I wish we were the Clampetts

The Clampetts were lucky.  They struck gold, packed everything on a wagon, and headed West.  I am not envious of the black gold – Texas tea (much), nor the West, but the part about throwing everything they own on the back of a truck as if it were a game of Jenga, securing it with rope and simply heading in the right direction would be an improvement over what we are going through right now.  The keywords here is “they”.  E. and I have pretty much had to relinquish control over most of our belongings to others, to “professionals”, and keep in mind, we are both what pop psychology calls “type A personalities”.  Oh, how I enjoy packers placing my belongings into boxes and hauling them away for two years to a storage facility to which I will have no access! I watched packers wrap our plastic cereal bowls as if it were precious China, since they charge us for packing materials.  They packed my broom before I had time to notice it was gone, before I had time to sweep the full box of laundry detergent powder that had fallen open onto the garage floor.

Today, I watched another set of movers pack bundles of clothes, wrapped in brown paper, to be later stuffed in a crate.  They repeated the gesture with bundles of toiletries, books, a desktop and two pairs of shoes still in the box.  We had been told the movers would be very efficient.  I had assumed the shoeboxes would be filled with items such as socks, to consolidate, that shoes themselves would be filled with smaller items such as toiletries (my mommy taught me that).   My definition of space efficiency is different and involves 3D visualization.  I doubt that was done.  I could have doubled the merchandise we are taking if I had been aware of their (non) system.  Which, after all, is a good thing since I am trying to simplify, minimize, de-clutter, zen-ify our new life for Bangalore.

We are tired, exhausted and but all around excited!

Truck riders in Begumpet

Truck riders in Begumpet

About the Clampetts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beverly_Hillbillies

Posted in Preparing for the trip, Street photography | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

She didn’t like India

She didn’t like crowds, noise, dust, kids, filth, anything disorganized, so how could she have liked India?

But she was so happy that we are moving there.  She was so proud of E.’s job opportunity.  She was with us when we were pondering the pros and cons of jumping into an unknown world, and she was always on the side of  “pros”.  That was my mother for you, a world of contradiction, of extremes.  Although she was a master of negativity, she saw the millions of doors opening for us with this India project.

My mother lost her battle against cancer a week ago today.  An unfair battle.  A 70 pound woman against death.  An unfair battle against the medical institution that deprived her of a quiet, dignified death.

And true to herself, she sent us off in style: our plane tickets to Bangalore were issued the day the family said goodbye.  I know deep down inside of me that was my mother’s last gift to us.

hands for KV

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Falaknuma Palace

BW2R2429-Edit

It is cliché to use expressions such as “Heaven on Earth” or “It’s not a hotel but an experience” when describing the Falaknuma Palace in Hyderabad.  All are true.  For lack of knowledge of any Indian literature describing the place, I rely on an old French favorite poet of mine, Baudelaire, though it has nothing to do with India.

A guard walking by the Clock Tower (I think, correct me if I am wrong).

Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,

Luxe, calme et volupté.
Des meubles luisants,

Polis par les ans,

Décoreraient notre chambre;

Les plus rares fleurs

Mêlant leurs odeurs

Aux vagues senteurs de l’ambre,

Les riches plafonds,

Les miroirs profonds,

La splendeur orientale,

Tout y parlerait

À l’âme en secret

Sa douce langue natale.
 
Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,

Luxe, calme et volupté.
 Charles Baudelaire, L’invitation au voyage (exerpt)
Every morning at dawn, sitting at the terrace outside our bedroom, I listened the Call to Prayer from at least six mosques surrounding the hill.

Every morning at dawn, sitting at the terrace outside our bedroom, I listened the Call to Prayer from at least six mosques surrounding the hill.

