Caught with pants down in Hyde Park

BY BIMAL BOSE

Our digs in London were walking distance from South Kensington tube station. The ride from there to Piccadilly Circus cost a tanner. The walk to Hyde Park corner from there took half an hour. We were students at the time and to save money stooped to all manner of tactics. The oddest of these was to keep the loo swing door open and let your mate in before closing and thereby save a penny. The popular English idiom of penny having dropped derives from this. Walking the distance was an honourable option as chances of cheating the transport system were nil. Our digs housed six boarders from as many countries. It was an

The mere presence of this uniformed person, popularly called “the bobby,” technically representing the Crown, was enough to ensure peace amalgam of 4-5 languages and since our ability to speak the native tongue was at par with each other, there were no hassles in the communication department expect on occasions when someone wanted to prove a point in the cockney dialect. This was forbidden as Mrs. Kelley, our very English land lady who had a Scottish husband, would have nothing of it. She took it upon herself to groom the foreigners in the best of English traditions, with language being her primary concern! Frankly, initially Mrs. Kelley’s clipped accent sounded a bit odd in our ears drowned in a sea of Cockney – a lingo born in London after all.

There was no definitive bonding amongst the boarders but we were all young, inquisitive and new in England. Luckily, I had struck a friendship with Asgar Ali from Nairobi whose mother was the daughter of a tribal chief and father an immigrant

Punjabi farmer from Pakistan. At that point of time in history, Jomo Keneyatta, a powerful Kikyu tribal chief had unleashed a rebellion against the rich British farmers. Consequently, the local press, who were after Jomo’s blood, conveniently branded him a terrorist!

Asgar was aware of this and so was I but it did not come as a damper in our relationship, as in India too we had gone through comparable situations. Instead, it was our wont to meticulously plan our weekend jaunts thus cementing our friendship further.

On a bright Sunday afternoon, after the standard fare doled out by Mrs Kelley of roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and smelly Brussels sprout, the boarders normally trooped out. That afternoon Asgar and I headed out for the famous Hyde Park corner near Marble Arch to listen to the “soap box” orators. The orators were thus named because they would stand on old pine wood boxes used for transporting fruits and soap bars, and barely able to support the weight of a person.

This free-for-all speech corner was, and still is, a popular London attraction.

Hyde Park combined rugged dignity with amusement value. It occupied a unique place in the hearts of freedom loving people. Nowhere an individual had the freedom to speak his mind so openly and at times, with subtle vengeance, so freely.

The British Parliament was the acknowledged mother of Parliamentary democracy, with freedom of speech being one of its robust pillars. In this context, symbolically, the Hyde Park gatherings where the speakers were free to air their views (in gay abandon), amply demonstrated a vital aspect of democracy in action. For a moment, ignore the brutal force coupled with crooked diplomacy the British crown employed to dominate three fourth of the globe!

Little wonder, then, that quite a few future parliamentarians of all hues from the emerging democracies honed their debating skills in this vibrant corner. As was expected, the black, brown and in between coloured faces in the gathering outnumbered white faces by two to one. The latter group were mostly IRA, Save Jesus and Salvation Army groups with some fellow travellers from the lunatic fringe thrown in.

The Kikiyu uprising was a hot topic and there were quite a few speakers, including a sprinkling of white speakers patronisingly taking the cudgel for the downtrodden blacks of Africa. One of them turned out to be a communist of the Russian variety .He had recently paid a visit to Karl Marx grave and was uncontrollably charged!

There was a flurry of clappings and colourful invectives as one can associate with a heterogeneous public gathering of this kind. The guardian of the English law was a solitary unarmed policeman attired in his usual black uniform and typical elongated helmet displaying a nickel coated badge proclaiming his rank and a black leather strap latched to his chin. The mere presence of this uniformed person, popularly called “the bobby,” technically representing the Crown, was enough to ensure peace. No room for any uncivil behaviour as the law in this regard was forthright. Once the Rubicon was crossed, the law took its course and the offender booked, taken prisoner and produced before a magistrate the following day.

Londoners congregated to this corner of their city for innocuous fun and the people were generally in a holiday mood.

That day, after the crowd had started melting away in ones and twos, Asgar and I too joined the slow but steady stream. Although it was nearly ten in the evening, it being summer there was ample daylight still left.

We casually drifted away to the nearest oak trees to ease ourselves in Indian style. A couple of yards separated us, but as soon as I heard Asgar speaking agitatedly I sensed that all was not well. In a flash I zipped up and ran towards him and realised he had been speaking to a tall bobby. The “law” in the mean time having parked his push bike against a nearby tree trunk was busy taking out his blue coloured note book. He had made his intensions very clear – to slap a fine of five pounds, a fortune for us in those days, for public nuisance, coupled with the defacing of Her Majesty’s property.

Asgar was not very articulate and the Bobby had found that out and did not object to someone more articulate acting as a good Samaritan to do the explaining for him. I pleaded with the policeman saying, “look here officer, my friend from Kenya is new to England like me and totally unaware of the codes of conduct here (we jolly well were briefed about this at the High Commission!) and being his first time offence (a typical desi style of pleading), could he be let off with a verbal warning. My friend will provide his dig’s address besides bringing his passport as well as university identity card for you to examine.”

Surprisingly, the officer liked what I said and began putting his dreadful notebook back into his pocket. The next few moments he surprised me by asking if I was from India and if so from which part. This welcome change in the bobby’s mood encouraged me to reply in the affirmative adding that I was from Calcutta. No sooner did I finished saying so he gleefully told me that until about a year ago he had migrated from Calcutta where he worked as a traffic sergeant. The Railways and Police Force

We were students at the time and to save money stooped to all manner of tactics. The oddest of these was to keep the loo swing door open and let your mate in before closing and thereby save a penny in those days were the largest employers of Anglo Indians. The bobby’s next move took me by total surprise. Asking Asgar to wait, he took me aside and in all seriousness advised me in colloquial Bengali to keep away from Asgar as he may well be a Kikui. That was a dirty word those days. Soon after, the bobby mounted his bike and headed towards the general direction of Marble Arch.

I had been instrumental in bailing out Asgar on another occasion previously when to my horror he was merrily using the bath tub as a bucket sub-continental style and pouring tumbler full of water over head much to the chagrin of Mrs. Kelley. But that’s another story, to be narrated some other time.