Across the Seas

Now that people live longer Dementia is on the rise in terms of the number of people affected. People in their fifties are known to be affected by the disease when one is not able to remember simple things such as faces. It is amazing how such things can slip out of one's memory. Memory is not given at birth. We learn as we grow. The memory cells regularly get filled with new elements. Most of it happens in the early years of life with both pleasant and not so pleasant elements. I still remember my struggle while learning English as a second language, memorizing phrases and rules of grammar. Not so easy to imprint it in the unwilling memory cells of a child. But once they were in, they stayed put like the physical limbs. However, these cells had their preferences. Some new elements were lost almost as soon as they were learnt, while some stayed on forever or until the dementia. This process of retention or deletion is biological, over which one has little control. How nice it would have been, if these cells were as manageable as in the modern-day computers. That is an advantage of AI over 'I' of the Creator.

English is the major language of communication between nations. It is a difficult language to learn, full of idiosyncrasies beyond what is written in words. Can be frustrating at times. This is what I experienced on my first visit to London. Trying to find a place on the underground I needed help. Lo beholds! The name of the place was pronounced very different from how it was spelt. Added to the misery was a graffiti on the wall boldly pronouncing 'We was robbed'. It was obviously the expression of frustration over some unfairness. If this was the state of English in the mother country, what chances did we foreigners have? I can now understand laments of Oscar Wilde that 'England and America were two countries separated by a common language'. I thought the divide was the Atlantic.

As I settled down to the new environment at the university, there was much to learn beyond the academic programme. It began with the word 'sir' that we so freely use to address superiors. When I addressed my supervisor with the term, he was very embarrassed. There were many more surprises in everyday life such as wearing a suit. In those days people dressed casually and a suit was a formal attire not to wear in the classroom. Gradually I got used to such nuances as the panorama of life unfolded in various walks of life. There was Tariq Ali screaming at the Hyde Park on British hypocrisy. And there was Bertrand Russel who went to jail at the young age of ninety plus protesting the war crimes in Vietnam, not different from the travail of Galileo four centuries ago.

Bertrand Russell was a mathematician turned philosopher. Among his many bothers, one was the resting-place of Planet Earth. How did it rest? On the back of a turtle? Where was the turtle resting? Having some background in astronomy I was bothered with the concept of an ever-expanding universe? Where would one find so much space to accommodate this expansion? Then there was Stephen Hawkings. Is it possible that the universe will start to regress at a point of time? Yaak!

Otherwise, life was not very different from that at home. Weekdays passed quickly busy with the classwork. Weekends were days of shopping, some cooking and socializing. The cookbook of Ms. Kabir did not help. On the first day, I burnt my eyebrows trying to see if the onion had turned brown by lifting the lid of a steaming pan.

Time passed quickly and the graduation was done. I taught in a school before moving on to the next stage of studies. Not so easy. There were smart kids who were full of questions. How do you answer the innocent question of a child as to how big the infinity is? How do the infinities add up? And so on. As I taught, I also learnt that infinity is a place where things happen that should not. This is putting meaning into theories on how they relate to real life. In this never-never land parallel lines can meet. All the competitors in a race can win the first prize. Wizard of Oz was very handy as examples were sought.

Some of the things that we presume guaranteed in life today did not exist in those days. Talking to home on the phone was a luxury. So was air travel. Indian food was still an exotic food item in England. One had to go to an Indian restaurant to taste the food. Most of these restaurants were owned by people from Sylhet. The situation is very different today. There are Michelin star Indian restaurants in the country. Tikka masala is part of the British cuisine and can be had in major English chains. One reason for this transformation is the migration of a large number of diasporas from the subcontinent. British television also had a role through serials such as Curry and Chips, Citizen Khan and Mind Your Language. In spite of racial overtone these serials introduced many practices of the subcontinent that were not understood by the locals at the time. Very funny, somewhat racial.

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