The week before we left for Sydney, we met in the pool in the Bay a lady who, the child of a British civil servant in India, had been born in Simla, once the summer capital of British India.
I was reminded of this when I found the 4-disc DVD "Indian Summers" at VINNIES in Newtown. Set in the "little England" of Simla against the grandeur of the Himalayas, it tells the rich and explosive story behind the decline of the Britith Empire in India. Not even the label "MA 15+ Strong sexual scenes" was necessary for me to pick it up immediately.
That was not the only thing "Indian" about our visit to Sydney, as the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also in town. At the LIFEHOUSE we also met up again with the Malay-Indian Raj, a volunteer whom we had met five years earlier when he turned out to be the friend of a colleague in Penang with whom I had worked at Price Waterhouse as consultant for the Penang Port Commission. Then, at Redfern Station while trying to find the platform for our train to Bomaderry, we ran into Ramess, an Indian from Durban in South Africa. He had left there in 2004, and we talked, half in English and half in Afrikaans, about the many changes that had occurred there since the end of Apartheid.
Of course, we was too young to have experienced the worst excesses of Apartheid, nor had he ever heard of Alan Paton's "Cry, The Beloved Country" which had been banned during my time there. We exchanged email addresses and promised to keep in touch. The people one meets!
And the unexpected encounters continued: at Kiama we met a couple, he in a wheelchair and she pushing it, who had come down from Lithgow in the Blue Mountains. "How far are you going?" I asked. "Just out on a day trip to Bomaderry and back to celebrate our wedding anniversary." All in one day which, both being pensioners, cost them $2.50 for him and $2.50 for her. Something to keep in mind when my time comes!
(I absolutely love travelling by train which got me thinking how nice it would be to live near the railhead at Bomaderry, and to jump onto a train for a day-trip up the coast or into Sydney or even beyond, all for $2.50. Perhaps I ought to include Bomaderry in my downsizing-plans!)
As we were waiting for the bus at Bomaderry, we met the Pertells from Camden. They knew Noni and Stewart whose "Escape from the City" had been shown in Episode 38 in September 2019 - click here - of the ABC series by the same name. As the caption reads, "Having downsized to a small Sydney unit, retirees Noni and Stuart are feeling restless. They're keen to find a coastal home which caters to their passions and has ample space for the family to come and visit" - and they did when they bought this lovely "Hampton-style" house on Nelligen's Clyde Boulevard.
Now it's time to kick back the recliner in front of the blazing fire and watch the first episode in the 576-minute long series "Indian Summers".
