COFFEE EVENINGS IN EDINBURGH

COFFEE - EVENINGS IN EDINBURGH

Khaliqur Rahman

Volunteers from the Overseas Students’ Centre (OSC) are there to receive the new-comers. Our train from London reaches Edinburgh on time at 3:30 in the afternoon and soon we are in the warm and cosy little reception of the Centre. We’re welcomed with coffee and biscuits. We’re then given pin-flags with our names on them. There is a big world map on one of the walls in the room and each one of us is asked to show on the map where one comes from. I hoist my flag on the dot showing Raipur, Madhya Pradesh (now Chhatisgarh), India.

Then they give each of us a packet which has enough information, well written and well printed on glossy paper about the Centre. I gather that the OSC, at 3, A Buccleuch (pronounced buckloo) Place, provides a focal point for all students from abroad who are in Edinburgh. The atmosphere there, they say, is relaxed and friendly and students, willing to go along and mix with the others who know what it’s like to be a stranger in a strange land, many thousand miles away from home, should always drop by. Vegetarian lunches are available at the Centre on weekdays from 12:30 and frequent evening events are organized. The Centre also provides a selection of foreign periodicals and British newspapers. A few days later, I discover that I can always lay my hands on the International editions of India Today.

Another glossy sheet promises, in a well programmed way, warm and cordial coffee evenings. Volunteering families, in Edinburgh, arrange these coffee evenings for overseas students. The idea is to keep the new entrants in good cheer, lest they should feel lonely and homesick.

We have our first coffee evening with the Boyds. Rev Kenneth Boyd is a Chaplain in the University Chaplaincy, I soon come to know, and Mrs Boyd teaches Islamic Studies at school in Watson’s College. They have no children. But I notice, they have a dog, middle aged, just as the Boyds, and lazy and portly, too, just as any priest head anywhere.

Someone passes coffee, someone else biscuits. In an informal atmosphere, each one of us bumps into the other to ask for and give introduction like one’s name and country and the course one is going to do in Edinburgh and so on. In a few minutes, the crowd of about 30 breaks into smaller groups of two or three. It is good company for each soon purely on the basis of vibes, I suppose. Each little group then sits down, on chairs, in the settees and on the carpet.

I find myself with the Boyds on the carpet. The initial ‘phatic’ communion prepares us for more specific, perhaps more meaningful conversation. At some point Mrs Boyd asks me what I think of Sufism. I tell her Sufism is Spiritualism and Spiritualism starts where Religion ends! Have you ever seen a saint with a belly, and a priest head, Pope, Imam or Shankaracharya, without one? I ask.

Rev Boyd looks at his paunch and laughs!

The Boyds invite me to dinner several times during my one year stay in Edinburgh.