There's something about British culture that I miss very much when I am abroad, even in my own country India. I did not realise I loved it so much because I guess it is one of those things that for me is like water to fish. I took it for granted. I suppose in a way I had absorbed a feel and sense for it, even a natural knack for it, because I grew up immersed in English literature. As now, all through my life, I have spent time with books and the written word a lot more than people or the social world. People in those books had this quality I am talking about—one could call it a sense of humour but that's a bit general, I'd call it wit. This wit relies on a good facility with language and is 'dry', includes sarcasm, irony, puns, word plays, paradoxes, sharp observations... you get the picture?

This, my favourite brand of humour, is everywhere in the UK. Because it was already something I regularly enjoyed and fed on before stepping on English shores, though via books or movies or online mostly, it never even seemed that remarkable when I found it in real life! It does seem so now...when I think about it. It makes even very ordinary encounters with people such as the taxi driver or shop salesperson or passenger on a train very interesting. I don't mean to say that every British person has it or every Indian lacks it. But by and large, I find the level and quality of (my kind of) humour pretty high in the UK. I call it ‘my kind’ but it is more culturally specific to the UK so that makes sense. That also means that I probably come across as a much more interesting person in the UK culture, as much as they come across to me. A bit like an instrument fitting into the right orchestra.

I remember this time recently when I was going by taxi to give my 'Life in the UK' test. The British driver was quite curious about what kind of questions were covered in the test. I admitted that general knowledge was not my thing at all. Questions around sports for example might be quite simple for people who follow sports, but I don't have a clue. Luckily there would be questions on literature such as identifying Shakespeare's sonnets and that would be easier for me. He wasn't so confident about his Shakespeare it turned out. Almost 10 mins before time we reached my destination. He said to me as I was dropped off, 'You have 10 mins extra to revise now' (or something to that effect). To which I said, 'If I haven't got it yet, I don't think I'm going to get it in the next 10 mins' (or something like that). We both guffawed to that ;)

[I passed the first time after studying barely 2 weeks so I must have got it ;)]