Second stint at London

I remember booking a week's stay in St Christopher's Inn in Moorgate close to the office for a few days while I found a place to stay. I didn't want to go back to the same place I lived last time because I wanted to explore other parts of London and didn't want to contribute to the ghettoization. I moved to Islington with an Indian friend and 2 others from France. It was a sublet and we all paid cash which at the time which a naive me thought was normal as it was always how I paid for accommodation even in India. All 4 of us got kicked out after about 6 months. I didn't know that tenants have rights in the UK and they just can't be kicked out like that. I always thought landlords had the power to evict tenants out whenever they wanted with just a notice. In India, I didn't care about respectable living standards or my rights. I just lived, paid and when the landlord wanted the house back, I moved out. Contracts signing were just not there at all or was just namesake. But the housing system, income tax, law enforcement was much more elaborate and fit for purpose in the UK. With very less time to find my next place, I hurriedly found a place in Upper Clapton.

If East London was for people from the Indian Subcontinent, North seemed to be the place for people from the Mediteranean. There was a strong Jewish presence where I lived, and a little bit south of it was Turkish. Unfortunately the landlord decided not to renew my contract for the year after citing refurbishments reasons and I was out room hunting again in the February of 2018 after just 3 months. This time, I moved to Shadwell where the famous East London began. Shadwell was dominated by people from Bangladesh.

London has its pockets of people from various parts of the world which is why I consider it to be a mini world. Everyone and everything from everywhere are here. Thats the beauty of this global city which almost no other city can boast about. I sometimes take pride in counting the number of friends I made from various parts of the world. On the other hand, I realised that multiculturalism veers into the territory of ghettoization when there are too many people from the same region/culture that they tend to form pockets of their own and don't feel the need to integrate which has the potential to a lack of harmony. So I feel that the diversity of London is at a knife-edge.

At Shadwell, just walking distance to London Bridge, I finally got a room for myself and I shared the house with 4 others. The house itself was very small with 2 Brits, a Czech, a Tunisia and me. One of the Brits, Cey, became a good friend. One of my favourite walks in London is the one from Shadwell through to St Katherine Docks to London Bridge.