UNWIND: WHEN ARUN IYER MET BORIS BECKER OVER A BEER AT WIMBLEDON

Arun Iyer shares memories of a special experience at Wimbledon where he met Boris Becker over a beer and walked the famous green courts for the first time in his life

Travel is a very big part of my life, and I believe it really helps to take a holiday and get away from life’s mundane routine. I travel extensively for work, in addition to my vacation travel. All the clichés of travel are true – it opens up your mind and it allows you to experience new cultures and new food. However I must say that I am a little bit of a conventional traveller, so by the fourth day of my travel, I start craving Indian food. Thankfully, finding Indian food isn’t too difficult to find in any part of the world today. What travel also does is it gives me time to read, to sit back and think and spend time with my family and loved ones. Also, I am one of the few people in the world that loves being on an airplane. The longer the flight, the happier I am! Luckily for me, given my life and the job, I am happiest when I am on an airplane. As far as my philosophy of travel is concerned, I am not one of those people that takes too many pictures. I just enjoy soaking in every moment rather than capturing it for the future. There are times when I come back from a trip without any pictures.

AN UNFORGETTABLE DAY AT WIMBLEDON
It’s a bit difficult to choose my favourite travel experience because I’m pretty old now and I’ve had too many memorable holidays. However, one of my most cherished travel memories was from my vacation last summer. That’s when I went to London and I caught some of the action from the Wimbledon tournament for the first time. That was really special. I have grown up watching tennis and have always been hoping to actually walk the lawns of Wimbledon at some point in my life. In fact, I was fortunate to be in the members’ enclosure and even meet Boris Becker over a beer! It was a dream come true. I watched the entire first day of Wimbledon last year, so I caught of one Andy Murray’s games as well as Petra Kvitova’s comeback game after the nasty stabbing she suffered to her hand last year.

PUB HOPPING IN LONDON
Some of my most memorable food memories are from London. I frequent the city fairly often, but recently visited with my eight-year old son. London is one of the few places where you can actually go to the pub with children. So every day I would ask my son where he wanted to go, and his immediate response would be, “Let’s go pub hopping today!”

That’s a fantastic thing to do in London! The food in the city’s pubs is outstanding. You can devour delicious things like their trademark fish and chips and scotch eggs. Every day, my son and I would head out and visit around four or five pubs, he would order a juice and I’d drink a beer. We would enjoy some great food together, while spending quality time with each other.