By Dr. Terhemba Shija
The city of London has held my wife and I captive for four days now. Coming from a less developed country, we were thrilled by its almost perfect infrastructure but also appalled by the merciless extortion of capitalism in its bloodstream.
Like Charles Dickens’ oxymorous description of the 18th century London and its twin, Paris, these four days have been “the worst of times, it has also been the best of times” for me and my wife.
The London summer has been in its full beauty. The mornings are exquisite with the sun beaming brilliantly on its inhabitants, deceptively promising a warm day. The afternoons and evenings are also radiant with a prolonged daylight that erases the promise of warmth. We find ourselves dressed in warm jackets.
We have roamed the streets of London these four days enjoying the anonymity a large city provides. We have visited its political and imperial shrines; Palaces, the Parliament and museums.Its been a huge drain on our lean pockets and low status of our local currency. We also visited my favourite bookshop, Foyles and made a few purchases of new books.
London overwhelmes its inhabitants with its embellished conquistadorial history and intimidates its visitors with Victorian and gothic architecture and narrow streets.
I’m not really a stranger here, but none of my previous visits was for leisure and I was not accompanied by my spouse. It still remains to me a capital of imperialism, even as as I seek leisure in its allure. The Rise of America has not altered this impression. I could observe a certain aura of durability that sustains the pristine aesthetics and cosmopolitan innocence of London as the world’s center of gravity.
It is interesting and ironical how londoners are able to avoid European partnership through Brexit but are invaded and conquered by the various nations Britain once colonised.
The streets of London are roamed by hordes of people from tribes, ethnic groups and races that were once their colonial subjects. A typical street in London now is a kaleidoscope of mobs lifted from New Delhi, Beruit, Jakarta, Lagos, Shanghai and even Gboko. I have no idea of how the rural areas of England or the slums of London look like. What I have seen so far makes the city eligible for the world prize of the city with the most complex diversity.
This honour has come to the city probably without its knowing. There has been no precise point at which London had discovered its loss until a Londoner of Indian heritage became the British Prime minister a few years ago. Citizens of different ethnic nations and religions, particularly the Asians, Africans and the Caribbeans have conquered the Anglo-Saxons and taken over their economy and diminished their state church.
London has proved itself a perfect laboratory of ethnic concoctions and experiments. There is a cross breeding of sort. The new humans look like aliens; smooth, comely and exotic. They emerge with peculiar looks and behavior. They spot excessive tattoos, nose and ear rings, diverse hair styles, delicate beauty and an uncanny devotion to the demon of the android phone. In public places, lifts, elevators, at home, in schools, buses, taxis and street corners, the new generation of Londoners commune with virtual audiences. It is now the absolute reign of the AI, the Internet and the computer.
The streets of London are mostly serene and clean. However its underground is a fierce beast that swallows and spews hordes of ceaseless fast-moving pedestrians every now and then. The rickety trains surprise me with their resilience and capacity to keep the chaotic 10 million commuting population in check. I understand most of the tracks were laid over a hundred years ago.
There is indeed a lot to take away from this city any time one visits. But I must leave. We have had enough of rest for the season. Our next destination is Paris. May God guide us as we cross the English Channel into continental Europe.
