In London state of mind

The scariest thing for a first-timer in London is to land with a crashed technology. And if that happens to be a laptop without which you can’t exist, you have had it.

As I discovered much to my outrage, most repair options are way beyond an average pocket. My journey went something like this: The hotel said they have no one to help me with. A young geek at the reception whispered on the sly that the same trouble had cost him a minimum of £270 so I could just dump this one and might as well buy a new laptop for around a 100 pounds more.

PC World, the biggest showroom of comps with a huge repairs division showed no signs of relenting and said they needed at least three days to get going.

Then a helpful Samaritan who works for the BBC but hails from Bihar found out there is something called the Geek Squad who give hotel/home visits but for a fixed price of £97 and a maximum of £117 for whatever it would take for repairs. But there was no there-and-then service assured.

My trouble-shooter then found out that there was an IT expert from India who may be able to help in case it was a screen hijack. But for that I would have to travel across the length of London and go to a place called Ilford.

Three hours to and fro, I had not even made a beginning with my dead laptop. Time was passing and panic of handicap was rising by the minute. I was then taken to a shop in Ilford where an Indian origin-Saudi-Pakistani Brit (phew!), opened it up completely to check what was wrong. Half-an-hour later he said I could drop it in the dustbin as the mother board had gone.

Of course, he was kind enough to not charge any money for checking it, but said he was doing so only because his grandparents were born in Delhi.

Thanking him profusely for sparing me £30 for a dekko, I then called a friend of a friend of a friend in London to seek help.

Of course, my desperation would have got his goat so he went out of his way to get me a comp from a friend of his who had two.

Finally, I am with a laptop and breathing easy.

But this laptop situation came to me with an experience I would have otherwise not had — that of tube travelling and the other of walking for more than at least 15 km in the entire day!

Spending an entire day changing trains on my first day here, I got to know how strangely the Brits travel. All of them mostly wear black, are almost always eating something or the other, have earphones plugged in, fingers busy with texting and a magazine or a newspaper under their arms.

No one ever talks to anyone or even smiles. The silence in the Brit version of the metro is stunning, especially for those flying in from India.

All sorts of people — like the stiff upper lippers in tuxedos, to cross dressers in blond wigs, pierced faces and strange bushy dresses take the public transport here.

But the one thing that is very Indian in the London tube is the frequent faults and abrupt cancellation or shortening of routes that happens rather regularly.

Other than that, the hostility towards outsiders is sometimes palpable. Some stations are so deserted that you get scared standing there. And yes, it is a lifetime wonderment to actually have been to places like Greenwich, Stratford, Canning Town and Swiss Cottage. I, for one, had read about them only in textbooks so even gracing their platforms gave a strange kind of thrill.

Published June 7, 2009, Sunday Pioneer, http://www.dailypioneer.com/181239/In-London-state-of-mind.html