To all that is Brit

One of my favourite scenes in a movie is in Notting Hill, where Hugh Grant is in the bookstore where he meets Julia Roberts for the first time, and is browsing through the travel section. He picks up a book on Turkey and asks the shop owner for what he thinks about the book. Without as much as batting an eyelid, the owner of the store replies “Unlike the other travel writers, this one’s actually been to Turkey.” I must have gotten the words out of order, but I’m glad I remember the essence of the statement from that scene. In putting down my thoughts here, I feel like one of the ‘other writers’ that hasn’t been to the proverbial Turkey; Britain in this case.

I’m not sure where and why it started, quite like the Industrial Revolution, which also (you’ll see why) started in England. My guess is it might have been that evening in December when I was out bargaining with the street vendor to knock off a couple of bucks from the skull cap I was looking to buy. He wasn’t too keen on giving me a monetary kickback on the cap, but he threw in a freebie and said I could have a bandanna with the skull cap if I bought it at the quoted price. The last time I wore a bandanna was 5 years ago when we were skiing for 2 weeks in Solang Valley near Manali. I have the photograph to prove it, and it was the Union Jack bandanna. I asked the cap-seller on the street that wintry evening if he had a Union Jack bandanna, and as it turned out, he had one last piece remaining. It was a good deal for the buyer and the seller.

It isn’t unreasonable to assume that somebody wearing an ‘I love NY’ tee on the streets in Bangalore has in fact returned from NY (or has someone he/she knows who’s returned from NY, in which case it makes the person nothing short of a complete twat). But that same assumption doesn’t qualify for the Union Jack bandanna. An over-sized kerchief around your head bearing the colours of Great Britain doesn’t suggest anymore than deducing that the cost of onion, petrol and beer this week are all on an even keel. But I must have anticipated it that very moment, and since clarity lies only in hindsight, I am only now allowed to see that all this while I had been swooning to sparkles that could only be British. Allow me elaborate.

In a world that is so American as in what it eats, wears, reads and sings, it is easy to overlook what Britain gave us. I can only speak for myself here, and I will point out how British influences have been filing the good part of the day for an average guy like me. In the books category, I started off reading Jeremy Clarkson’s ‘The World according to Clarkson’. The book was a breezer, and it could as well have been an audio book for the voice of Clarkson was distinct as it is on television. I’m not sure if it was chance, or divine order, but the next book was Bill Bryson’s 'Notes from a Small Island'. Now, I haven’t read any other travel book on Britain, but I can be forgiven in assuming that none other gets better than Bryson’s work. As the critical acclaim on the cover says that there is as much of Bryson in the book as there is of Britain itself. I have now moved on to another Bryson hit, 'Down Under' about his travel through Australia, which for the record is taken as Britain’s cousin. There’s just no getting away.

The shows I was playing on my computer were quintessentially Brit. There was the world’s best TV show currently, Top Gear (of course), and if you haven’t already I would urge you to catch their Middle East special that came out during Christmas. For me, personally, TG is a travel, fun and adventure show where the occasional car breaks out. But then, you haven’t gotten your head around British Television if you haven’t watched Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister. I had always intended to watch both these shows, but it had remained there on my to-do-sometime-in-the-future-list; like reading the Mahabartha and Ramayana. I had just never gotten around to it. But then the timing was right, and I settled in my head once and for all the debate about the greatest sitcom ever made. Meanwhile, I got a category ‘A’ recommendation to watch 'The Office'. I inadvertently ended up downloading 'Office' which is the original British series after which the American 'The Office' is made. Coincidence? Maybe not.

It would be criminal to leave out the music playing on my i-pod these last couple of days. I find it more than a mere chance that they have been The Who, Beatles, Dire Straits and U2 (Irish can count as UK). I spent my Sunday watching the rockumentary 'Flight 666' about the heavy-metal band Iron Maiden. What blokes in the band! From the first minute, the hair at the back your neck is standing straight, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

I turned on the cable television to find that BBC Entertainment was now being aired, which means more awesome shows. I spent considerable time at the British Library last week looking for a book they didn’t have but instead ended up reading Jeeves. I paced the aisles at Marks and Spencer waiting on a friend as she was let loose on the sale they had going there. The weather in Bangalore this winter was most certainly Brit, what with cloudy overcast skies and cold mornings. The cricket was great. The coffee was hot. The beer flowed freely. In short, this could just as well have been Britain, except that it wasn’t.

A two months' road-trip through England is on my bucket-list. But given the glimpse of England I have witnessed right here at home, I feel safe in saying that the feeling of walking through customs at Heathrow and into the warm London summer morning when the day comes, is going to be almost an anti-climax.