We were two famished souls, and consequently our first priority was dinner. There are a good many Indian Restaurants in Central London, my favourite being Ragam, owned by a certain Haridasan from Guruvayoor, with whom I have this long-standing argument on whether you use potatoes in traditional Kerala avial. My contention is that you don’t, but the avial at Ragam is very tasty, nonetheless. (Some of my readers might be able to enlighten me on this).

However, dining at restaurants at Central London tends to leave you a little short at the end of the month, and yesterday, I chose the homelier Indian YMCA canteen, where you can have an excellent, and (equally important) a filling meal for £4 a person, with the added advantage that you feel like you are in a Medical College Hostel in Bombay.

After dinner, Sunu unthinkingly suggested that we take a walk, since it was only quarter to eight, and the festivities at Trafalgar Square would not begin until 10 o'clock, at the least, and I gleefully agreed to show him around Central London. (I used to stay here, earlier, at The President Hotel.) We traced our way to Holborn through the quiet, leafy campus of London University, pausing further down to admire the majestic pillars of the British Museum and the lions guarding its rear gate.

I kept up a steady flow of chatter, lest Sunu should start thinking, for if he did that, he would realise that he had been walking for a long time, and then he would begin to complain. Either I was being very effective in my self-appointed role as guide to Central London, or I had underestimated his capacity for walking, for he showed no signs of tiring.

At Holborn, there was heavy traffic, and we took a detour towards the Thames (which was my secret destination, for I dared not tell Sunu that we were walking as far as The Westminster Abbey). This took us through some of the areas frequented by the homeless people in London. (Yes, London has its share of poverty).

In one of the alleys we were glad to see some of these people being fed by volunteers of the social service. Every Christmas, all homeless people are housed in schools and government buildings, and fed by the local authorities, but I do not know if this does any good, because, in the coldest month of January they are all turned out again to fend for themselves, and then they are worse off than before.

We now took a wrong turn, and imagine our surprise when we found ourselves facing The Old Curiosity Shop, immortalised by Dickens. It is pint-sized among the massive ugly concrete buildings, but proud and dignified, and reminded me, for some reason, of R.S.Vadhyar and sons, Kalpathy. Probably it was the blue-painted, low, your-head-goes-bang-if-you-ain’t-careful door that stirred the memory.

I had hunted for this shop a long time, but I hadn’t been able to find it when I was in Central London, although I had seen another noteworthy sight -- Dr. Johnson’s house (which had looked so frugal, like the man himself – to imagine much of the first Dictionary would have been written there!).

The Thames is most beautiful at night, because you don’t then see the Coca-Cola cans and used plastic bags gently deposited by the waves on the shingle banks. All you see is the floating Abbey, gloriously lit up on one side, and St. Paul’s looming in the distance.

The Inspector Calls by J B Priestly is still playing at the Garrick Theatre, the neon sign at the Royal National Theatre announces (I saw this West End play 3 months ago, and evidently it is still going strong), and the temperature is hovering at a comfortable 9 C (which is surprising for this time of the year). In fact, I am warm enough in my full-necked sweater, and take off my jacket. The chimes of the Ben announcing 9 o’clock luxuriously float across the river to where we stand, at my favourite spot on the Waterloo Bridge.

At the Embankment tube station, I am accosted by a Sri Lankan Tamil boy, "Anna, Ealing Broadwaykku enda line pogum?", and I direct him to the District Line. Out of 10 people walking down the road on a London street, there is a very high probability that at least one is a Sri Lankan Tamil or a North Indian, generally a Punjabi. Consequently, to survive in London, it is sufficient if you know either Tamil or Hindi!

Most of the Sri Lankan Tamils had come here as refugees in the late Eighties and early Nineties. A friend of mine, who is originally from Jaffna, got a scholarship to study in China, and he left Sri Lanka in the mid-eighties. By the time he finished graduation, the situation there had worsened so much that his family was forced to seek asylum in the UK, and they have all been here ever since.

Finally when we arrived at Trafalgar Square, due to a bomb scare, the police had tightly cordoned it off. We managed to get to the Nelson Column, however, after being thoroughly frisked. The fountain had been turned off, much to the disappointment of the yelling throng . This was similar to any Bangalore crowd, and after the quiet evening on the Thames, jarred on my nerves ( though I was hollering like everyone else), and we did not stay long.

As I waved goodbye to Sunu, and walked up the hill to Severall’s Avenue, I could hear church bells rolling across the sleepy town of Chesham. And at the foot of Alexander Street, I stood for a long minute, listening to the distant cheers from the George and The Dragon.

So this was my first New Year in good old England.