Strangely enough, an Indian can enter the UK parliament without much fuss. Anyone can just stand in line, wait for hour or so and watch the proceedings of one of the greatest democracies in the world. I did that yesterday. No long forms. No official indentification like passport required. Just a very small form with your name and address. I saw The House of Commons (Lower House) and The House of Lords (upper house).
It was an amazing experience. Photography was not allowed or I would have captured the wonderful architecture inside. Big Ben and the parliament is as wonderful on the outside as on the inside. The people in charge of ushering you around are exceedingly polite.
That brings us to the next question. How hard it is for an Indian to visit the Indian parliament? Probably very hard. You just cant stand in line. A word from your local MP is probably required. Some long forms in the name of security possibly! You might say that there are too many people in India and there would be a mad rush if it was so easy to get in. No true. London gets more tourists every year than all of India. Yet they manage. What about security? Well, what about it? The UK parliament is as much a target as the Indian one. Security inside is all pervasive but not heavy handed. You go through the usual metal detectors and pat-downs but its not oppressive at all.
I think its time we opened our minds in India. Let Indians see the Indian parliament.
Here is a photo of the visitors sticker we have to put on our jackets. I’ve preserved it as a memento.
Security alert in the London subway has some interesting results…
Unless you have been on Alpha Centauri lately, you know that terrorists have been quite busy in London this summer. There were a couple of failed bombing attempts in London and a successful one in Glasgow. UK is on high alert. There are police officers everywhere. Terrorism sells and the media, predictably, has gone berzerk. Everyone has become paranoid.
This has a real ground level impact as I found out when I was traveling on the London Underground yesterday. I was traveling with my uncle from Tower Hill station to Victoria station on the District Line. The train suddenly stopped within one of the tunnels. The driver came on the PA and said that all the trains on the District and Circle lines had been suspended because of a security alert (something about a suspicious suitcase or something in one of the trains). We waited in the tunnel for a few minutes. The driver couldn’t pull into the next station and let us off because another train was already stopped there!
So what do we do? Should we wait in the heat for the next hour or so while the line is declared safe again? No. We were lucky. The driver got a little creative: There was just a little space on the platform of the next station. He took the train slowly into the next station until it was almost touching the train already parked there. He then asked the passengers to come in a thin file all the way from the back of the train to the front . We had to open the doors linking the bogeys. We then exited through his door.
I took some photographs of this mildly exciting event. The first one is going through the doors linking each of the bogeys.
We did this until we reached the front of the train to the driver’s cabin. We exited from his door! The driver was gracious enough to let me take his photo.
Out safe and sound!