Thankfully I lucked out when I
choose mine, Electric Cats, as it was only a twenty-minute walk from the newly
running metro. Only one line of the metro is opened running laterally through
the city. It has taken 5 years and $2.1bn (3 times the budget) to build, slow
even by India’s standards of red tape and bribe based construction hold ups,
but when all the lines are up and running it will make travelling in the city a
lot easier. Autorickshaws will hardly break the bank at £2.50 for a 1 hour
journey but the exact same route by metro took me 20mins and cost me 14p. The
idea of a metro is still quite alien to a lot of Bangalore’s inhabitants. Kids bursting
with excitement at the ticket booth, cheated death rushing through the slide
doors before they guillotined back shut. The blank stares the older generation
returned to the many aides and helpers reminded me of the same look with my mum
when I showed her how to use on-demand for the first time. But getting off at
MG Road station I felt like I could have been back in Shanghai’s East Nanjing station
or any western city with the number of big label shops and boutiques.
Advertising boards everywhere, each adorned with the whitest Indian guy you
could find just to make sure the product sells.
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| Tipu's Summer Palace |
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| Iskcon Temple |
Over the first few days I visited my fair
share of temples. In the south of the city was the Bull Temple, a towering
black bull statue reared up on a platform in the centre. He seemed too colossal
to be housed inside, giving the impression that with one snorting toss of his
head he could tear the whole building down around you like a Minotaur of
Ancient Greece. After that was the Hare Krisna Iskcon Temple in the north. It
had a strict dress code so lungis were needed to cover bare knees and all shoes
and socks deposited at the door. The whole complex was laid out in a winding
loop with the metal handrails reminiscent
of cueing for an amusement park ride. First we went through two small temples,
serving as a prelude of what was to come. Ornately carved wooden doors and a
collision of colour adorning the statues on the altar. Ponytailed disciples lit
incense and planked in worship at the front. The doors of the main temple were
at least 20ft high and again each panel had its own intricate etching. Inside my
eye was immediately drawn to the main altar comprised of three open doors, a
mess of stories played out by statues and incense all gilded in gold. True to
form the railing wound round the front of it so everyone could see up close and
make their offerings. In the centre of the room there was a band sitting on
plump embroidered cushions playing sitars and traditional pipes. Others chanted
along with them the same praises to Krishna, who looked down on approvingly from
detailed fresco paintings on the ceiling. I was to see a lot more of Krishna
after that though as we wound our way through four separate souvenir stores. This
gave me plenty of time to stock up on everything from pencils and postcards to
DVDs chronicling his adventures and all emblazoned with that blue spectral
face.
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| Blinds and Basket Weavers in the street |
It says a lot about Bangalore that after
seeing all that there wasn’t really much touristy left to see.
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| Toit's Microbrewery |
Again, like Shanghai,
it seemed a city I’d rather live in than want to visit as a tourist. And like
Shanghai when there’s nothing else on, day drinking is always an option. So it
was I found myself with a crowd, including the hostel owner, at around noon
sampling the beers at Toits, a microbrewery. These have sprung up everywhere in
Bangalore and are not so slowly spreading to other cities. After our first few
pints we were even offered a free tour of the facilities and saw exactly how
they made each type of beer starting with the malt and right through to the
finished article, putting the rather tame Guiness factory tour to shame in
comparison.
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| Jackfruit Vendor |
One of the big highlights were the games in
the hostel at night and learning backgammon in particular. It was always a game
I had seen but never played, like Spyro because of Xbox. Playing with a fiery
Egyptian who was a big fan of learning by doing he schooled me in the first few
before I was able to come back and hold my own. Another first for me was trying
jackfruit, I had never even seen it
before and so it was like hearing they had brought out a new flavor of
skittles. About the size of a melon but with a skin more similar to a bulbous
grapefruit, the vendors have to hack it down to the wee nubs of fruit that look
like a deflated light bulb. With a knife they pry out the stone and you are
left with a rubbery chewing fruit that tastes a bit like a fruit salad bar. Tasty
but you have to be able to get over the nauseating image of the swarms of black
flies covering them before you buy them.