There are thousands of beautiful pictures of the Palace that you can find online.  The hospitality is such that we felt at home there, and most people don’t snap pictures of their homes.  Don’t get me wrong, we do not live in anything comparable to this.  No Christofle silverware at home, no European trained chef, no turn down service, no pool attendant with drinks, sunscreen and towels, no marble or library full of first editions.  No Chotha the baby monkey either, the kittens probably wouldn’t like him!  The photos I am posting here reflect the atmosphere of calm and serenity.  We were guests of the Nizam, whom we expected would show up at any time, from behind a marble column, greeting us with a friendly: “Here you are,  it’s so nice to see you again”.  Well, not really!

Next time, maybe.

Tea tasting

Tea tasting

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

The packing game

The moving date is fast approaching, though we are not sure of the exact date.  It was September, then October, then November, and we are now back at October.  October 1st or 31st?  I have little to no control over that, so I have decided to focus on what I do have control over: packing, or more specifically thinking about packing.

We are starting to panic!

On one hand, it would be nice to get rid of everything and start anew in India.  On the other hand, we are materialistic Americans and we like “stuff”.  Our stuff!

We are also going for a limited amount of time, it’s not a permanent move.  Our apartment will be fully furnished, all the way down to the pots and pans and bed sheets.  As much as it is possible to start fresh and buy everything once we settle in Bangalore, it would be financially devastating to have to do the same when we come back.

We have not yet decided what to bring with us.  The amount of luggage space available will dictate much of it.  We are lucky, we are taking a shipping crate (about 2 m3) and whatever luggage the airline will allow.  Since the kitties will be our carry-ons, we are facing a problem of how to bring the expensive items such as computers and cameras.  Should we trust the company shipping the crate, or the airlines handling our suitcases?

So I made flow charts in the hopes that visualizing the process would help.  You can take the girl out of academia, but you can’t take academia out of the girl!

For all the articles that will not be shipped to India, we need to decide what to do.  We can sell them, give them, store them or bring them back to Texas.

If we don't bring it with us, what do we do with it?

If we don’t bring it with us, what do we do with it?

And for everything that we take, we need to think of the best method for shipping to destination.

How will it arrive in India?

How will it arrive in India?

This doesn’t solve the problem of what will be moved to Bangalore, but it’s a step in the right direction: East!

The app I used for the charts is PureFlow, and it’s free.

Posted in Preparing for the trip | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Beyond Namaste

I am trying my best at Hindi, and it’s not easy.

Let’s start with the flashcards I found online:

Tamarind

Huh?

Oh, I have seen that before.  I think it’s a, hmmm, let me think, oh, it’s fresh tamarind.  I got it, tamarind.  A as in “apple”.  T as in “tamarind”.  Right? Wrong.  It’s called इमली.  Yep.  It’s pronounced IMALI.  इ is for I as in “idiot”!  That’s good to know because it’s a staple of Indian cooking, but in terms or learning the language, it’s not very helpful.

Let’s move on:

Snow plough

Really?  A snow plow?  In India?  They use people to sweep the streets in Bangalore but have snowplows? Ok.  They may have them in the Northern states, in the Himalayas up there.  But I am back to square one, with the same problem I had with my imali.

We buy Rosetta Stone for Hindi.  I will skip the details (email me if you want my opinion) but it was a bust.

We buy the Pimsleur method.  It’s great, but I am a visual learner.  And I have developed a sort of attention deficit disorder when it comes to studying: 30 minutes of uninterrupted work and concentration, I can’t do that anymore!  And it doesn’t teach you how to read.

There is still the option of taking real classes.  Close to a half billion people speak the language, and in Silicon Valley, it shouldn’t be hard to find a teacher.  Once again, wrong!  Even the university where I taught doesn’t offer Hindi courses.  But I found a small for profit language school and registered.

Oh boy…  Let me introduce you to some of the finesse of Hindi.

They write with the Devanagari script, not our Latin alphabet with only 26 letters.  I already knew that.

