Staying with friends in the vicinity of one of England’s poshest bits of countryside has its joys. The English friends take you around the sights when work permits but other desis also get in touch because Oxfordshire is a patch where Indians, especially Bangalis, like to gather in the summer. A few weeks into my stay, a Cal couple get in touch. “Helloez!” says the wife-component, “Porshu din ki korchho tumi?” I tell her I have nothing planned for the day after. “Great! Be ready! We are in the area. We’ve a rented car and will pick you up before lunchtime. Bawr has a few places he likes to visit, so we’ll do that.” I know Bawr — aka hubbybabu — to be a man of taste and knowledge who has spent a lot of time in this area when he was studying, so I look forward to the outing. On the day, the pair drive up while the election results are coming in from home. “Before anything we are going to a pub!” cries M, the wife. “We have to celebrate Karnataka!” Bawr is deprecating. “It’s likely to be a good result but a lot of them are still only leads. Bola jaay na, let’s see the final confirmed tally.” I agree with this. M is dismissive: “Arrey! Tomra na bhishon pessimistic! Beer khaabo!” None dares to disagree with the beer plan and we drive off into the countryside.
Bawr tells me we are going to Woodstock where we’ll visit Blenheim Palace, the Duke of Marlborough’s seat and Winston Churchill’s main country home. We work our way around the periphery of Oxford as quickly as the Sunday traffic permits and right at lunchtime we arrive at the quaint little tourist magnet. We drive around the ye olde houses and ye olde town hall till we find a parking space between a Ferrari and a lower-down-the-food chain BMW. I begin to remark about the posh motors parked around us but stop mid-sentence as I spot the mother of iconic private-gaaris. Bawr and I both go, “Wow! Isn’t that...?” “Yes that certainly is, no doubt about it.” M is curious. “Why are you both getting so excited about this old khatara?” Bawr and I go into the Calcutta I-know-the-quiz-answer-kintu-bolbo-na mode. “First described in Casino Royale.” “Yes, then makes another appearance in Moonraker, at least in the book and comic strip.” “Yes, do you think this one’s also supercharged?” After a while, we take pity on M and explain that before James Bond got a rebranding to Aston Martin, his motorised steed was a 1930s supercharged Bentley convertible — this spotlessly shiny thing parked before us.
The pub is warm and buzzing with customers. We hoist pints of nice local ale and toast the defeat of the Bhajpa in Karnataka. Bawr being Bawr sounds a word of caution: “Well, maybe they let this one go so that they can claim next year’s big one is also free and fair.” It’s a thought, but it doesn’t stop us from enjoying the sharing of a full English breakfast and shepherd’s pie, with extra fries.
After the repast, we begin to walk it off. We enter the Blenheim estate through one of the lesser gates as Bawr explains that the first Duke was gifted this massive area of prime land by the reigning English monarch when he won a famous battle at Blindheim (which in English becomes Blenheim — pronounced ‘Blen’em’) in 1704. The royal decree also ordered that the Marlboroughs would have to pay no tax on the estate or earnings from it in perpetuity. In the late-19th century, Winston Churchill was born into the family — the then duke’s younger brother’s son — and treated the vast pile as his second home away from Westminster and Downing Street.
Entering the estate, you’re immediately struck by how vast it is, sprouting with all the arboreal abhushans of the beautiful English countryside — oak, elm and so on. The man-made lake is vast. In the middle of it, two large dredger barges are cleaning the water. At the edge of the lake, the sloping grass is occupied by a variety of ducks, geese and swans. Beyond the waterbody and the bridge, straddling a narrow point, the castle itself sprawls across the horizon, the scaffolding obscuring large parts of its face as repair work proceeds. Looking at all this, you suddenly understand Churchill completely. There is the constant search in early adulthood for military glory; there is the disaster of Gallipoli; there is, post-WWI, his ordering of history’s first aerial bombing of civilians by the RAF in Iraq and, then, there is the Second World War. There is also the complete inability to see people of other races and the poor in general as proper human beings. Then there is the deliberate cruelty of ignoring all pleas towards alleviating the famine in Bengal.
“So this is where he lived,” says M. “This is also where he came to get away from London and make his paintings, when he was a minister and Prime Minister,” I add. “Achha, you guys don’t get so agitated about old Winnie that you alarm the haansh. They can attack, especially if you venture near their young, so be careful.” Despite the warning, M ventures perilously close to some baby geese but the mother seems unperturbed.
We wander around some more, admire the large mansion at one side of the grounds that is probably the chief gardener’s lodge, and then we come away. After tea surrounded by locals and tourists, we drive back. Passing one of many the hospital complexes in the area, we see a pair of desi women walking briskly on the road. “Ah, some brown skin at last!” M exclaims, “I was getting tired of all the groups of shada chamra.” “Lots of Indian nurses and doctors here,” Bawr explains, “most of the desi nurses are from Kerala.” We all agree that the old racist Winnie the C is probably turning in his grave to see his green and sceptred isle taken over thus.
