The British Library

My, My !!! The pleasures of being in London. Just being able to work in the British Library is every thing one could ask for. When, I was in Maulana Azad National Urdu University, MANNU, we were working on a Project on Madarsa education and in the State Central Library we came across some reference to memoirs of a Miss Wyld. She had come to start the girls school in Hyderabad. I had desperately searched for this, down the years in many libraries but never found it. Sitting with a friend at Birkbeck, I just mentioned this and she opened the mobile phone and looked at the catelog and reserved this for me. I was not sure but the second day, I went at 9.30,I was told that, I will get this at quarter to twelve and lo they handed me a box with about 450 documents and said, I was to go and sit at the tables with yellow signs. This meant, this was precious and I could not take photographs but notes I could take, and never leave this material unattended and had to hand it back to the desk, even if I left for few minutes. They in turn kept my Library card with them. The green desks meant you can take pictures through your mobile. I looked at the box with amazement and in front of me were typed papers in a much faded yellow colour. Miss Wyld had come to Hyderabad in 1909, having to run a girl's school which had started in 1907.She found that except for the building nothing existed and this is an excellent memoirs of hers on her difficulties, an unmarried women, the issues she faced in an alien country and its culture, climate, language and how difficult it was to make sense of many practices. But she loved the school, she adopted it and ran her school efficiently starting with four students to increasing this to 100 with in a span of a short time. She talks of festivals, fairs, transport, disease, health, schooling, purdah, nautch, life of a woman,floods in Musi, coronation of the Nizam and many more incidents. There were 42 Chapters and I could read only half of this. This memoir was written when Wyld became blind at ninety and learnt to touch type. It is an amazing account of her recollections with such a sharp wit and tendency to note the details and the beginnings of girls education in Hyderabad. I had not carried my lap top on the first day, so I returned back around 1.30,making some notes. Today, I was there at 9.30 with my lap top and did not move till they announced at 4.30, that now all the manuscripts have to be handed over. I could not but help smiling as, I read her account of how when the correspondence became increased in Urdu, she asked the

Government to appoint a Babu. After a month of following it up, she finally got a Babu, after all the paraphernalia of maintaining Purdah and seeing that he does not come in contact with any Muslim girl or women. She asked him what his name was and what he had studied. He said very proudly that he was BA Fail and she said, she was so sorry that he had failed and hoped he would pass soon or next year. She found that the Babu was very offended and it was only later that she understood how great an achievement this was and some thing of an accomplishment that he was distinguished enough to have had at least given the exam. There were so many other incidences talked about and I must have looked crazy to others for I kept smiling at many places in between as I read the manuscript. This took me into a flight of imagination as to how Hyderabad must have been in 1909.I am so over whelmed with the staff that is so helpful and eager to help.

The Trafalgar Square

 The Trafalgar Square as we know it today was from 14th to 17th centuries a courtyard for the great mews and had stables. In 1812, John Nash started developing it as a public space and it was in 1830 that it was named Trafalgar Square. Today this is seen as the centre of National democracies and protests. In fact we saw a major rally and protest again Climate change when we were there. There are beautiful fountains here being adorned with sculptures of mermaids and Tritons ie. male figures with a fish like tail. There are also dolphin sculptures. People just come and spend here time enjoying the open space and admiring the fountains and Sculptures.

The National Portrait Gallery

 

The National portrait Gallery is opposite to Trafalgar Square. This is the largest collection of portraits in the world boasting of 215,000 works from 16th century to present day. Though founded in 1856, many of these portrait paintings were housed in different places all over London. They were moved to the present gallery opposite Trafalgar Square at St. Martin Place, in 1896.This is a joy for any one interested in art for it tells you the history through art. It has historical portraits from Queen Elizabeth to present day J. K. Rowling. Here one can see portraits of Kings, Queens, poets, soldiers, artists, philosophers, scientists and even film stars. As a Historian, I spent more time in the historical galleries and clicked more pictures here than in the ones that had portraits of the contemporary periods.