They have different sounds than us.  They have four different pronunciations for our letter “D”,  and none of them are the exact equivalent of our “D”.  You have to curl your tongue, move it closer to your teeth, or near your soft palate… They have 3 variations of “G”, 2 for “K”, etc…  Retroflex, dental, aspirated, unaspirated, it’s a workout for your mouth.

They have gendered nouns, like in French.  Fine, I can learn.

They have gendered conjugations.  “I live in Bangalore” is different if “I” is a boy or a girl.  “My cat is black” is different if the owner of the said cat is boy or girl.  However, there are no distinctions between “he”, “she” and “it”, or between “him” and “her”; the verb will indicate gender.  Ok, so I will only learn how to speak like a girl, that will make it easier!

It gets better.  “Tomorrow” and “yesterday” are the same word.  What?  Yes, the end of the verb in the sentence will determine the tense.

Even the numbers are different.  They don’t always use arab numerals.  The “1” looks like a 9, “4” looks like an 8, “7” looks like a drunk 9.  And they use one special word for each number between 0 and 100.  Yippee!

I am only on page 9 of the book.  And you know what the main spoken language in Bangalore is?  Not Hindi!

Posted in Preparing for the trip | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

A primer on driving in India

In India, you drive on the left side of the road.  Most of the time.  Sometimes.  Scratch that.

In India, you drive on the left side of the road if there is enough room.

Or if nothing big is coming at you.

Or unless there is a cow of course.

Or a tractor.

Or if you need to make a right.

Or if you want to make a U-turn.

Head on collision avoided

Head on collision avoided

Turning left

They needed to turn right.  Now.

If it fits...

If it fits…

There are no rules against cutting through 2 lanes of traffic

There are no rules against cutting through 2 lanes of traffic…

There are no rules against cutting through 4 lanes of traffic

… or 4 lanes of traffic

A median? What for?

A median? What for?

In India, you pretty much drive wherever you can.

This post is dedicated to my uncle Joël, motorcyclist extraordinaire.

Posted in Casual observations, Street photography | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Look a bit closer

We have close to 2500 photos from our trip.  I am looking at them one by one.  Even if some are not technically perfect, they are wonderful memories.

While staying at the Taj Falaknuma in Hyderabad, we took pictures of the scenery, panoramas of the city, glimpses of the neighborhoods around us.  Urban areas are covered with haze, or pollution, and a lot of the pictures are a bit disappointing, although true to reality.  They look like this:

View from Falaknuma

View from Falaknuma

I checked other images, zoomed it, and smiled.  In the midst of those hazy pixels, I now see life, kids, families, cricket players, laundry.  The picture above, after careful scrutiny, unveils these:

Cricketer - 1

Cricketeer

Playing in the sand

Playing in the sand

For your enjoyment, here is the rest of the cricket game:

Pitching

Bowling

Waiting

Waiting

Missed

Missed

From two images similar to the one below,

Street view

Street view

you can see:

Four boys

Four boys

Women in blue

A dancer and a motorcycle

A store, and some rubble

A store, and some rubble

Women chatting

Women chatting

Baby sitting

Babysitting

This is the country I fell in love with.

Posted in Casual observations, Street photography | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Zip it up!

Public urination is probably one of the funniest, shocking, embarrassing, cultural clash that a westerner can see in India.  It’s everywhere!

I was ready to look the other way and accept it as a cultural specificity of the country until someone told me that cities are now taking a stance against it.  In rural areas, peeing in the sugar cane fields is a bit different from peeing in the street in a traffic jam.  You don’t believe me?  There, I have proof, look at the man in the white shirt who just parked his motorcyle:

Image

One could argue that traffic jams are an attenuating circumstance.  But have you ever seen a Los Angelino stop on the side of 101 and drop trou?  No.

Bangalore’s walls have signs everywhere stating that public urination is illegal. It’s obviously not enforced, though I have heard that it’s ok to “shame” the guys by pointing at them, or banging on stuff to make them stop.  The signs are even written in several languages, so your only legitimate claim would be illiteracy (which is low in Indian cities).

