Visits to UK - 1955 and 1985

Pearey Tikku (now 79 years old) is a graduate engineer from India, where he worked for the cement industry. He arrived in the US with his wife in 1997 and lives with his children in New England and California. He is deeply religious and spends time reading scriptures and in meditation. Also likes to spend time writing poetry.

Editor's note: The author went to the United Kingdom on a two-year scholarship in 1955.

1955

Your offer from a distant land

Activates my mind of that times band

In that distant past, a young soul

Roughing Bay of Biscay, Channel, then my goal

At last Terra Firma, Tilbury Docks, your land

On an October eve I rode to Euston grand

Cora Hotel I was perched, left to fend

Alone, and so reserve, even sleep was shy to descend

A freezing room and I was not bright

To check the curtains and look around, draw them tight

Windows left open were my doom

And I resolved to return fastest soon

Chelmsford Essex on the Colchester line

Liverpool Street dispatched me fine

‘Cherry- Tree' my favorite haunt

Of Beer and wine, then a smoke full jaunt

Crompton Parkinson, my timeshare with others

Two good years went past, there were no fears

In Scottish Highlands, Devil's Elbow, lovely peaks

Castles, Cathedrals, Spires, every stone there speaks

Lake district, Wales, a paradise grand

Nature lends to mankind its gracious hand

Where is that country now?

Serenity security must return somehow.

UK Revisited in 1985

I returned to same faces, thirty years thereafter

To find great changes, people no longer softer

A strange mix, purple, brown, dark and fair

All immigrants, sometime or the other, I hear

No longer freedom to move around, freely, greet

In by lanes and crammed areas off Oxford Street

Advice is to be on the main road throughout

Fear of misdemeanor, mischievous set all about

Why this change in a country that was so calm?

Hub of the Empire, and full of charm

Motorways now new and that so fast

To carry you forward and you do last!

Pubs no longer same, no smoke now bound

Within the four walls I found

But Victorian grace still lingering around

Reminding of that distant past,

Connecting this present, such that that may last.

© Pearey Tikku 2012