There is a traveler who goes to another country armed with distrust and pepper spray. He is sure these people, his hosts, are waiting on the other side of customs to fleece him of all his belongings and dignity. So he takes friendliness as connivance, and invitation as entrapment. He spends all his time with people like himself, fearful travelers who’ve come abroad so they can say they saw a replica of the Trojan Horse in Greece.

I like to do it differently.

A town is not just its best eatery, the people who live there. It is, in my opinion, always worthwhile to listen to the people’s stories, to come away from a country with a sense of people as well as a sense of place.

When I travel I like to talk to everyone, except the conspicuously louche and the obviously criminal. Duh! That attitude has made traveling marvelously easy. If nothing else, it helps you find out where you should and shouldn’t go. But mostly it’s important because it prevents that awful thing, the cultural faux pas.

As David Sedaris notes in his hilarious article on learning the German language, cultural faux pas are not just embarrassing for the individual, they can become embarrassing for everyone else who shares the seal on their passport.

Nothing is more helpful in avoiding such blunders than reminding myself that though I am passing through, others live here. They did not put up this lovely street solely for my enjoyment. This is their home. The least I can do is get to know my host.

So the last Sunday before I left London, I got to know a bit more about Londoners. I got schooled right in the streets.

***

sikhwoman

A flurry of saris and shawls whirling in the wind. Hundreds of Sikhs were walking across Hyde Park with determination. I followed in their footsteps.

We passed a group of men playing a game of Sunday morning soccer on the field, none of whom took notice of the colorful parade.

A swarm of people in various Sikh dress were marching up Park Lane, a street that borders Hyde Park. They were coming from Marble Arch. They were chanting, some of them visibly agitated. Others carried banners with photos of mutilated bodies. I approached one woman in a sari. She explained.

***

sikhwomen

sikhmen

sikhmarching

The march was commemorating the anti-Sikh massacre in northern India in 1984. Sikhism is not something that falls within my avid interests but I stayed for a while and talked to people in the crowd because these kinds of moments are just as important as shopping in Notting Hill.

This march made me see Britain in a different way. This land is not just sharp-tongued wits who aspirate their vowels and ladies with impractical hats. It’s the child in that picture, it’s the woman I saw wearing a niqab in the metro, the folks in Zadie Smith’s novels.

Great Britain is increasingly multi-ethnic. New Yorker reported that in between 2009-2011 some 586,000 people had immigrated to Britain. In some areas, as in the western Midlands, apparently the most popular name for baby boys is Mohammed, ahead of the perennial Jack.

I had no idea about that or what a Sikh really was before that day. I think that’s what our ever eloquent President Obama would call a teachable moment.