England

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees-
Those dying generations - at their song...
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect
- Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium


England is so different from what I had imagined. Man, what a cliche - but if you could hear me say those words, maybe it would make sense, if you could hear how VEHEMENTLY I DECLAIM IT!
I think its different when you're here on holiday, and different when you live here, study here, work here. That sounds so condescending, maybe people who came here to visit understood the texture of the nation better than I did, but I don't know... I know that if I was visiting, I would have fallen in love with everything at first sight.
But I didn't - I came here to live here for a year, maybe more, with the weight of a student loan on my back (i'm much better off than hundreds of people here, but still) and determined to get a job to pay the rent, and watched as all the money I saved over the last two years slipped through my fingers like water - in just one month. All but £200 remains of the original £1,500. Oh well.
Through those eyes jaundiced by penury, I viewed this cold nation, with its people who say, "You alright, love?" when you walk into a shop, with a smile that doesn't seem to reach their eyes. A politeness that bites you in the face.
A nation where every facility is made available for every person with different needs (the disabled can use buses here quite comfortably for example) but only because they would get sued otherwise, or so they tell me.
A nation where people's eyes don't meet on the road, even if they know each other.
A nation of bizarre (to me) crimes. People here seem to commit crimes because they're bored! I found it, and still find it inexplicable. A man says to his friend, "Hey, watch this" and picks up a hammer and pounds a random woman on the street on the head, causing internal bleeding, and eventually death.
A gang of football hooligans are frustrated because England lost to Portugal, so they see two Asian students walking by and beat the shit out of them to vent their frustration.
(To be fair to Brits, if they came over to India, they would find it equally inexplicable that a man could be tortured and made to drink cow piss and eat cow shit because he slaughtered a cow for his food, and is a Dalit. Or that the police could actually join in in the mass beating up of a thief, instead of disrupting the proceedings.)
The bizarre ads. "Mud! Mud! Glorious Mud!" sing a bunch of people as they squish through a pile of, well, mud. The ad is for crisps, or chips, or something.

And then there's.....

The countryside. The churches. The poetry that everything in this place is so undeniably drenched in.
The guy in my class who says stuff like, "Came away with your kneecaps on?" and "How's tricks?"
The other guy in my class who says in heavy yorkshire-speak "Abhinav you cheeky bastard, you alrigh'?"
The Scottish guy who feels compelled to imitate Apu from Simpsons every now and then to me.
The girl in my department who looks exactly like Katie Holmes.
The beer, and the pubs - especially the ones with the live bands who sound brilliant beyond anything i've heard.

The unbelievably good writing in the newspapers - and the unbelievably bizarre choice of articles. The first time I picked up The Sun, I turn to page 3, and there's a completely topless model, with a speech bubble next to her which goes "Diane says that now is not the time to call a referendum regarding the EU treaty." On second thoughts, she does look kind of intellectual.

In the Daily Mirror - the rival tabloid - a photo feature on who has the weirdest boobs in the cabinet. A collage of women politicians showing cleavage, with comments captioned. And right at the end, poor old Tony Blair, who wins the award with his sagging man-boobs.

On the other hand, gorgeous travelogues (one on Hampi in India which made me wonder whether I really know anything about India myself), the thoroughly exhaustive international pages. The intrepidity of their journalists, in Pakistan for example. The standard of writing.

I think you'd quickly realise that the essential diff between England and India is that England is either a stagnant or a slow-growing economy, and that is obvious everywhere, but especially in the behaviour of the people. A bit wary, a bit fatalistic, and there always seems that wealth of bitterness beneath the surface.

Especially a student town like Sheffield takes some getting used to if you have a sense of the romantic, and came to England expecting to step right into a Victorian novel, where the long light shakes across the lakes and wild cataract leaps in glory. All of that is there, no doubt, but the texture of this nation is in its people. And in a student town, young Brits from everywhere, all of whom take a while to warm up to you, but really are not very different from you.
The older generation, who are so delightful. One old couple I encountered at the bus stop, who come from an old age home close to my place, spent half an hour talking to me about India, and how all people are the same after all.

And though its the people who make the place, if I weren't to make a single friend in England in my time here, it would still be worth it. To wander through the countryside and see buildings and landscapes you'd only dreamt of, but are still somehow vagely familiar. to be at a gig, to see a building you've grown up reading about, to suddenly see what those poets in the 18th century saw, to feel somehow part of that history... that is worth any other shit you may go through.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity