October 6 to December 28, 2004
Slough, Windsor & Maidenhead

A walk is a great idea

A walk in England is a pleasure, a great idea, better than any other mode of transport, I mean. A walk in the English countryside is a most divine experience. You can either lose yourself or discover yourself, a great experience, either way.

A back-pack of essentials (depends on your cravings, whims, vices or cares) a camera, a well covered body, a free mind and a searching soul is all I had during those several walks spanning just short of nine months’ wandering in England.

 On most days, my back-pack of essentials contained a jacket, water bottles, a few cans of beer, home-made sandwiches, munchies picked from Tesco, Lidl or even Somerfields, a note-book, a few cameras mostly bought from 99 P or £ 1 shops. It was only in November 2004 that I was able to buy a decent replacement for my lost cameras during my homeless days.

46, Amberley Road, Slough, Berkshire is where most of my memorable walks originated from and ended. I have no reason to think that I’m someone so special that Dr.Bola brought me to his house here, set me up in one of the twin attics, showed me around the house, explained the intricacies of the kitchen, the bath, handed me a set of duplicate keys to his entire house and asked to make myself comfortable.

Once you are on Peascod Street, the high Street of Windsor, you are in a different world altogether from the rest of the Berkshire County.

This street has the charm that can surpass that of being on Oxford Street or the Regent Street in the heart of London, which are rather, quite, flat. Peascod St. descends from the hillock on which the Windsor Castle is situated. Probably it’s the slope that gives it the charm of being on a hill station and the absence of any vehicular traffic makes it much more relaxed and the absence of the noise of Central London makes it far more pleasurable than the areas that I have combed with my pair of 54 years old legs. I’m told that I walk a lot. Lot more than many people that we know.

Once I’d stocked my backpack with essentials from my favorite in Windsor …of Marks & Spencer, I would climb the slope of the street, go around the castle and settle down on my favorite bench by the river Thames facing Eton with Windsor just behind my back.

October 6 to December 28, 2004
Slough, Windsor & Maidenhead

I slurped the last few drops from my last can of Carlsberg Special Brew, chucked the empty can into the bin, slipped my arms through the straps of my back-pack and sighed with contentment that I’d had a good day so far. No more sleeping on the cold benches of Trafalgar Square tonight.

I walked back around the castle to catch the bus to the Slough Bus station and from thereon to Whittekar Road which was just one stop further from where I would alight for a short walk home to Amberley Road. Dr. Bola was hardly ever home until after I’d gone off to sleep and I was mostly gone for the day much before he was up. So we hardly ever met during the weekdays. Soon I was running out of my money and I had not even bought any new surfaces to paint on since I’d handed over my six paintings to Visual Art, London and I’d forgotten my sketch book with several incomplete works on their table during our meetings on October 2nd 3rd and 4th.

On the 2nd to show them my paintings and sketches, on the third to discuss terms and conditions and on the fourth to sign my still wet paintings. I made three of my biggest mistakes of life in as many days. Firstly to hand over my first ever six paintings, secondly to forget my incomplete sketches and the blank sketch book on their table and thirdly to have borrowed ₤ 40 to pay the Emirates airlines as extra fare for having overstayed the validity of my return ticket to home in Delhi.

Despite having tried my best over phone, email and visit to London again in 2006, I’m yet to see any of my paintings or sketches as I write this on November 15, 2007.

Neither did I make it to Delhi on the flight on 4th as overstaying by another day had attracted another extra charge of ₤ 50, which I did not have. My visa would expire tonight and I would be an illegal alien in an alien country several thousand miles from my family I loved above everything else in this world.

With the little money I’d left on me I bought a weekly bus pass for ₤ 9.50 to go into London each day to look for ways and means to survive, I spent two nights at terminal 2 of Heathrow airport. On October 6th I met Dr. Bola and the world around me changed forever.

I headed for Greenford to meet Mr. Kalhar, one of our customers at the drinks' cash and carry where I’d worked before. It was worth a try I thought to meet Mr. Kalhar who had a franchise shop for Londis somewhere in Slough where he lived as well, he’d mentioned once. Yes, he agreed to give me work for four hours in the mornings and I agreed to whatever wages he offered me, which I thought was a lot better than having no money at all.

Luckily Amberley Road was mid way between the Kalhar household and their Londis franchise on Earl’s Lane in Cippenham, a picturesque, dream village as I discovered later. So each early and freezing morning I would be all dressed up and ready with my backpack and be on the Whittekar Road, while it was still dark as the Sun would rise much later. From  there, Mr.Kalhar would pick me up in his black BMW to go to work each day, seven days a week.

I had started to paint again.

Taking the good doctor’s leave, sometimes I would hop on to a bus to go to Cass Art on the Charring Cross Road to buy my favorite Winsor & Newton canvasses and return to meet my friend at a convenient place we'd decide over our mobile phones and we would head back for Slough, several slippery and cold October miles away from London.

On one such a day he handed me a ₤ 20 note and asked me to buy him a pair of canvasses for him. ‘Was he catching the painter’s bug too?’ I thought. He took me to the other attic room across the stairway landing, pulled out a stack of paper sketches and paintings as if by magic and grinned.

‘See You don’t do portraits like I do, you just do lines after lines on your canvasses’. He said. His words stuck in my mind like few ever had. I was to name my exhibition at the Slough Library later in November “The Lines”. And later in January 2007 in Delhi “Panchtatva-ki-Lakirein” (The Lines of Five elements)

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