The town of Colchester

 

Spent the whole morning going around the town of Colchester a very small, cute and an ancient town in the typical English fashion. Colchester name to fame is as one of the first towns established by the Romans when they established their kingdom in this region around 43 A.D. and it is one of the oldest recorded town of Britain. It was also the capital of Roman Britain. In fact, it derives its Nam from the Roman word, Coloni means human settlement. Situated on the banks of River Colin it is about fifty miles from London and is in the Essex District. Destroyed and rebuilt many times today it has a war memorial of the first world war veterans with a number of beautiful laid lawns and gardens with bright coloured flowers. The Colchester Castle is an ancient castle of Norman times with beautiful laws all around it. It also has a Georgian House, called the Holly Tree House that has a museum in which one can see three centuries back utensils, clothing, portraits and a huge collection of watches. The Holly tree house was built in 1718 for a Elizabeth Corlinelsen, who died soon with in a year of marriage and then the house passed to Sarah Creffeild and her husband Charles Grey who was a member of Parliament from Colchester for five terms in the reign of King George II and King George III and who lived here till 1827.It is primarily his family collection that we see. He was the one who purchased a lot of land around the castle and planted a number of Holly trees around it. This house has preserved a number of potrarits, clocks and other items of that period.Thanks Deepti for taking time and showing us around this beautiful city, its castles and museums. Indeed a beautiful and lovely day.

Fitzroy Square

 

In London we are staying at Fitzroy Square. This is close, as per London standards to the University of London, which is at a walking distance. Most of the houses surrounding the area are occupied by Professors or students. There is a shopping area also near by and so are Soho Square and Trafalgar Square. It is interesting to see how the English commemorate their famous personalities and not necessarily only politicians as is done in India. There are a number of houses that have plaques in them with names of important people who lived there. I do not recollect any such thing in India which we have of people, literatures, poets, writers, painters, doctors other than politicians. One can connect to the house immediately as one sees these names.

Stonehenge

Stonehenge is the ultimate historical mystery that has baffled many and till today we are not sure about the details of this and many theories propound. Built on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, this is the largest human made circle of erected stones. This consists of thirty stones in an outer circle in a horse shoe shape and the stones are called Sarsens. Inside is an inner circle and then an outer circle called blue sarsens. The lightest stones weigh 3600 kg. and the heaviest one weigh 22 tons which is equivalent to the weight of four African Elephants. These stones were brought from 32 km. and 225 km. from Wales and this is a mystery as to how they were brought and for what purpose. Some say they were dragged through wooden made sledges and other say through wooden rafts flown across the river.The next mystery is that after being brought here, how were they made to stand. It is believed that a deep hole was dug and using wedges and ropes these stones were then made to stand erect. The very imagination of this boggles one's mind and this looks beyond one's imagination and one is no longer sure. However, what is known that all this was built in about 1000 years in several stages. Most probably all this began about 5000 years back as a simple earth work enclosure where pre historic people buried their cremated dead. The stone circle as per carbon dating is said to have begun around 2500 years in the late Neolithic period. Some theories propound that this was for measuring time with the shadows falling on earth, some say this was a healing place where early period people came for healing, to some this is a ritualistic place and others think it is a burial place. What ever the reason, it continues raise the awe factor and attract a large number of people. Even today on Summer Solstice, 21st June where the sun is at the highest point, 15,000 to 20,000 people gather at this site to observe the sunrise, which is said to be really beautiful. The first rays of sun fall on the Heel Stone a single stone that stands outside the main circle of rocks. However, I had visited this site earlier in 2005 or 2006, when I was in Bristol and had rented a room with a British Lady. Her son and his friend had come down from London and we had driven to this place. It was empty, there were no tickets and I am sure, I have a face book post some where or at least pictures, where we went inside, touched the stones and took pictures standing next to these stones. My only memory is that there was a lot of cow dung around and we had to be very careful where we were stepping but we went around taking a number of pictures standing near each stone and looking like pygmies. We were the only four people in the place. I have a very vivid memory of this visit for on our way back they decided they wanted to eat Indian cuisine for they loved Indian food and were looking for an Indian restaurant. I had then suggested to them that if they help, I would cook a meal which would be better than the restaurant for here ever Indian restaurant (be it of a Pakistani, Ceylonese or Bangla desi, they all called it Indian and add a lot of sugar in dishes). They very happily drove me to the market, we shopped and there was so much excitement in learning to cook an Indian meal. To me what was needed was a lot of onions, ginger, garlic, tomatoes and each dish was done in a similar fashion. The two boys had helped in cutting, peeling, crushing and we did indeed have a wonderful Indian vegetarian meal with Lassi added minus Haldi, which I could not find in the market. Every one had enjoyed the meal very much and the son had also noted down some Indian recipes and told me he would cook them back home. However, today, when we visited this site in 2019,there were thousands of tourists, we had to buy tickets, buses took us to the spot and the whole area is cardoned off and we cannot go near the stones. May be this is required to protect this cultural heritage for posterity. But this site always raises a lot of curiosity and one wonders as to how the earlier humans managed to drag these stones to this distance and place them erect.