June 8, 2011

Met the BBC’s arts correspondent, Razia Iqbal

at the new Docklands Museum near London’s Canary Wharf.

Tried to imagine the wharves crowded with sailors and lascars;

a forest of masts and sails on the water; the paving stones slippery with whale oil and rum…

Then lunch at ‘L’Autre Pied’ (5-7 Blandford St., just off Thayer St.)

Although booked at random it turned out to be a startlingly good restaurant. Highly recommended.

Then serendipitously chanced on this near Manchester Square

It seemed a good augury for I loved his swash-

buckling sea-stories as a boy.

Then in conversation with Razia Iqbal at Asia House

She was one of the best interlocutors I’ve ever had.

At the signing afterwards, a gentleman who looked somehow  familiar

introduced himself as Anthony Aris, twin brother of Michael Aris, Aung San Suu Kyi’s husband.

He told me that he and his wife Marie Laure had recently visited Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon, which took me back to the December day in 1996 when I first attended one of her weekend meetings, at the gates of her house on University Avenue:

And I remembered also a book-signing in Portland, Oregon, when a tall young man handed me a copy of The Calcutta Chromosome and said it was one of his favourite books. And then, almost as an afterthought, he added: ‘You’ve met my mother in Rangoon. I’m Alexander Aris.’