Southall, Punjabis and how much I love acting stupid

So I'm back to blogging. After being annoyed for a while, thanks to the unsolicited comments about my blogging from my work colleagues, I'm back ... and there's lots to catch up on. And this time, darlings, I bothered to bring my camera along, so it's all about visuals, visuals, visuals.Two weeks ago (I know, how out-of-date of me), my dear Punjabi friend, Apu, came over to London for a day and it was the most fun I had in years. We were meeting in Southall, which is "full of Punjabis! Only Punjabis!!!" as Apu says. We went to the Sikh gurdwara (the largest in Europe, apparently), sat there for a while listening to the preaching going on, not that I know what it was about. My Punjabi isn't that great.

Afterwards we went down to the communal kitchen, the langar, as they call it, and had some food (stuffed ourselves like pigs, in Apu's case - he can't cook and being away from mummy for about half a year now, he is suffering badly). We had chappattis, chana dal, dahi, dal makhani, pakora and mixed vegetables. Apu was pretty impressed with my ability to name all the food correctly! So the gurdwara was an interesting place to see but unless you are with a Sikh, I wouldn't go there because it would probably feel a little weird, not that they would kick you out or anything.  With our bellies full, we checked out Southall High Street, with its Bollywood cinema - the Himalaya Palace, and its many saree shops, where I bought a really nice blue kurta. I have been dying to get one for ages, I have a pink one that I bought in Delhi about a year ago and I totally love it. If there is a reason for me to come back to Southall in the future, it will definitely be the Indian sweet shops - there are so many of them there and their creations look irressistible, so many shapes and colours.

You know what ... the more I think of it, the more funny it is that a place like Southall exists in London. Because it has nothing to do with Britain ... or Europe, even. It's like you are walking on a street in Delhi, except you don't need to fly there. Just take a bus from Ealing Broadway.

After Southall, it was on to sightseeing - Picadilly Circus, Trafalgar Sq., Oxford St., Westminster and so on ... it was Apu's first time in London. (And I hope it wasn't the last because he is so much fun to hang out with. There just aren't many people left in this world who understand the importance of hanging upside down from railings and renaming Tube stations with funnier names and posing with two footballs as giant boobs and and ... you know? The importance of being able to act like a five-year-old sometimes. We are a dying breed, I am telling you!)