Dateline London:Arrival

Dateline London: A second trip overseas. I am a more experienced traveller. Not a novice anymore. Not someone who marvels at the flight entertainment system. Not even someone who is nervous when the steward asks for the choice of menu. I enter the on-flight washrooms with a familiar confidence. I smile at fellow passengers with a “ know-it-all look”. In London, again I do not awe at the good roads, the big cars or the organised traffic. I speak with a touch of experience, no longer the bewilderment. Saturday I take a tube to the Victoria coach station. There are faces to read. A spoilt rich Punjabi boy, dressed in black suit and a steel watch. A bored housewife, a lonely middle-aged man. A doting father, a tired salesman, grumpy teenagers. There are tired faces. Tales of sleepless nights, of weary conversations. Reflections of broken relationships ; of incomplete lives. Faces of a lonely city. My second trip overseas has just begun, and I know by experience, that there is nothing like being “ back home”.