An English Christmas...

Right from Agatha Christie to Charles Dickens, everyone raves about an English Christmas. Just to what find out what all the hype was about, I decided to spend Christmas in London this year.

Here are some of the things I really enjoyed and hence have decided to include in the ''must-do'' list.

Watch a Pantomime

A Pantomime is a musical-comedy mostly performed during the christmas and New year season. I saw the ''Sleeping beauty''. I was initially skeptical when I learnt that the show was nearly for 3 hours and hardly anyone had come there without a kid. But it turned out to be 3 hours of pure and unadulterated fun.

The actors were brilliant and whats more they all had radiant smiles and really seemed to enjoy what they were doing. The show was very interactive and the audience was allowed to boo the villian (-ess), sigh with the princess when she falls in love and wish for a ''happily ever after'' ending. The crew threw chocolates into the crowd, came running through spraying everyone with water guns, had gorillas that scared the living daylights out of some kids, made the audience sing and dance with them...ohh I felt I was 13 and was taking part in a school annual day !

The best part was when a couple of the really small kids were called on stage and were asked questions by the court jester (CJ). Here are some of the ''brilliant'' answers

CJ: Where do you live ?

Kid1 (after a lot of thinking): Home

Kid2 (after a lot of looking around): hmm...

CJ: never heard better answers !

CJ: what did you get for christmas ?

Kid1: hmm...nothing

Kid2 (with a sheepish smile): hmm...forgot

CJ: well, between the two of you, you are keeping the christmas spirit alive !

Enjoy the Christmas lights

Walking through Oxford street and Regent Street on Christmas Day was amazing inspite of the biting cold weather (click on the photo for a larger version).

For someone coming from Munich, where christmas decorations are confined mostly to the city centre, seeing rows and rows of lights in all possible shapes and colors was just too festive to miss. Going on Christmas day would ensure that you will not get clobbered by crazy shoppers (its God's day, noone shops much to the relief of most men)

Eat Christmas pudding

If there is something worth eating in the English cuisine, its surely the Christmas pudding. Made with nuts, raisins and alcohol (mostly cognac), it is definitely a dessert worth gaining a few pounds for (atleast thats my excuse for now) !

Do some ''Boxing day'' Shopping

All stores have a massive sale on Boxing day. I saw items that had 70% discount. Well, yes, you should have had some experience in Ranganathan street to combat the crazy women (and sometimes men) in the crowded stores and if you are prudent, you will shop online or visit some stores away from Central London where the chances of you being mobbed are less likely !

Visit a Castle

I went to the Windsor castle and was pleasantly surprised by very few visitors.

Since most people use the christmas vacation to catch up with families, sightseeing places like Castles are hardly crowded and this is a once-in-a-year opportunity for a highly touristy place like London.

Besides this I also had fun with a school friend, a college friend, a distant cousin, nearly emptied Saravana Bhavan in Eastham, saw Manmadhan Ambu in Cineworld (and felt jealous about how desi movies were screened and advertised just like English movies - for someone in a city where only 2 theatres screen English movies and desi movies are confined to one show, this is a big deal!) and ate a looooooot of really good desi food (to an extent that I should live only on water for the rest of the year!)

An English Christmas in London is a lot of fun, an English Christmas in London with near and dear ones is super duper fun !

Copyright for Pantomime photo: Odos Entertainment

Hakuna Matata

...if that doesn't ring a bell, either you have not seen Disney's Lion King movie or you just need me to refresh your memory. It's one of the classics that was always dear to my heart and when I knew the broadway musical was playing in London, I decided to make it one of my first stops for two reasons, the great reviews and how everyone says that going to theatre in London in a must-do.

It was a typical London evening...windy, slightly cold when my friend and I rode the tube and landed in Covent Garden and marched right in to the hustle and bustle of the city. A short walk from there would get us to the Lyceum theatre, but wading through hordes of people (even for someone who is used to Ranganathan Street) was not easy. We made it in the nick of time and didn’t even pause to admire the theatre interior (which I did after the show) when a voice announced ‘the show will commence in 2 minutes’ and it started right on the dot at 7:30 pm.

I was very surprised to see how packed the theatre was given that the Lion King Musical had been running since 1997! A google search had revealed that the show lasts 2 hours and 40 minutes and since it was my first time in a theatre watching a musical, I was a little skeptical, but when we finally had the interval after 1.2 hours, I realized my legs had gone numb since I had crossed them and had not changed position for the entire time – now you know how engrossed I was!!

