Life in London!!

That’s how we arrived in London from Madras, via Delhi!

Aeroflot airlines, the official airlines of the then USSR, or whatever was left after Gorbachev and his Glasnost and or Perestroika, carried us from Delhi, via Moscow to the busiest airport in the world. Needless to say that those words of Gorbachev got into Oxford English Dictionary of the 80’s, similar to WMD, i.e. Weapons of Mass Destruction in the new millennium courtesy George Bush. Perhaps the words are as obsolete as they were, when came in vogue.

I, Hari and Ganesh Moorthy! We roughly paid around Rs 20,000 each for the return journey to London from Delhi. It was March 1994 and the aim was to attend PLAB exam in London, pass it and find a job in United Kingdom as a Trainee Doctor and earn the whopping Rs one lac monthly! Perhaps, this is what I had told my poor mother and managed to convince, before she pledged her Jewellery for the same journey and the examination fees.

The journey from Chennai, to London, however lasted more than 3 days. The initial stretch from Chennai was done with Tamil Nadu Express, travelling two nights, and a day, in a non air-conditioned first class coupe, in March 1994! Needless to say that we were almost roasted by the time we reached Delhi. It was our second time in Delhi and the previous visit being with our MBBS classmates, on a batch tour to Kashmir in 1989.

The departure platform of Chennai, Central station was flooded with people and tears on that eventual night, when we left for Delhi by Tamil Nadu express. That was also the final night; I had seen my father alive and also few other people, including Hari’s Bavaa, who died few years later in a car crash, near Mysore. My father died 4 months later, surrounded by his close friends, on a fateful trip to Kutraalam, South Tamil Nadu in July 1994.

Coming back to our London trip, I needed to mention about few interesting things that happened to us after our arrival in Delhi. We still had one full day at spare and the flight to London via Moscow was at early morning the next day. In Delhi, we holed up in one of the flats of a Mysore MP, who was a friend of Hari’s Baava. We rummaged through the streets of New Delhi, struggling with our Bobby’s Hindi!

We, visited few places and then decided to do the stupidest crew hair cut for Rs 5 along with shaving our fungal moustaches!! Ganesh was bit fair skinned amongst us, however needless to say how we all looked and made a mockery of ourselves at the airport, by the way we attired with a black leather jacket! It was, what we thought so cool those days, came with the blessings of my brother, who negotiated the price from a local harbour friend in Chennai.


Rightly so, we had few troubles in the immigration. The chaps in Delhi must have thought that those southies were indeed LTTE chaps in disguise. Mind you, it was 1994 and not that far from 1991, when Rajiv was killed. Ganesh, the fair skinned was interrogated for nearly an hour or two in Hindi! All he could muster in those two hours in Hindi was “I don’t know Hindi”.


Well, eventually managed to get pass the immigration with our black leathered jacket and ended up on the flight to Moscow. To our surprise and shock the economy class was full of Russian farmers; smoking cigars and drinking Vodka from their own supply. The journey time was around 4 hours and we felt like were still travelling in Tamil Nadu express!

Moscow’s airport was engulfed by glorious white pure snow. The transit time was few hours before we boarded the much nicer looking and better served flight to London!

Our flight arrived roughly lunch time, in London. No problems at immigration. People seemed to have believed that we were indeed from Chennai or the then Madras, in India. The black jackets were still worn whilst we took Piccadilly blue line to Hammersmith station. Then, we swapped to the Green District line at Hammersmith. The routes and transport methods were meticulously followed as instructed. The instructions were from none other than our seniors and also our senior classmates, who had made the same fateful, life turning, tummy churning journey from the airport to London Eastham station. The destination was obviously Stanley Flats at Caledon road.

We were eagerly welcomed by our friend Ramesh at the flats, who, to our relief had already identified few B&B’s.

That was how our journey, in an alien land began. The black jackets were still worn when we arrived at the then Stanley Flats, a ten minutes stroll from the East Ham station.

I have still got it in my GARAGE!!!