In the Country

Hi, people,

It's been 3 weeks since I arrived in England. Most of the time has been spent in Nottingham and Northampton. The cities are similar, more modern and very much more populated.

But what binds the whole country together, I think, are the suburbs, with their quaint area identifiers--this "close", that "court", the other "place", and so on. These place-names give the locality an identity, a uniqueness, and a sense of unity. In my experience, India, perhaps because of its vastness, does not have such neighbourhoods. But exceptions prove the rule--my own Veteran Lines, for example.

Of course, villages have their own vibrancy. The closest thing to such individuality is the "gated community" of modern Indian cities, but these experiments are also exercises in exclusivity and conformity, not the free spirit of the quintessential English suburb.

To fortify what I interpret Wordsworth's beautiful phrase "sameness with difference" to mean, almost every town and residential community has it's distinctive architecture. Even the streets of London have rows of similar houses--on both sides! Imagine, then, the towns and villages.

Here, in England, it is as if "ostentation" is a dirty word, one that can easily be replaced with "austerity", or even "solidarity"--the "sameness with difference" principle put into practice. I am not qualified to talk about the insides of any home, but if it is his/her "castle", as the saying goes, then I believe in the other saying, too--"to each his own". This is the stark, glaring, in-your-face, difference that stares at you everywhere in India--it even spills out onto the street. And, God knows what you will encounter if you ask unembarrassing questions.

Are you asking me my preference, dear Reader? To be honest, this life can grow on me, but I wouldn't trade it, wholesale, for my own, in my own country.

On many, many parameters, India has miles to go before she sleeps, but breathes there the person who can abandon a mother--especially "BHARAT MATA"?

No, not me, dear Reader.

As always, I can be accessed at
bryan peppin.com

Cheers.