The opening itself was brilliant...you remember the movie right? The sun, the animals, the music – well it was the same and this time the effect was doubled because it was live and you never realized it was people playing the animals. When a couple of giraffes walk across the stage, you don’t notice that they are people on stilts with really long giraffe-neck hats until you stop to wonder how they actually do it! The elephants actually walked through the audience to get to the stage!

The characters who played it were perfect – the little Simbha and Nala adorable, the grown up versions perfectly fitting the mills-and-boon description (for the animal world, ofcourse :D), the father Mufasa commanding, his brother Scar charmingly wicked ! I thought the idea of all the people wearing huge masks as hats was brilliant because it made them look like real characters without unduly covering their faces with paints and masks ! The photo shows Simbha and you can see the lion's mask-cum-hat he is wearing (wonder if there is a another word for this).

The stampede in the which Mufasa is killed deserves special mention for how realistic it was – you can imagine trying to create a 1000 animal stampede on a 100sq.m stage. Hakuna matata doesn’t disappoint one bit, the colors, the music, the formations – everything is a treat to the eyes and ears! Like in movies, the interval was exactly at the right moment, when little Simbha grows up to a handsome young man…err…lion and you cant help but grin thinking of the plight of the villain when Simbha manages to catch up with him….it so looks like the beginning of a happily-ever-after !

During the interval, the only snack we managed to find was springles and I was cursing myself for buying it and more so for not eating it during the break itself since the crunchy noise was distracting me from the dialogues :D!

The Meercat Timon with his humor and sarcasm and Pumba, the warthog completely live up to expectations. Simbha meeting Nala again and falling in love is shown with a clichéd but still enjoyable dance sequence. The scene where Simbha hears his father talk to him and realises that he should go back to his kingdom definitely deserves a special mention, was well thought out and well presented. I thought the climax was handled a bit hapazhardly and there were so many things happening in the scene that if you saw one, you missed the others….oh..well..am just being picky !

I should mention this chubby African lady who begins the show with a high pitched note (reminded me of the kulavai satham in tamil movies). She was sort of the narrator but she did more than narrate, she cracked me up every time she came on the screen with her antics!

I usually stay away from reviews and try to watch movies, esp. those that are acclaimed as good, without knowing even a bit about the plot and if possible, the cast, since that helps me enjoy the movie immensely. But in this case, although I knew what was going to happen, I still couldn’t wait to see how they actually did it! Not only did the show leave me very impressed but it also painted a nice picture for a Broadway musical in my mind…next time someone invites me to one, I won’t think twice about it.

Copyright for pictures: Disney

The temple tour

What does this remind you of ?? South India, traveling in a car or a van and seeing at least 3-4 temples in a day ? Well, you are right about the latter but bang wrong about the former since the temple tour was in London…that’s right…I said London. I saw three temples in a day (and four in all, during my brief stay) and that is a record. The only time I have done this before is when amma or some perusu gets over-excited about a pilgrimage trip in South India and decides to take me along !

The first stop was the Mahalakshmi temple in Eastham – obviously, in the desi part of the town. The temple itself was small (but nice) and what completely shook me was the poo kadai at the entrance, I mean finding malli in winter in Europe is just too overwhelming for someone who lives in Munich. I entered the temple to find it pretty crowded because of the Satya narayana puja that was going on and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw rows of desi couples all set with their Puja saman….to me it looked too real, too desi and although I knew London has a huge desi community, seeing it was a very different experience. Perumal and Thayar were brilliantly decorated and the swamy vigraham itself was beautiful. I felt a shiver pass through me when the archagar (with a nice iyengar namam) placed the sadari on my head and gave me theertham and thulasi.

The walk after visiting the temple reminded me of a less crowded Pondy bazaar….jewelery store, pullayar statues, oodhubathi vasanai…I was smelling home….!

The next step was the Murugar temple. This brought back a bigger flood of memories because it was this typical temple you see in everywhere in Chennai, with multiple sannidhis housing multiple vigrahams – from Pullayar to vennai covered Anjaneyar, a Dwajasthambam, a place for Navagraham and even a used ther ! The only thing missing was the prasadam…unfortunately there were no dhonnais with chakara pongal or vennpongal in it.

The temple Kopurams I saw were all ivory colored and I was wondering why they do not get it painted in colors like in India. I believe its either too expensive to do and/or too difficult to maintain because of weather conditions.

