London Chronicles

I completed a month in the capital city of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland(London, in short) on May 10, Tuesday. By the 12th of May i moved into my place, which was long due, and as of today i am a legal tenant residing at 26, Offley Road, Oval, London. My land lady, who stays right above above is an Australian and is a graphic designer by profession. I was exhausted of a substantial amount of my time and energy in my efforts to find a place to stay. The question of "how" shall be answered in the paragraphs that follow.

I must accept that i am here(should be interpreted purely in a physical sense) right now (2005 may 16, 1632 hrs) solely due to one of the channels that the indian software industry has created for bright/block-headed engineers to travel abroad. Thank you. But, there are many other things that i am not in the least bit thankful about, an exposition of which i shall reserve for a later day. Somehow, for some questions the only answers we get are "as per company policy". So "as per company policy", i was entitled to only 5 days of stay in a hotel, (Apr 11-15 2005) after which i could either choose to live on the street for free or pay 1/4 th of my salary as weekly accomodation charges at the hotel. I guess it wouldn't matter if you were travelling either to another country, another planet or for that matter even another galaxy, you are entitled to only 5 days of accomodation at a hotel which would be reimbursed by the company. Company policies transgress countries and galaxies.

It took me 3 days to get acclimatized to the place, work , modes of travel and that left me with hardly 2 days to find my own accomodation. At the start it didnt seem all that hard; there were a few places to look for information(on the web, local newspapers), note prospective offers, pay a visit and finalise. But within the third day of looking i realised, that the people who placed the ads either didnt understand the meaning of terms such as "pleasant", "spacious", "clean", "tidy" or had quite the wrong impression about the place that they were willing to rent/share. I made no efforts to enlighten any of the above folks.

6 days and i still was pretty much homeless, i had already breached company policy and things weren't looking very bright. . 7th day, i set out on another expediton of house hunting. Sometime around the afternoon, i found myself in front of a pharmacy in Leytonstone, waiting for an individual by the name Victor. After a few minutes of pacing around, i noticed a short-built dark-haired Britisher walking towards me with the air of recognition (In retrospect, it seems quite obvious, since when we had spoken i had mentioned that i was indian, and on that afternoon, there was no one more indian than me anywhere near the vicinity of the pharmacy). It was Victor. We walked to the house where he had a room that he was willing to rent. It already had more than a couple of people staying there, a swedish couple, a German student, an australian traveller, and a British professional. I thought to myself, this place could be it, an Indian engineer would complete the global atmosphere of the house. The place looked good, the beer bottles strewn all over the place looked even better, they'd had a party the last night. I had finally found it, the abode i had been looking for all this while. After discussing all the formalities (which, i would realise later, wasn't complete enough) i headed back to the hotel to pick up my luggage and move in. I met a few friends on the way, shared the good news with them , we made merry and i proceeded. By the time i reached the hotel and checked out it had become quite late in the evening. I had to make a call to Victor before i moved so i called him informing him of my arrival. But just before placing the reciever it occured to me to ask him whether there was a minimum notice period i had to give before i left. To which he replied "3 months". I had foreseen my entire stay in London to be only for 3 months, which meant i would have to give him notice right away. I did, to which he very matter of factly replied that the indian engineer wouldn't be joining the global household.

I was quashed, here i was standing on a street, a mild rain pouring, with all my luggage around me, homeless. I had arrived , the refugee from India. If we had a photographer around, we would have had an entry into the Picture of the Year (POY) Awards. But all you sadist lovers of tragedies, it doesnt get any worse than this. It could have, but this story doesnt. Luckily i have a father, who thankfully has ample contacts in major cities of the world and london just happened to be one of them. A few minutes, and a few phone calls later, i had arranged stay for myself in Croydon. It was temporary, but it resolved all my problems for now.

For the next one month i had a warm room with a cosy bed, good malyalee/North indian/British food(Mrs. Nair is quite a good cook), hot tea soon as i get back from work,
Ah!......... the little joys in life. I had moved into a kind, loving household, elderly couple, old friends of Senior. Within a week i had found THE PLACE i intend to stay for all the time that i'm here, at the Oval, quite close to the cricket stadium. The tube station is just a stone's throw away, making life a bit easier. Its not one bit global, i share the house with another indian. We'll probably learn how to make sambar together, sorry mate don't see any Shepherd's Pie being baked here.

Well, now that writing this blog has taken my entire afternoon, and i do not wish it to eat into my evening too, which seems quite pleasant outside. I think its time for me to take in some of the the English air with a pleasant stroll in Kennington park. Blogging ends here. To all those people out there, looking for a place to stay in London, you have my best wishes.