav Ganguly’s name written in one of the boards and like any warm-blooded Indian, I was instantly reminded of him waving his shirt bare-bodied and triumphant, an epochal spur-of-the-moment moment that to many marked the dawn of a new spirit of India, an in-your-face confident India.
I made it to the BBC Headquarters, though I knew that I would not be able to go inside the building. But being close to it would be enough for me. It turned out to be more than enough. The place was deserted on the outside except for two bored guards keeping an eye out on the square leading up to the headquarters building. It turned out to be more than enough when I fired up the BBC website on my tablet sitting in a coffee shop in that square. And then went out of the coffee shop and peered in through the massive glass doors of the building to see the same news story on the giant screen inside the building. I lingered in the square peering in for a little bit and saw two staff members coming out with their BBC ID badges swinging. What a life they must have, I thought giddily for a moment. Though having the weight of bringing unbiased news to the world, on the dot, and often from unhappy corners of the world, cannot all be honey and roses. A statue of George Orwell standing next to the entrance served to remind all of the importance of bringing such news and making sense of it:
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
I ended my fanboy jaunt through London reluctantly as the evening matured into night, reminding me of my late night flight back to the US. I had the classic multicultural experience as I chowed down a hummus wrap at Au Bon Pain, an American chain restaurant, with a French name, and sitting in the heart of the British world. So it was that I found the proverbial stiff British upper lip did crack into a smile, and repeatedly, and at moments that I would least expect.
Distant Whispers from an Academic Engineer's World 