Traveling is fun. Travel to new places is a treat. If you have old friends in those new places, then it becomes a memorable journey. Finally if those new places and old friends are in foreign lands, halfway across the world, then it is utopia!
Recently on my way to Mexico, I broke journey at U.K. so that I could meet up with my referee. However, Robert, my referee informed me that he would be visiting his family and friends up in North England. That left me with a whole week in U.K. with six of my old medical college class mates, who had settled there for the last two decades. I looked forward to the seven days that I would spend and the merry times would make up for the long travel to meet them. The joys of reunion and catching up with what they had done, while recalling past anecdotes, would recharge us.
It was my second visit to U.K. Yet, this was a visit of a different kind. I wanted quality time with my friends, to interact with them and not be rushing around all the sights and trips that London or the rest of England had on offer. My first host was Rafiq, who picking me up from London's Heathrow, hit the motorway, which put Delhi's Ring Road in the shade. The discipline in the traffic even in the worst traffic jams was explained to me by him. Everyone followed what they called, 'the two-second rule'. Namely, at whatever speed they were travelling, every car would follow the predecessor keeping a distance of what it would cover in two seconds. How I wished this was speedily implemented in Delhi's choatic traffic!
Arriving at his cozy place in Enfield, one of the outermost boroughs of London, he offered to take me as any good host to all those interesting places that I had missed on my last visit! While I agreed that Madam Tussuad's wax works and the displays at the Natural History Museum were world class, they were better off without me disturbing them. With some persuasion, I convinced him that I just wanted to sit down as we were in the backyard, looking at the long evening splash its colours across an English summer sky, with planes streaking across it. The children splashed in the pool that we had arranged in the garden, while Rafiq, his wife Jaiboon, and me, talked about anything that fancied us. Unwinding, we all soaked in, our own feelings of relaxation.
Dinner after sundown, which was at 9:30 PM helped me correct my sleep cycle as much as watching the fading daylight colours. Just like most of my friends who were settled in England, Rafiq was a good driver and a fine cook. Therefore, It was unadulterated joy to taste both the food and memories of old times. We recalled stories of Rafiq's brother Farooq, a state wicket keeper in his times, who had been with me since school and through college as a room mate. How at his young age he would detail cricket positions for various team strengths and how each of us spent our childhood times.
Just after dinner, I remembered suddenly that I had not applied for leave! This was done immediately online. Looking at the monitor, preceded by the meal, the good evening, and the long haul flight, made my eyes droop and I called it a day.
The next morn, we went looking out for camera batteries, only to be told that my digital camera was so old that its batteries were out of production! Rafiq not to be cowed down so easily, decided to go online and order them. As it was Sunday we took the children out for their customary drive-in and take-away Lunch. We were expecting Sunder my next host the next morning, who would arrive after meeting another friend of ours, named Alagappan, coming in to London from Texas. The logistics were a bit complicated to me, but both Sunder and Rafiq were good at this too. A long walk after dinner with Rafiq took me in and around the NIH hospital that he worked in. The neat corridors, outer environs, and well-kept buildings showed how much our Government hospitals in India had to catch up with.
Sunder's arrival the next morn was delayed by a traffic jam. However, no later had he dropped in, he ordered my camera batteries so that it would be delivered at his house in Pickworth, around the time I would be there. This, I had to agree was good planning.
After Lunch, I left with Sunder at the wheel, catching up from me on the news of our classmates in India. After we had gone through those whom we mutually knew well, as well as a short thunderstorm, we turned off the motorway, into narrower roads from where the rolling English countryside was much closer. Finally we arrived at Pickworth without much ado.
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