Visitors Now Permanent

It had been planned as a two-week trip to London to see Naveen, who had been working in the UK for over three months. Our clothes were packed for Christmas in London and nothing more, because we would be heading back to base in Delhi.

With so little time on the trip, we wasted none of it and hopped on to a tour bus.

A Bucket List of Books

While we were busy touring London, I had my own bucket list, and it was really a list of childhood books. I had grown up on the red, green and orange Enid Blyton storybooks, and now I was going to live inside that world. I wanted to catch a glimpse of Malory Towers in the shadow of Church and Jane Austen in Abbey School in Reading.

These were the writers of my childhood, and I was about to walk where they had been. I wasn’t going to miss Dickensian London streets at Christmas either. And we couldn’t leave out Harry Potter, my son wailed.

Meanwhile, at the Office

Meanwhile, my husband Naveen and his friends were quietly fretting in the office about how to convince us to stay for good. The big boss, meanwhile, was worried that Naveen wouldn’t want to stay in the UK at all if the indecision dragged on, so friends, managers and colleagues stepped in to talk us into it.

It seemed inconceivable that we would trade the comfortable life we had settled into, but should we compromise on a great career opportunity that Naveen had in the UK?

Plain Speaking

Then the manager’s wife weighed in. She had put her own two children through grammar schools and believed a child’s education was not something to be brushed aside and it starts early. She decided to take matters into her own hands and do some plain speaking.

Nirbhay simply had to get a place at a local primary school now, mid-year, no waiting. He would miss a place in secondary school the following year too if we didn’t settle for good. That was that.

Accepting the logic, and that relocation was going to happen sooner or later, I said yes. We would formally relocate to the UK, from inside the UK.

No planning. No searching online for school areas, or towns, or even a house to rent. We simply made it work.

Everything at Once

Then everything came cascading at once. It was nearly Christmas, the holidays were about to begin, and we rushed to the council with a school application, praying for somewhere close by. Friends and colleagues were supportive but apprehensive, privately certain this was a most unusual way to go about things, when they had all planned their own moves months in advance.

It was 17th December, the last week before the schools closed, when the coordinator called to confirm a place for Nirbhay. He had to join for one day, the very next school day, and have a tour.

Then began the real rush. Where were our clothes? Our friends were relieved that things were falling into place, while I made a panic call to the manager’s wife. What does a primary school child even look like? Uniform, bag, books?

After all that fretting, it turned out to be simple. We walked to our local Asda and picked up a green jumper for £5, a white shirt, grey trousers and socks. Nothing broke the piggy bank, leave alone the bank. Nirbhay was ready for school after £20 of shopping.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. Back in India, his school had a special uniform fitting day with an army of people packing every variant, a separate day for books, induction and orientation before any of it began, buildings spread over acres with gymnasiums, air conditioning, and a school bus with its own bus guard.

The Hawkedon Primary School was a lovely primary, all of 10 rooms, that we walked to every day, with nice teachers. I was relieved the decision to stay back worked well. We reused our 2 weeks of clothes to last us for another 3 months, till Easter came and we could go back to India to bring over our stuff.