BW2R3376-Edit

Maybe they need better visuals:

Image

And then there’s this guy.  He was a just few feet away from us.  I blacked out his face, because, who knows, he may be working with E in a few months!

Image

And women? I was told, and I quote: “we learn to hold it”.  Another strike against Indian women…

Posted in Casual observations, Street photography | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

In the States, we have a magic trick: I put my garbage in a garbage bag, nicely secured in a garbage pail.  When it gets full, when I live in a house, I take it to the outside bin that I roll once a week to the curb.  When I live in an apartment complex, I take it to the big dumpster outside.  Then, when I am not here, the garbage truck comes, and poof, just like that, no more garbage.

In India, it seems to be a different story.  I do not know what happens to household garbage, but street garbage suffers a different fate.  When you walk the streets of the city, you don’t see big trucks driven by an anonymous man that you can’t see anyway because he is behind dark tinted windows.  Here, you see a lot of people sweeping the streets.  They sweep the trash into neat piles on the side of the road.  They do this bent in half because they use short brooms.  Footwear is optional.  It’s done mainly by women.

Image

 This is a rather large road in Bangalore.

Image

She’s barefoot.  Most of them wear a head covering.

Image

If you look really closely, you’ll notice that the woman in the blue jacket is wearing a nose ring in each nostril. She’s the only person I have seen so far wearing two.

PJ1A3291-Edit-2

This is one of the few men I have seen sweeping.  Either he has a longer broom or he’s much shorter!

PJ1A2291-Edit

You can see how she has to bend over.  And in case you’re wondering, no, I don’t go smack into people’s faces to take photos.  This is done from a distance, and I shoot “from the hip”.

The streets stink of garbage (and sewer, plus urine sometimes), no matter how tidy the piles are.

Image

Garbage pile on the left.

Image

Garbage pile on the right.

The piles are not always on side alleys.  There is one right now about 20 feet from the entrance of our hotel.

I wondered what happened to these piles of garbage until I realized that you often see mini fires on the side of the street.  It took me a few days to put two and two together and understand that they burn the garbage right there.  Because it doesn’t smell like burnt plastic, I believe the sweepers have a system of sorting out the trash.

This afternoon, I saw the fires and had my camera at the same time.  This was more in a field than on the side of the road, but the process is the same.  Interestingly, this is within a few feet of some of the IT companies.  You can see the glass window building in the background.

PJ1A3324-Edit

At this point, she’s walking away from the fire.

PJ1A3326-Edit

Then she goes back towards it.

And yes, to the left, there is a cow.

Posted on by Kitty Vindaloo | 2 Comments

Meet Chotha

There is a little monkey hanging out at the hotel.  He’s the only one.  And he’s so cute!  We first saw him around the pool, jumping, running, chewing on leaves, and I believe he was being a show off.  He was following the pool attendant, about 20 feet around him.  Of course, us westerners, as well as a Japanese couple, fawned over the little creature, though careful not to get too close.  Monkeys are cute but I know they can get aggressive and they bite: rabies, remember!

We asked about the monkey, and were given several versions, so here is mine.  They had a family of wild monkeys on the property: the mom, the dad and a baby.  Unfortunately, there was an accident about 3 months ago, and both adults died.  The baby stayed around, and the staff is, underhandedly, taking care of him (or is it a girl?).  I was told that they were trying to remove him from the grounds for safety reasons.   They looked a bit surprised that we would be so interested in a lowly monkey, but we then were given reports as to where the monkey had been seen last.

I asked A. (name withheld for privacy reasons) if the baby monkey had a name.  He said no, and gave me a look that I interpreted as “who would do such a silly thing as naming a wild monkey”.  But 2 minutes later, he approached me and said softly: “I call him Chotha”.

It means “small” in Hindi.

Image

Image

Image

Image  Can you see him?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment