Pre-monsoons in Bangy Town

Pre Monsoons in Bangalore started with a "oor habba" or festival of the town. The streets were lit up with colorful lights, the village/town goddesses were taken out on processions, a lot of folk music native to Karnataka blaring all day with prayers to the rain gods to shower their blessings.





Lo and behold! The gods did shower. The skies roared and lightning lit up the night sky. Every evening for the past couple of days has been a heavy down pour, banglore feels home again, the chill and the tingling sensation in the air, the temperatures hovering at an ideal 20 degrees or around and romance spreading it's effects on couples and lovers. I shall be good and cut out the traffic jams and over flowing sewers to retain the good feel and also, the part where I am rushing out of office to reach home before the gods decide to turn on the tap.





Today a few beauties were on display in my garden. Below is a snap shot of it. This is my favorite part of the year. Lots and lots of flowers all around and every where you look, it is colorful and vibrant! Again I am cutting out the poor souls not used to pollen in the air.

When Indians get westernized

I really don't like to crib on my blog but then,
When the Indians get westernized, then they complain about everything that gets indianized!

A couple of things that I noticed in the past week:

1) We are rude to our own families and ultra polite and greatly helpful to acquaintances. I wonder why and how we can correct this, in the - supposed to be more enlightened - younger generation as well as in the -supposed to be more experienced - older generation

2) We are very happy to run to a forest and preserve the folk culture, it is our cultural heritage. Back home, anything and everything a Brahmin lifestyle suggests is a blunder and has to be treated with highest detest. This is how we preserving our culture.

3) An eclectic mix of French and Brazilian cooking results in delicious food where as anything getting indianized is distasteful. I am particularly pissed with the comments buy a silly fat NRI on one of the shows on Travel and Living. His remarks on the "Indianized Chinese food", on "The British gave us tea, and we indianized it", on the "stinking Masala chai" and the "road side thick distasteful tea" literally set my appetite for his blood on a boil.

4) We are more than happy to have no self respect and even happier to blame the Brits for it. After 50 or more years of Independence, it's gone from low self respect to almost none...

5) We live in the past most of the time. That's our excuse for our laziness. Like, India WAS a great country, we WERE a rich family during our grandfather’s time a century back, we HAD the greatest scholars and libraries of those times, we WERE thin like a stick a few years back.

The day we turned into Zebras

This last Sunday, a friend and I randomly decided on going out on a moderately long ride. Totally random, we just took the bike and headed out on Mysore road, did not even check the fuel in the tank nor the cash in our wallets, no sunscreen, no riding jacket, nothing, just my bike and us.

We rode on Mysore road and took a deviation to reach the big banyan tree. The road is BADD! We decided to ride further on to Manchanabele, a small dam and a mini-bird watching paradise. Here the road gets WORSE. We managed to reach there a little before the sun started to get unbearable. After sitting at the waterside till the sun started to burn our skin (really brief period) we decided to head back and have breakfast. We did spot some very beautiful birds and the lack of a good camera was felt badly. Managed with my fone camera are some fotos below:

Some village boys more than happy to dance and pose, playing in the waters and splashing it all over.


The cute girl on the tree, completely camera shy and who refused to turn her face around.


The granny walking along the lone road, right out of the past century!


No justice to the view of Savandurga from this camera at all!


On the way back the bike conked! The engine suddenly started to rev at a high RPM even at idling! Tried the windows trick - switch off and switch on (computer engineers you see!), tried the good old way of shaking and starting but NOTHING! The thought of having to push it all the way back was quite scary. Manu called up his friend, a bike expert, to see if we could try and do a telefono-mechanics job. After an analysis he gave up and a service station was the only option. "But wait a minute; see if the choke is on". It was! Switching it off solved the problem! Glad it was not a real problem. We were back on the saddle, with a sigh of relief, and rode to the big banyan.

JUST FOR EMPHASIS:
If engine revs higher at idling, check the choke, might be ON!
If the headlight is on always, check the pass button might be jammed ON!

For details on Manchanabele see here.

The Big Banyan, tender coconut, some pictures, a little rest and decided to go to kamath lokaruchi for food. The fuel was almost in reserve but decided we can manage it and by the time we arrived there, we were running on reserves and so was the bike. Our tummies were begging for food. Jolada rotti was quite tasty @ LR and we guzzled down a few gallons of butter milk and washed our burning skin under the cool waters. I coaxed Manu to also try and make it to Kanva reservoir, with the confidence that the bike's reserves would be sufficient, and thankfully it was. But the site @ kanva was not as pleasant as it was last time. There was a lot of construction work and the road across the reservoir was closed.

By this time the heat had started to tire us. We took frequent breaks along the way back to the main road. I wish there were a few benches along the way. We briefly discussed on how our civilization, in India, had seen the peak and now is on it’s declining path. The era of Ashoka and the likes where the roads were lined by shading trees and enough rest houses on the way and now, there is not even a drop of water to quench the parched throat. It's just pollution and selfishness that abounds all around stifling the people's values just like the summers' heat.

We reached Mysore road and without much adu, I filled some fuel at the first fuel station we saw. We were already low on cash and there were no WORKING ATMs in any of the towns along the way. The heat must be getting to them too. I filled only a liter of fuel for the way back. I am so glad the bikes give good mileage.

Reached home tired, exhausted and tanned to at least 5 shades darker! My arms look very very funny, striped like a Zebra. No more summer time rides was the decision.

pay more, get less...new age principles

Every time I get out of coffee day, I keep making a oath never to return to such a lousy place again and to stick around to good old banglore cafes.

Just for facts, herez the comparision:

note: Waiter is the guy at CCD and Server is our local hotel boy

1) The waiter comes up with a pad and pen and jots down the order. Still I get a cappachino instead of a latte. He takes orders from may be 4 tables for about 20 items.

The server takes orders from about 15 tables for about 50 different items with various variations and it almost never goes wrong!

2) The order is place, food never delivered, and the bill arrives. To make things worse, the waiter comes up and asks if I want anything ELSE!!

The server gets the food in almost a jiffy, asks if you need any thing else with it, enquires if its ok, makes small talk, literally treats you like a guest at home and then gives the bill. He is happy if you tip him or not, wishes you a good day regardless of the tip and make you want to come back to the place!

3) It takes half hour to make a coffee with all the latest gadgets and still it comes cold and very light! He never remembers you!

I get the coffee IMMEDIATELY, and with the desired variation. If you are a regular (visit 3 times) he even remembers your requirement!

street play

Boys will be boys, despite starting to work and putting on lots of fat! This was what I realised as the guy next to me suddenly zoomed and made crazy turns and dips to overtake me. Pondering on, I realised that this sudden behaviour was triggered by a simple thing. A slight twist of the throttle...I had revd my engine high and the man thought I wanted to have a drag race on MG early morning in peak hour traffic! What a dim wit!

On a deeper analysis, I have done the ripping and crazy riding also. I have timed these trips to office and they are almost always the same, how ever much of rash riding I did! After a small accident, (need to clarify that I was riding very slowly!! bloody oil spills) I was riding slowly since braking was a bit of a difficulty and I had to use clutch control, I realise that it still took the same time to get to work with much less tension! Sorry to give you the typical good ending, yes I ride much less rashly these days, but ya once in a while I love the engine and the pillion screaming ;-)

Oh, I got a nice sticker to post on my bike, it says "Honk if you are Constipated". Hope the honking behind me gets lesser *keeping fingers crossed*.

a tribute to my collegues in a different country

pong, dong, long, mong, tong...ong ang ong...

Ok thats literally the sounds that they make in the name of speaking english. Call me rasist or whatever, I dont care. Im fedup of trying to figure out what they are speaking!