The monsoon has seemed to have pulled a
fast one on all meteorologists, showing it’s not only Ireland, and the first
few showers have came early. At first these thunderous downpours were sorely
needed, dropping the temperature from the high 30s and releasing fresh smells
from the parched ground and plants. That was at first. After an hour roads were
starting to swell and footpaths were transformed into shifting swamps. Garbage
blocked drains unsurprisingly failed to deal with a week’s worth of rain coming
in a couple of hours. Getting home became its own adventure powering through shin
deep mud brown water and dodging cars that were amphibiously splashing past
you, all desperate to get back. That night I had to navigate my way across
town to check in at my hotel for the wedding. Indian practice dictates that the
family of the bride pays for everything as after, she will then live with the
groom’s family. This included my hotel bill, a friend of a friend of the bride,
crazy but I wasn’t complaining. The first night we went for the pre pre wedding
Mehandi ceremony in her family home. Here artists use natural dyes to draw
intricate patterns on their forearms. The longer these dye-tattoos stay on the
bride, the longer the marriage will last. All of the bride’s family were
getting tattoos too so as a sign of solidarity I allowed them to do my hand as
well. However I didn’t realize that the Mehandi is usually only for the females
in the party so rather than draw an intricate feminine hand tattoo, the artist
went for the sort of scorpion he’d draw for a 12 year old at a family party.
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| The Bride's Mehandi, her mum getting her's and my whopping scorpion |
The next day was the ceremonial puja in the
morning before the more festive Sangeet in the evening. It was like the set of
an Indiana Jones party; an old ruined temple, illuminated by strings of fairy
lights and colour lamps hanging everywhere. Entertainment was provided by the
bride and her friends in the form of traditional choreographed dances. Even the
kids were getting in on the act with a few modern takes. Pride of place in the
centre of the marquee, was a sofa for the bride’s mother and father to sit back
and bask in the affection lavished on them.
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| Sangeet |
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| Offie/Bar complete with rum carton, bleak |
Being a Brahmin wedding though meant there
was no drink and strictly vegetarian. The first of these was easily negated and
the last of which wasn’t even an issue.
The younger generation congregated in
the car park and drank out of bottles they had snuck in with them. This was
mostly Old Monk’s rum, coming in a Ribena like carton, it only cost marginally
more at 80p, and was actually quite tasty. Going in with my pre-poured bottle I
was a little nervous, like sneaking drink past your parents. The bride though
asked me if I was drinking coke or coke
(whilst simultaneously waggling her head from side to side). The Indian head
waggle signifies a lot of things, it means hello, it means yes and basically
the equivalent to a wink. Happily I passed over my coke and she downed a good quart before passing it to the groom to
do likewise. After that the bride and groom were always first to be visited after
a trip to the car park so they could get their own share without being seen to
go out. After that was the food and my oh my was it good. A train of servers
first laid your leaf, cleaned it, sprinkled salt, sprinkled chutney pickle, the
rice, the veg, the salad, the sauce, the sweet, until you had a little bit of
everything and were ready to tuck in. There was no cutlery so guests were
expected to eat with their hand, I was in heaven. Picking up fingerfulls of
rice with a scooped hand you then use your thumb to push it into your mouth.
Mixing in the sauce and the veg as you like and each handful is different but
so good. The only mistake I made was trusting Nabeel to make my pallet cleanser
at the end. This is called Paan and is made of a beetle leaf wrapped around
chilies and chuna, lime stone. Nab being Nab decided to put way too much of the
chuna paste in and afterwards I was struggling to remember my name let alone
taste anything.
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| Two meals on banana leaves and the dreaded chuna paste white top right |
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| Two Rajs |
The only cure I decided was to keep
drinking to wash the corrosive taste out of mouth. It might not have been the
best idea as the six of us who followed that course of action all slept in the
next morning and missed the main part of the ceremony. We were there for
breakfast though which was another feast like the one before. I soon gathered a
crowd of excited kids who were very interested in the foreigner in their midst.
They decided that they must teach me a bit of Kannada, Tamil and Hindi, and
were hysterical at the poor attempts I made to repeat them. For lunch and
dinner they then coached me how to eat properly and made sure that I ordered
all the best bits. Afterwards it was on to my spin bowling in cricket, standing
on opposite ends of the reception area and pinging tennis balls at each other
regardless of who was walking by. Kids playing cricket in general in India has
been such a real experience to watch. It has a very jumpers for goalposts vibe
about it with kids using broken chairs, bottles and even stacks of stones to
serve as stumps. They will play it anywhere too; on the beach, in back allies,
half deserted car parks and everywhere else in between. After another night of car park drinking it
was back to the hotel to sleep it off. Nab showed me a proper hungover Indian
breakfast of Chicken 65 (spiced chicken with chilli and veg), chicken lollipops
(fried chicken drumsticks) and aloo (Indian flat bread stuffed with paneer and
potato). Perfect send off before we go our separate ways for a few weeks. Now
it’s on to Mysore before pingballing around the Jungle for a few days.
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