Appreciating anew

Reentry can be disintegrating. I’ve lived London but reminders are for thanks giving: London’s public face, its point of initial contact, is desi, from the cleaners to the flight attendants and ticket agents to the young passport control dude asking fresh questions about my New Year’s plans with a wink in his eye. Did Southall grow up around Heathrow or was it waiting to yield up lovely X-ray screeners barely out of their teens? No matter, there are countries I love for their culture and hate for their food– being vegetarian in Spain means picking bits of ham out of hard, dry baguettes. Good food can only enhance the emotionality of a place, Italy obviously, and I might like Thailand. London Delivers. Samosas, aloo tikkis, paneer wraps, mango lassi at any old cornershop. God shave the queen.

There were raucous desi b-boys in pimp threads and bling bling swigging straight from the bottle on the tube last night. An English couple opposite stared, fascinated and appalled, their dining room gossip secure for the week. Cute Asians in bobs yelled ‘Happy New Year!’ in twee, drunken accents. Uncle types stole courtesy kisses from French strangers. The Eye of London turned Eye of Sauron with fields of slowly drifting sparks, world-ending grandeur, anime. It beat the gracious fountains of fire in Rome, high on a hill above the Piazza del Popolo, set to classical, the best I’ve ever seen. Rome’s crowd was friendlier, dancing arm-in-arm, a big public party; Barcelona was football aggression; but London had an excuse, it started to pour.

11 thoughts on “Appreciating anew

  1. I have to object! It didn’t pour, we only had the umbrella up for about 15 minutes! Although maybe I have a different gauge as to what pouring is, seeing as I live in the UK.

    That’s a bit of verbal floetry from you Manish, nice. Just a stopover in the Big Smoke?

  2. One of the biggest debut novels of 2006 is called Londonstani by Financial Times journalist Gautam Malkani and is set amongst the gangster desi boys who live in the shadow of Heathrow airport. It is getting major hype and got the author a six figure advance after a massive bidding war.

    “Londonstani”, Gautam Malkani’s electrifying debut, reveals a Britain that has never before been explored in the novel: a country of young Asians and white boys (desis and goras) trying to work out a place for themselves in the shadow of the divergent cultures of their parents’ generation
    Set close to the Heathrow feed roads of Hounslow, Malkani shows us the lives of a gang of four young men: Hardjit the ring leader, a Sikh, violent, determined his caste stay pure; Ravi, determinedly tactless, a sheep following the herd; Amit, whose brother Arun is struggling to win the approval of his mother for the Hindu girl he has chosen to marry; and Jas who tells us of his journey with these three, desperate to win their approval, desperate too for Samira, a Muslim girl, which in this story can only have bad consequences.
    Together they cruise the streets in Amit’s enhanced Beemer, making a little money changing the electronic fingerprints on stolen mobile phones, a scam that leads them into more dangerous waters. Funny, crude, disturbing, written in the vibrant language of its protagonists – a mix of slang, Bollywood, texting, Hindu and bastardised gangsta rap – “Londonstani” is about many things: tribalism, aggressive masculinity, integration, cross-cultural chirpsing techniques, the urban scene seeping into the mainstream, bling bling economics, ‘complicated family-related shit’. It is one of the most surprising British novels of recent years.

    Also being published this year is novel Tourism by a new writer called Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal.

    Bhupinder ‘Puppy’ Singh Johal – handsome, rakish and spiritually disenfranchised – has left behind the immigrant neighbourhood of Southall to mix with the elite of metropolitan London society. When sloaney rich-girl Sophie, falls for him, he grabs the chance to escape his past and pursue the woman of his dreams, the voluptuous sophisticate Sarupa, who happens to be engaged to Sophie’s cousin. Using whatever and whoever he can, Puppy explores the grit and glamour of a city seething with the possibilities and politics of money, race and sex: an incendiary cocktail that explodes, changing him and those closest to him forever…Set in the long hot summer of 2002, “Tourism” is a filthy, unflinching and politically incorrect take on modern Britain.

    So it looks like being the year that Southall and West London Punjabi life gets represented fully on the London literary scene.

  3. happy new year manish… loved the musings of the difficulty of being veggie in spain.. had a hard time there earlier this year with the same problem…. must agree with bongbreakers comments… loved the flow of the words… nice nice! 🙂

  4. The same can be seen at a much slower rate at the NY airports, more and more desi workers….

  5. manish,

    to be a happy vegetarian traveller, stick to the tourist areas. most tourist areas have some vegetarian options. I was in Barcelona in 2001 and had some of the best food in my life. Whenever I was hungry, I’d hop onto a train and head for Rambla.

  6. Thanks, BB and chickpea! Yeah, just a layover– no lay, and itŽs over 😉

    Neel, a lot of those tapas places on Las Ramblas employ Punjabis with acute deshdar (like gaydar, but less useful for those who possess it 😉 ) I still object to the blandness of the papas allioli and champiñones. The colonists could learn something from Mexico 🙂

  7. Manish, bust out the Hindi. I know you have the lingo chops, so it should work – even with my broken Hindi I managed to get a chunky discount from a souvenir shop on Las Ramblas. It’s the whole novelty factor.

    Jai, you’re a Londoner. Do you feel as though a magical presence has just drifted through your life? At the time Manish arrived in London, didn’t you feel as though life was better? That things weren’t so bad? An inexplicable sense of well-being, like the aura of a greater being was among us?

    Nah me neither.

  8. Bong Breaker,

    Jai, you’re a Londoner. Do you feel as though a magical presence has just drifted through your life? At the time Manish arrived in London, didn’t you feel as though life was better? That things weren’t so bad? An inexplicable sense of well-being, like the aura of a greater being was among us?

    No, but I did notice strange things like the weather suddenly becoming icy cold, wolves howling at night, weird shadows on broomsticks flitting across the moon, feeling that “something” was watching me when I was asleep, and so on. It seemed to go back to normal after Manish left the country.

    {Just joking, Manish 😉 }

  9. Hey…

    Well – i don’t know how i wandered on to this site (4.17am, random googling in need of going on holiday again as 2 weeks in Scotland is more than enough..) so anyways, u were all talking about Spain! I wana go in Easter time – is there a lot of desi’s there? and is food really a problem (saying i’m muslim)?

    Anyways – would like a reply… your lil diary thing at the top was endearing, bless yer cotton sox! x