Down In Oxford

On a pleasant October morning in 1996 Subrat alighted from a bus on to the famous cobblestones of Oxford’s Gloucester Green bus station. 

He had come for a three-month stint as a Visiting Professor at Linacre College. From prior experience he knew Oxford to be negotiable by foot. So he walked to his place of accommodation, dragging his large-wheeled suitcase behind him without much effort.    

The modern building he was to move into was at a place awash in history. The street in front was the St. Aldate’s.  Next to it was Pembroke College where the great Dr Johnson had studied in the 18th century. Across St. Aldate’s, and diagonally opposite his building, was Christchurch College. Legend had it that Dr Johnson was deeply ashamed to walk in front of the elite Christchurch because his shoes were not in shape.  

“Hardy made Christchurch into Cardinal and Oxford into Christminster in Jude the Obscure,” Subrat intoned to himself as he walked.

Other treasures waited to be uncovered: the Broad Street leading to Bodleian Library as it passed, keeping Baliol College, Oxford’s oldest, to the left. If you made a left and went in the opposite direction, you would see the Martyr’s Memorial, memorializing the several thousands who had died in the First World War. That was where the road forked and became Woodstock and Banbury, each road dotted with ancient colleges.

His own college, Linacre, was a modern college on St. Cross Road. But a meandering walk to Linacre through Hollywell Street gave one a chance to savour the scenes that made Oxford the ‘city of dreaming spires.’

…..   

Subrat felt elated that he had become an insider at a place where history stared at one from almost every building and each street corner. During his earlier visit he had been an outsider looking in or, which was the same thing, looking through someone else’s eyes.

The very next moment, of course, he came to. 

Who knew better than him how antiquity was not so benign a thing after all, here as well as back in India? 

He remembered only too well how his last visit to Oxford was ruined by exactly this discovery.

….

That was eleven years ago. He had first come to Oxford, riding in the Norwich-Bristol coach. That was an October day too. It was dull, drizzly and overcast as if in an attempt to broadcast his gloomy mood. 

Only a week ago he had landed in Norwich. He had travelled alone, leaving Swarnima and 3-year old Anisha to their own devices in Berhampur.  Memories of their ramshackle life in the non-descript town tugged at his heartstrings, making rapprochement with this new chapter in a scenic Norwich difficult.  

At this point summons from his college senior, now an Oxonian, had held out hope as it promised a half way house between past and present. It had put him right back on the road in an awesome display of audacity he hadn’t known he possessed.

“Let nothing, not weather, not the hassles of a long, solitary bus ride, deter you from coming” – the postcard from Oxford had said. 

The words were gospel.

What had followed was totally unexpected.

 A warm kerbside hug from his friend as he got off the taxi that degenerated into a chilling downer once they were in his room.

The point was this: Subrat hadn’t done enough. He may have come nearer to the temple, meaning England, but he was still farther from God, meaning Oxford. In short, UEA didn’t measure up. 

If only he had known then that W G Sebald, the greatest post-war writer Europe would produce, was being nurtured in the womb of UEA at that very moment when Oxford was being eulogised!  

A brief truce had followed when they headed to Phoenix Cinema and sipped wine at the adjoining bar. Although the downer was not repeated, the earlier warmth was not regained either. 

….

And now destiny brought him once again to Oxford after 11 years. He had a chance to even the tally. But he must play it right. 

How?

He seemed to have got off on the wrong foot by walking to Phoenix Cinema on the very day he set foot in Oxford. It was a sign of his lingering vulnerability.

By a striking coincidence, Jude, the new movie adaptation of Hardy’s novel, was playing there. The book was so much about the yearning of a commoner to get into Oxford.  

Again it was an early warning that the pitfall lay in coveting the insider status. For only as an outsider, could one see through the mystique of the fabled place.  

….

Subrat took heart from an incident that happened at his Linacre advisor Kate Flint’s house.

She had him over for a meal on the second weekend of his arrival at Oxford. 

He reached the place where James Street should be, but found the name St. James Street on the plaque. He went up to house number 12 anyway. 

The door opened at the press of the buzzer. A gentleman appeared.

“You must be Subrat.”

“Yes.”

“What took you so long?”

“I was a little confused when I saw the sign at the mouth of the road, saying St. James Street.”

Kate had by then materialized, her face lit up by an impish smile.

“We have decanonized it.”

….

Subrat decided that the first thing to do on returning to his teaching job in Bhubaneswar was expose Oxspeak.  

For the glamour of Oxford came from a series of deceptive euphemistic conversions: Autumn, Spring, and Summer into Michelmas, Hilary, and Trinity, Bills into Battles, and Teacher into Don to justify high table privileges. 

He had an awakening.

View it from below: that was the simple way to hold glamour at bay. There, here, everywhere.