@Bradford, West Yorkshire, England.
An year has passed since my visit to the United Kingdom and my last foreign trip; this awareness would tickle my intellect to write something on those memories, but this time not about something which did impress me and come up with anything which helped my study of history of English literature. I would write about a place which was fine, but nothing which was impressive or special enough for me, but is still somewhat likeable and would qualify to be in my travel diaries even as it did pale in comparison to what I visited before and after that journey. It wasn’t a bad journey, so it had to be in that list even as the gain was less for the intellect and the soul. After all, it was a city which was inhabited even during the Anglo-Saxon ages. It even had a mention in the Domesday Book of William the Conquerer’s time and former powerful manufacturing centre and a trade centre of wool. But the city I saw looked to be of much lesser power compared to what I had been witnessing around Yorkshire and therefore it had to be much better to impress me; if it was the first British city I visited, it would have helped in the generation of a better impression about itself at the cost of a decrease in the total evaluation of the island as a whole.
When I came to knew that once, a march to celebrate St George’s Day was cancelled and England couldn’t even commemorate their patron saint in their own city, I knew that this was not at all the right place. But not every part of a city is the same and there is no city in the world which is so perfect that it’s features will make us feel as if we are back to the Garden of Eden with roads, transport and buildings as extra additions. As every other city, there were those good things; the other side of what was the exact opposite; the best thing was undoubtedly the Undercliffe Cemetery. Never was a cemetry more fascinationg for me, an infatuation which was to be lowered only after I saw the Glasgow Necropolis. It was not just a cemetery, it was a collection of monuments, fauna and flora. The architecture of the tombs combined with the greenery as well as the view towards the city was beautiful. It could also be termed a park or a historic place. This cemetery of the Victorian Age is indeed a special place which would make one think about being buried in there sooner or later; it is a wonderful place to live as a vampire, zombie or just a random spirit and talk to the other souls which roam around. There are a few places which would make death an amazing thing; one of them would be the need to be buried at a wonderful place like this.
Even as most of the graves had crosses, especially Celtic crosses, some of them had footballs, urns, trophies, arches, flowers, pointers and statues. There was so much variety in it, as some of them looked like chapels, Greek or Roman temples, dungeons or Pyramids, some of them even having spinxes or angels guarding the tombs. There were so many inscriptions on each of those graves and so much designs carved into each of them. Most of them were kind of Gothic, and they successfully gave that feeling of the existance of spirits in the form of shadows which come back to life at night. At a time when Halloween was not too far away, this was something which was to awaken the spirits of the holiday which were asleep as if to consider the day as belonging to some other creatures who lived far away in strange lands and talking in incomprehensible dialects which are of a financial or profit-oriented character rooted in sin and deserving a free ticket to perpetual hell which burns the soul faster than the body, but keeps it intact for further torture. Only a few of them were free spirits, and the rest were humans who were affected by the shadow world. The cemetery was the beginning of what had begun as the start of the beginning; but it had no effect on the longer run and as it was not the absolute beginning, it slowly lost it’s light charm on my intellect which the Glasgow Necropolis gained.
Bradford Cathedral is an interesting structure, but unless seen before having a look at the other massive church buildings, it will not bring that special expression on your face. It still has a history dating back to the Anglo-Saxon times even as the current building can’t tell that old a story when the area was Northumbria. It has undergone so many changes since then and it might still be more impressive than any of the churches you see in South Asia; I would make a few exceptions in that case, but with a historical background, I would support this building, which is called the Cathedral Church of St Peter situated in the heart of the city of Bradford. Sometimes, one has to feel for the places of worship which had no patrons in high places; some churches and temples will survive on it’s past glory even as there is no more interest left in them, while some others will cease to be important due to some irreversible changes in history. Literature has been moderate in that case, and at times been on the right side, but history has did the worst, on more than a few occasions and took sides and made us believe it is a fair opinion; on this case I would blame it on the neglect and what was in the mind of a few selected people of history, not just the writers, but also the creators of it with their actions.
Bradford seemed to have less order in comparison as people looked more careless, walking on roads and talking loudly in strange languages and writings in some unknown script too; I assumed it to be Urdu or some variant of it considering the large Pakistani population in the city. It was evident from their dress, not only women, but also men. That would give the impression of being in a multicultural area even as there have been many unrests around the city. Except for the looks of the buildings and the climate, it might have given the feeling of being in Pakistan, but I would restrain from thinking more about the same as I have never been there and not planning to either. I had thoughts about visiting the other neighbours Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Burma though, along with another trip to Sri Lanka. Bradford still made the place closer to Asia than any other even as it is debatable considering how much variety exists in Asia as a continent of so many cultures. But I didn’t have the need for that, and it was in no way closer to India, especially South India and no way near Kerala. I wasn’t there to get any feeling other than that of being in the United Kingdom.
There could be a thousand reasons for that and a few more hundreds which one might be able to figure out with a mind of reason, but I had just a few. I had my tradition, culture and my individuality and a part of my mind was always at home and it was something which kept me as what I have always been. Being back home was something which I had experienced and was still going to experience in a procedure which was expected to continue for decades. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was to go on forever until the Judgement Day. There is always something wrong with a trip when a place is not what it is expected to be; it is a feeling of the inner soul rather than what surrounds it in the material world. It is the self-destruction of the images of your mind aided by a force which is not at all perceptible and the ultimate replacement of these images by something which you didn’t really expect or didn’t even want to expect, and thus it happened on this occasion; not really a perfect obliteration, but something which was a slight punch to the intellectual side. It would hurt even the most mentally stable creator or a true student of art to such an extent which is to determined only by those intangible factors which guides him.
Diving out —>
TeNy
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