Home away from home

The news is that I recently went to South Hall,an Indian locality in London.It is mini India with most of them from sikh community. Went Lodon for a official meeting which lasted only a couple of hours.Somnath Biswas(Go and see him in SNAPS link) suggested to visit the place.I was a bit reluctant to go to the place but he insisted and I resigned ! ! Boarded a metro train(called UNDERGROUND) from Central London to Paddington and then a connecting train to SOUTH HAL. All these are the zones of London itself. When we alighted the train, I became nostalgic INSTANTLY...For the first time in England I was looking at a station where the officials were mostly Indians.And on the top of that I could see people spitting on the corners of stairs. Huh...I thought this was London, the supposedly largest city in world. But in a way , I was delighted to see that.

Loos were neglected, sharing the plight of their counterparts in India.The person on the enquiry counter was an Indian,the guard was an Indian,the pessangers waiting for their train were Indian.Could'nt see a single Brit on the station.It seemed as if I was in India.

Just gazed at a window pane in a shop.It was getting difficult to resist.The window pane displayed IMARTEE,and PANEE POOREE. Somnath told me to keep patience.He probably knew some better shops. There was a small cinema hall.We went inside it and saw some photographs of Kareena,Anil Kapoor who visited South Hall lately.

There were shops on the footpath, selling flashy items,watches,toys, lighters and other trivial things.There were shops with Indian garments,mostly chamko chamko.There was a SABJEE MANDI,which I never saw before in UK. Young generation in South Hall has developed the typical British accent. Probably they have been born and brought up in UK itself. We roamed around in the market for nearly 3 hours.In that whole duration we could see only one single brit(he was a police officer who probably failed to placate his superiors and got transferred to this place)

For the first time in my life, I swa a big PAKISTANI STORE.I think this was the single Pakistani store in whole South Hall.

Finally we went to a Punjabi restaurant.The name itself was PUNJABI.We startted with Pani pooree....bhai wah ..kya baat hai ... Then some SAMOSAS.Yummmm....Yummmm....and finally Rasmalai.We thought of having these things as starters but this prove to be a mistake.Then there was nospace left for the lunch. Phir yaad aya ...jitne dushmano komaar sakte ho mar do..bakiyon ko girftar kar lo So we finally left that place with a parcel full of Makke kee roti,aloo tikki,bhel pooree. On our way back, we purchased JALEBEE from the shop of GUPTAJEE. And finally we boarded the train to Ipswich with fond memories of what I call MINI INDIA.