Bangalore

I've made the mistake of not writing for too long, and now it seems that there is too much to write about.

When I last wrote, I left my my beloved Pandi Ji. Tear streaked, I headed to Bangalore via train.

I spent a week in Bangalore and had some strange and new experiences I would like to share with you.

I enjoyed my stay in Bangalore, but not as much as I did in some of the more remote and exotic places in India.

Bangalore is the most modern city in India, and about half of the foreigners that have made India their home live there.

A law that was passed almost two year ago, requires any person who wishes to use a public Internet cafe, to present a photo I.D. to the cafe worker, and have his personal details noted. This law was passed because of the amount of 'virtual' crimes that were being committed by young Internet pirates enjoying the anonymity that a public Internet cafe provides.

Although I am an ardent antagonist when it comes to the Lonely Planet, believing the information it provides is many a time biased and irrelevant, it did have one description of Bangalore I found dead on accurate - Traffic City.

The traffic in Bangalore is overwhelming. The traffic laws are obeyed, and in addition to the traffic lights there is also a timer, displaying the time left until the next light change, but the sheer mass of traffic creates an overwhelming pollution, and after spending just a few minutes in an Auto-Rickshaw, my throat starts to ache. A little while later, I sneeze and my eyes redden.

I was spending most of my time with Leigh, the same Canadian I met in Goa. We share a passion for literature and languages, and so we had plenty of interesting, nerdy conversations.

We were staying in separate rooms in the same hotel, until a peeping-tom went too far and actually opened a window looking to the inside of her room, hoping to get a better look.
After calming her (and myself), we decided to share a room and make it known wherever we go that we are a proper married couple, a plan (that worked) to spare her of the hassles and gawking that Indian men so excel at.

Since we were in a modern city, we decided to take advantage of the facilities at our disposal.
We would sit in plush posh coffee houses, sipping on real coffee (milk-shakes for me - coffee makes me twitchy) and read our books. We went to fancy restaurants and - sorry, I'm losing my concentration, the Indian guy behind me is asking some lady on the phone of she has a boyfriend, and now it seems like they're negotiating the answer.
Anyway, there was something very strange about the whole ordeal - errr, he's asking her if she believes in love - even though the places themselves made us feel like we could be in America or Europe, the waiters barely knew any English.
This strange phenomenon was later explained to us - the educated would never agree to to wait tables. Leaving the illiterate to fill in jobs where communicating with foreigners is a must.

Even really simple things were made onerous, for example:
Waiter: "May I take your plate"
Me: "No"
Waiter reaches forward and picks up the plate.
Me, gesturing heavily to the table: "Can you please leave my plate?"
Waiter, with a vacant stare: "O.K."

This stuff kept happening, everywhere.

It's as if the city is in transition. All these mega international brands have opened their branches here, and wisely so since the locals do possess money, but the workers still can't speak nor understand proper English.

On our last night we decided to bask in the decadence and went to an Indian club. We did our best not to look like mangy vagabonds, and I think we succeeded.

The club had a strict dress code, and I had to put on an embarrassingly synthetic pair of itching socks on, which I proceeded to take off as soon as I came in.

The place wasn't too full as it was a Sunday and everybody had to go back to work the next day, but it was still quite fun. We danced for a few hours, and Leigh had some colorful characters buy her a couple of beers. The placed closed early (11:30 PM). We fraternized with some Indians (very modern and western) and went with them to have some food at a very nice inexpensive restaurant.
I was extremely grateful for the opportunity, as I was meaning to get inside the Psyche of the modern Indian.
The conversation was very amiable, and it was nice to be able to ask questions openly with a mixed gender company about some Indian costumes and social trends.

And so, I left Bangalore with mixed feelings. On the one hand I got to explore modern Indian society (to an extent), but on the other, it wasn't very enjoyable and I realised it's rural India I'm after.