Enjoying my time visiting
Sarayu at Oxford. She is in the midst of her essay, and asked I spend some
hours by myself this afternoon. It turned out quite amazing. First, there are
more book shops with each five minute walk in Oxford than with every five hours
drive in Atlanta, and book shops are the ultimate refuge to any person lost in
the whims of thought and exploration. One can spend hours in a book store and
get into the minds of the writer and vicariously live in their worlds.
Beyond bookstores, Oxford has
such a density of pubs, museums, colleges, old buildings, and history.
After spending an hour at a bookstore, delighted at the “Poetry corner”,
I decided to search for the oldest pub in Oxford, and after some inquiring
found “The Turtle” – only the second oldest pub and in existence since 1381. It
is in the back of beyond, and a long walk through the cobbled streets into
almost a cave-like location. It has an inviting entrance “Education in
intoxication”! Once discovered, is an anthropologist’s delight!
Sitting alone with half a pint of lager, one had only three options……stay to
oneself, eavesdrop, or start conversations with strangers. The clientele was as
diverse as Oxford itself.
My eavesdropping skills got
me into the world of the young Oxford university students, diverse, and a group
obviously majoring in Oxford’s reputed triple major in philosophy, political
science, and economy. The conversation I overheard was incredible, diverse,
beautifully logical, ranging from Plato’s “Republic” to Machiavelli’s “Prince”
and also a smattering of Confucius, Sun Tzu, and Kautilya’s Arthashastra, and
of course, contemporary UK politics and Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.
While I admired this
eloquence and thoughtfulness among the young, my ears also did not miss the
rather rowdy and loud conversation in another table, occupied by older local
non-university types. One stream of conversation made me realize how a section
of old white male Brits is unhappy about their new prime minister. A guy ranted
“Our nation is going down, imagine a fuckin Paki becoming our leader. His wife
is supposed to be very rich, but she is obviously not shagging him enough” (ad
verbatim) Then one of the woman on that table says “But you voted Tory” and
this guy replies, “What choice did we have, this Paki shit or allowing Germans
to take us over”. The woman persists “Rishi is not Paki, he is Indian-Brit”,
and the guy goes “It does not matter, they are all the same”.
I turned left, and there was
an Australian family, and I said hello to them, and this was a beautiful
conversation. I learned about their roots seven generations ago, their forebears
sent to Australia as convicts, and how the family is searching for true
identity and empathizes with the Aborigines who have suffered colonization is
ways more cruel than their own ancestors did. We ate a fabulous chocolate cake
together, exchanged addresses and parted.
On the way back, I stopped at
the Museum of Science, and this was a grand finale to a wonderful afternoon.
The warden at the museum asks me my name and immediately tells me about
“Venkat, the famous off spinner”, and takes me through four centuries of the
progress of science, and we end up at the basement to read about Einstein, and
as the museum closed at 5 PM, I leave promising to return tomorrow…………………and he
has given me a quiz to guess his name……………..a five digit number, and his first
name that of a Holocaust survivor. Above all, his parting remark, “science not
religion, art not morality, humanity not tribalism” is our redemption…………………I
look forward to seeing him again tomorrow.
Venkat
