Sunday, August 26, 2001		Article

Yeh hai London, yeh hai London, meri jaan!
Text & photographs by Baljit Singh

The city of London is designed to be seen on foot

"EXCUSE me, what’s all this fuss about?"Her smile was as warm as the colour of her hair. The 20-something redhead who accosted me with this question in the middle of Leicester Square, London’s prime entertainment district, had ‘Londoner’ written all over her freckled face. She was alluding to the heavy police bandobast and a milling crowd in front of one of the several movie theatres in the Square. When I expressed my ignorance, she flashed another smile, pointed toward my heavy-duty camera and bag, and gushed: "Oh, I thought you were paparazzi!"

That remark brought home, like nothing else, the Indianisation of London. For a Sikh, wearing all the accoutrements of his faith, to be mistaken by a local for a member of that typically European tribe of celebrity-chasing photographers — the paparazzi — meant that Indians could feel as much at home in London as they did in Chandigarh, Delhi or Mumbai. (The ‘fuss’, incidentally, was caused by the premiere of the movie Tomb Raider.

It’s time for a snooze: A different view of Trafalgar Square.

London had indeed changed from the time I first visited it in 1987, when a turbaned gentleman often attracted smiles and stares. The London of the new millennium is as much about Asians as it is about Anglo-Saxons. Enter any shop, large or small and the chances are that more than half the floor staff will be of South-East Asian origin, sporting name-tags that read Harpreet, Satinder and the like. One of the few exceptions to this rule was Calumet, the American chain of shops which rents out photographic equipment. Just one of the dozen or so staff that I saw there was Asian.

The Tower Bridge is one of London’s most famous sights.

July signals the start of the marriage season among the Indian community in England, a fact that has more to do with the weather than with inter-planetary configurations. Conscious of the alienation of their sons and daughters from the mainstream Indian culture back home, the diaspora makes almost a fetish of observing all wedding rituals, be they ever so arcane. Amazingly, at both the weddings I attended, it was the video photographer who assumed the mantle of master-of-ceremonies and directed, almost choreographed, the course of the wedding, right down to the order in which the relatives could proceed to bless the newly-weds. After one particularly elaborate post-marriage ritual that ended with the couple getting up and sitting down several times in quick succession, the father of the groom confessed to me:

"It makes no sense, but who wants to take chances with such things."

The video man, even if he overheard his employer, did not reply, because he was busy issuing instructions for yet another ritual to the bride and the groom.

Chicken-tikka-masala might have usurped the place of fish-and-chips but beer remains Britain’s national drink.

The city of London is designed to be seen on foot. There’s no other way you can capture the delightful mix of sights, sounds and smells (remember, London has hundreds of Indian restaurants) that make this city unique even among the developed world. A walking tour also invites serendipity, such as the exhibition of prize-winning entries to a photography competition that I chanced upon in an office block by the Thames. Make sure, however, that you are armed with a tourist map of the city (costs a couple of pounds, and is available just about everywhere) and a sturdy pair of walking shoes. Spend some time in selecting a suitable walking tour from the several options given in the map; Ideally, your walk should take you to most of the places you have a special interest in. And if you aren’t good at reading maps, take along a companion who is, or join a conducted walking tour, of which there are many.

I chose to walk alone along the River Thames. Alone, because picture-making and an importunate spouse don’t mix too well. The Thames, because here lie the best vantage points for stunning images. Such as the riverside pub where I photographed office-goers relaxing after a hard day’s work — the Tower Bridge, arguably one of the most famous sights of England — the London skyline by setting sun... the houses of Parliament and Big Ben. At the end of the day, I had seen all the famous landmarks that the Thames flows past within London, and vowed one day to trace the entire 346 km course of this fascinating river, right from its origin in the Cotswold hills to where it finally empties into the North Sea.