Digbeth to Drummers Street's page

a Digbeth to Drummers Street b

â I boarded the bus at Digbeth, waving my eldest son Arnab, an Engineering student of Birmingham University then, to be back on the weekend with a return ticket costing GBP 23. The timetable said it was a 3 hours journey!

â With a good sleep for two hours, and trying to keep away the sleep for the next half an hour, I looked out passing through beautiful landscapes, roads and then a cemetery! Then red brick English buildings, told we were closer to Cambridge, to be sure when our bus crossed the Cam River!

â At Drummers street, I saw the English Scientist I had worked with, first in year 1997 and then in year 2000 at Fishers and Yates place, walking towards the Bus. I sighed with relief! We decided to go round the city while talking, before checking in my place of stay at Churchill College at Wilberforce Road making a phone call to my son of me being not lost by the Scientist help in finding a public booth!

â Cambridge, on both sides of road, as is full of Colleges, his son been a student here and he a visiting faculty for some time, I had a good introduction given by him, to this world of excellence and performance dating back so many years!

â So I was walking the streets, where, those few I knew through texts, Lord Rayleigh around 1904, Ernest Rutherford around 1908, Neil’s Bohr around 1922 and Bertrand Russell around 1950, all of Trinity, must have had there classic walk here! I took a long breath!

â At the bank of the Cam River after an hour or two, we sat with our cup of tea among students, discussing some academic issues, the sole purpose of coming to this very place, watching those on punt in the river resembling our country boats!

â Our talk continued with evening meals, in a place may be The Eagle pub, an old coaching inn, with the names of American soldiers in the ceiling who served the area during WWII. Later I came to now that it is a listed building and when it was refurbished, a few years ago, great care was taken to preserve the ceiling!

â While discussing some more points to be necessarily taken care of, I totally forgot to notice what I had, as I was grasping each of his word attentively, to be taken in my consideration, while I speak in the conference, in his absence, as he had some other work to do then!

â It was nice to be in Cambridge. I was trying hard not to be radiant, at my age crossing fifty, like the young faces of the students radiant to be in Cambridge!

â The city centers attraction seemed to be the number of colleges; the marvelous buildings specially the old ones, where the famous ones had been years back! And the River, on the both sides there were houses and the river flowed smoothly in between them!

â Some of the Colleges I have passed through are King’s (1441), Queen’s (1448), Christ’s (1505), St. John’s (1511), Magdalene (1542), Trinity (1546), Emmanuel (1584), Sidney Sussex (1596), Lucy Cavendish (1965) and obviously I was actually in Churchill College, Center for Mathematical Sciences for a week!

â The work for what I was here was over, rightly chosen by me, this very place of academic excellence. My spot friend, of Ankara origin, through an hour long chatting over Coffee in my room at Churchill College, proposed to visit her place of stay, near the Drummers street, at the Youth Hostel in the city center.

â We mostly talked over literature, with my limited knowledge, as one of her younger sister had done some study in Indian literatures! She was all in praise of the open lush green playground over looking from the third floor room, the rose gardens, the oval shaped green treetops, the picturesque building, the metal paths with in the garden again bordered by roses. I too joined as it was giving us the soothing touch far away from our different origins!

â It was a nice place to stay with calm and quiet campus with long walking corridors the library and the dinning room that I saw. I enjoyed very much to remember the tea and coffee and milk and sugar with an electric kettle and cups! The Bed maker supplied these items daily with towels and soaps! Though my thoughtful son had packed enough of all these items!

â Depositing the key at Porters lodge, we both moved on a long walk from Storey’s way to Madingley Road and then towards the city center leaving behind the classic walk to Trinity lane!

â Keeping on right, the American Cemetery of the 3,812 War Dead said to be having the 472 feet long Wall of the records and particulars of 5,125 of our missing, we turned right at the flower shop and then Magdalene Bridge, Cambridge’s first bridge and the original way in to city from the Roman road to the North!

â Crossing the Cam River Bridge closed to traffic then because of some work, a second’s goods shop, we started crossing colleges after colleges of Cambridge with bright students from all over the world! We sat smiling among them for a while on a roadside iron bench, some even wanted to help us with the road map in my hand!

â Walking again we saw the old colleges on the east side of Cam now expanded on to the west. We did not see, but opposite Anchor pub, there happens to be a Mathematical bridge supposed to have been first built without any screws and nails. When it was taken for repairs one could not rebuild it like that!

â Ankara friends place of stay at Cambridge, on the right of Drummers street, faced a big park, which was preparing for a mela or fair that evening. She changed while I ate jumbo-sized shelled roasted groundnuts and we thought to go round the mela!

â Stages were pulling up for show and big screens for some movie we thought. Stalls were getting ready. A red granule path as it looked was there in between the rows of stalls from the gate.

â We watched for some time the young pop singer’s dynamic performance on stage. Dressed in sparkling dresses, a group of boys and girl made an excellent crowd in front of their stage. People with family and small children sat on the ground leisurely watching too! There were guards and person who were keeping the place clean of litters. I noticed a new thing not seen before, a toilet on wheels!

â We started looking at the stalls with mostly young boys and decked up girls, just like a village fair in India. Items were priced as low as two GBP each. Folded umbrella selling at four GBP each. I noticed some hair clips, sold in the ladies compartment of local trains in Sealdah division of ten INR priced at two GBP there. They appeared to be the same, making a difference of more than hundred INR, I told my Ankara friend.

â We moved on comparing the rates proving to be really belonging to the world of numbers! We shifted to the food stall. The smell was tempting and we were hungry too. She saw some thing from her country, Turkey. It was labeled, some seafood! We had a closer look she breathed the aroma familiar to her, but gave up the thought of eating as dinner was waiting for us back at Churchill’s!

â Coming out of the Mela gate, we turned to store the full view with lights, to keep it in our mind. My Ankara friend talked about her aging parents while returning, she felt home sick, I thought.

â The long walk helped us to have the full dinner, starting with chilled minted pea soup, followed by pastry baskets, cheese, boneless lamb in rosemary and port sauce, potatoes, French style raspberry tart and as I had asked, elder flower tea at the end, specially for me, over a hunt by the catering staff! We left the place, as we finished our dinner, bidding good night, as she had to walk back to the Hostel at the city center!