Since I had heard so much about the Swami Narayana temple, we decided to visit that as well. I was simply stunned by its beauty that I didn’t even remember to pray all the time I was there. The only thing I did was crane and stare at the ceiling, then at the pillars, at the arches and then repeat everything all over! Even when looking at Swamy – Rama and Sita or Rukimini and Krishna, I spent too much time looking at them, how well they were decorated and somehow the beauty in the place was too much for me to shut out and concentrate on prayers.

The temple tour came to an end just before I left London, when my friend suggested making the Ambal temple my last stop. As we walked in to the temple, there was a huge hall with a LCD screen that was displaying Ambal. My friend points to it and says ‘Swamy paaru’ and I think to myself ‘enna dhan technology develop analum, vigrahathuku badhila LCD screen konjam too much’ and I say so to my friend who bursts out laughing as we enter another hall that houses the sannidhi. Then I smile with comprehension and realize that the LCD was just a quick preview :D !

Yes, it was my first temple tour outside India. It was also the first time
- I left my snow boots at the seruppu stand in a temple
- I walked into the temple with socks on and wearing a jacket
- I did a hurried pradakshinam because the floor was too cold (and I had these mental images of running around the Sirrangam temple when the sun is blazing hot struggling with the really hot stone floors in spite all the water that is poured on them to keep them cool)

PS: I cannot translate all the tamil words in this post because some of them aren’t even tamil, they are sanskit words mostly used in the context of temples and related stuff.

Gold fish translator:

Poo kadai – flower shop (in India)
Malli – jasmine
Kopuram - (temple) tower
Vigraham - (sanskrit) idol
Seruppu - slippers/shoes


enna dhan technology develop analum, vigrahathuku badhila LCD screen konjam too much’ – irrespective of development in technology, replacing an idol by a LCD screen is simply too much !

The Holy Land Experience

I am in the land of Sherlock Holmes – This was my first thought when I landed in the Heathrow airport, closely followed by a pang of guilt, since I was also going to meet a school friend of mine that I had not seen in 7 years (Btw, did I mention that I was in the UK for work :D ?). But I was suitably excited when I finally met her and her husband and on our first day together we happily headed to the most famous address in the world – Baker Street 221B.

Like the museum pamphlet claims, you can belong to one of three categories: one, you have heard of Holmes; two, you have read some of his works; three, you have read all of his works multiple times and can give an extempore speech on any one of them. It was gratifying to see that they never considered a category where you had not heard of Holmes….that’s blasphemous, you know (or they believed that if you left everything else London had to offer and came all the way to Baker Street you should have an inkling of who Holmes was)!

I first saw the baker street tube station (London underground transport) :), then I saw the Sherlock Holmes silhouette in the station :D, then I saw more silhouettes pasted everywhere in the station :D :D, I came out of the station and noticed an old man advertising the 'Sherlock Holmes walking tour' and handing out Sherlock Holmes visiting cards :D :D :D....I was in the land of Sherlock Holmes !

Needless to say, my hands were ever busy with the camera and my eyes worked overtime, trying to observe every minute detail (wonder who does that :D!) and take in every possible item and associate it with one or other of his stories. What I loved was some of the scenes from his short stories that were set up in the top floor of the house. It gave me a chance to test my ‘Sherlockian’ knowledge and now I know that when I read those stories I can attach faces to the names even better than before.

Here are a few: Try your hand at guessing the stories they represent ;)

Clue: She is holding tresses of her own hair.

Clue: This is one of the cases, where Holmes supports the ''criminal'' but the only one where he never comes in contact with the ''criminal'' itself

Who is shown in this pic?

If you said Holmes, you are not very far off. It is actually Professor Moriarty. I always thought of him as Holmes’ alter ego since he was almost as brilliant as Holmes and his description inevitably reminds me of Holmes and it was startling to see that in reality.

Well, if you insist on being a spoilsport and talk about Holmes being a fictional character, then you would find the letters, sent to Baker Street every year from people who believe in Holmes, hilarious. I found them amusing too but to me it reinforces the impression a character can create on you (and I secretly believe the Conan Doyle is a real life Sherlock Holmes….how else can you write so much about the art of deduction?!). Here is a sample.

What I missed was Mrs.Hudson. The website claims that you will find her there but the lady I found at the gift shop (who was dressed like Mrs.Hudson, apparently) did not even remotely fit my mental image of her. And there was also a disinterested guy reading a book in one of the rooms, obviously the guard. Oh..well, at least they had the good sense to set up a museum and have it open, when I was in London….

PS: There is another reason that I call it a holy land experience. I will write about that in my next post.