One of the first questions that pops up when you mention that you
visited the U.K. is that have you visited Oxford. This Saturday, six of
us decided to answer that question in affirmative. Would we get to see
the coveted Oxford college at this late juncture of our lives? Or even
manage to get a degree? We wittily mused. Reaching at 10 am in
Oxford, most of the planning was done in the Tourism information
centre itself. They were so thoughtful that they have a walking guide
that covers all the important places you’d like to visit there. It is
as simple as blindly following the arrows.

Even so with my famous sense of direction, I managed to reach a dead
end at an uncrowded mall. Smitha and Bharathy decided it would be a
good time to open the tiffin box. I was too busy gobbling down the
Bread Upama. While JD didn’t miss the opportunity to tease about the
girls’ culinary skills. Meanwhile Jaanavi bought some essential
supplies to ‘fuel’ us for the rest of the day.

Cornered in the Quad

Though unfortunately many colleges were closed on Saturday, the most
important (and spectacular) one wasn’t. That was Christ Church/College
- where Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka. Lewis Carroll) taught and in
the settings of which based his famous book ‘Alice in Wonderland’ .
Some of the nooks and crannies of the place began looking eerily
familiar when someone pointed out that many parts of the college was
used for shooting the Harry Potter movies. The rectangular grassy open
space in the centre (referred to as the Quadrangle) was truly
breathtaking. Whenever this happens, that is, stumbling across such
breathtaking vistas - the inevitable, the unavoidable happens. The
next 15 mins is taking pictures of the individuals, sometimes in
different permutations, with our gorgeous view backdrop. Rather,
whatever you could make out of the view from the jigsaw puzzle that
was created. Newbie photographers like me prefer to shoot just the
landscape, but my more knowledgeable friends never fail to advice me -
“Da fool, how will others know that you visited that place”. I
scratch my head and grin as if I’m a fool and move on. Enough of my
rant on photography.


As we went inside the church, a sweet lady noticed our interest in the
stained glass paintings and offered to explain. For the next 30
minutes or so, I have never experienced such a perceptive and detailed
analysis of a place or an object. It was like she was taking us hand
in hand through time. Retelling forgotten tales peppered with humour,
unravelling hidden forms from a seemingly complex artwork, pointing
out awe inspiring characteristics that would be normally missed by a
casual observer, she would weave herself and us across the
Church. Hearing I’m from Kerala, she mentioned that she is writing a
children’s book based on and elephant from Kerala. No wonder she is so
good at story telling besides being patiently meticulous about
finer details.

As we made exit from Christ Church, it started drizzling. But we
continued visiting most of the colleges which comprise the world famous
Oxford University. Being a weekend and vacation time, many of them
were closed, but we managed to go inside a few of them. They were
quite different from our Indian colleges. Mainly it was designed for a
lot less people and had a lot of well maintained green spaces.

If we ever visit Oxford another time, I would surely try out the water
ways, as it practically encircles the city. After a fair bit of
(window) shopping at high street we boarded our return trains.

Surp- Rising

This Sunday we saw ‘The Rising’, a period drama based on the first war
of Indian independence centred around the life of Managal Pandey. I
expected a pretty boring retelling of events. I was surprised to find
it quite well written both in terms of story and dialogue. However, it
failed in numerous areas. The characters were not fleshed out well
(even Mangal!) and the songs were jarring interruptions to the serious
tone of the movie. I’m not writing a full review here, as the
celebrities say, see it for yourself!

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