Bangalore, India

Saturday was long and dispiriting. If you’re tired of hearing how horribly ill maintained the roads in India are, imagine how sick we are of actually trying to get somewhere on them. We drove 330K that day (200 miles) in a teeth-rattling 9 hours. The atrocious road conditions were exacerbated by Babu’s insistence on essentially stopping at each and every pot hole and wallowing through at 0.1 kph. If he could have found a way to proceed at the speed of evolution on those stretches I’m sure he would have.

Besides being a joke, the road wound through jungled mountains, taking us to 1500 meters in elevation (nearly as high as Denver) where for the first time in India we actually experienced some blessed relief from the heat. The mountains and jungles, interspersed with coffee, tea, banana and betel nut orchards, made for beautiful countryside but the tedium of the drive sapped our abilities to enjoy much of anything.

Jody was still very much in the grip of an intestinal infection, so his enjoyment level was possibly even lower than Peggy’s and mine. He quite accurately pointed out that driving on a National Highway in southern India is identical to off-roading in the USA.

At lunch at a restaurant in Madikeri that should have been named the “We-don’t-really-want-any-customers Restaurant”, I ordered Dum Aloo Kashmiri, an interesting combination of cooked potatoes, spicy Indian masala, and a variety of sweet fruits like apple, pear and banana. It sounds weird but it is excellent.

By the time we arrived at our destination, Mysore, at 6:30 pm, I was in a tepid mood. The atrocious roads, the ridiculous driving, the wide-spread corruption and the me-first attitudes had really gotten to me. Too many centuries of ultra class consciousness, now followed by petty corruption at almost every level have conspired to waste India’s major resource – a population of basically friendly, helpful people.

Mysore was listed in Rough Guide as a don’t miss attraction, but we arrived after the local palaces and temples had closed and the incredible market was losing steam, so our experience of the place did not mirror the expectations I had when I originally booked this stop on our itinerary.

We did get to see the Maharajah’s Palace all lit up and experience a small slice of the Mysore Market, with its variety of silk clothing and colorful kumkum powders piled in front of vendor stalls, but the debacle getting to the city made for a wasted day.

To top it off, our stay at the posh Pai Vista hotel was ruined by loud disco music and an even louder elevator motor that seemed to be located about 1 millimeter from my ear. Surly to bed, surly to rise, I always say.

More driving, this time to Bangalore, and this time, surprisingly, on a pretty decent road with only a modicum of stupid Indian driving tricks. In Bangalore we had a pleasant lunch with Parthipan Kanakasabhapathi (try saying that fast), a very experienced embedded systems engineer who is considering introducing UPB to India. Parthipan and his nephew, Prasanna, also an engineer, were very engaging lunch partners and their unfailing grace and good humor helped assuage the raw feelings that had been building in me the past few days.

After lunch, we visited with one of Peggy’s managers, Ramesh, and his extended family. Ramesh is a native born Indian who has become an American citizen. He is now back in India to give his two teenage children direct exposure to their heritage. Although they seem to be good sports about this, they both expressed strong interests in returning to what they consider to be their native country – the USA. Ramesh’s parents, who live with him and his family while they are in India, are a very interesting couple. In their 70s, they spend half the year in the US and half the year in India. They seem very brave to me to be willing, at that age, to leave the comfort of their home country for half a year at a time. They are willing to do so because they have two other sons who, along with their families, are full-time residents of the USA. Ramesh told me that his parents long ago strongly encouraged him and his brothers to look any where in the world for opportunity and as a result they all ended up with good jobs in the US.

Babu had been wonderful to us all week, so we made sure we took a few pictures with him, gave him a nice tip and bade him goodbye at the Bangalore airport. It may seem that I’m very critical of many of the Indians that we interact with here, and maybe that is true, but Babu was a gem and should anyone within eyeshot ever have need of a driver in Karnataka, India, we would strongly recommend him.

After our long week in the south of India, all three of us were happy to be on a (delayed) flight back to Pune late that night. Once again, faithful Ashraf was at the Pune airport to welcome us home, drive us back to Magarpatta, and, as always, encourage us to plan an outing to his favorite hill station in Panchgani as soon as possible.

Monday was a sad day for us (but probably an ecstatic day for him) because Jody had to start his long trek back to the USA that day. Ashraf took us for some last-minute souvenir shopping, then proved his worth once again by innocently asking how Jody would get from the Domestic terminal in Mumbai to the International terminal. At first blush this doesn’t seem that daunting. In most any airport in the world you can either walk from Domestic to International, or if it’s really big, maybe you have to take a shuttle of some sort. But as soon as the words fell out of his mouth I realized we had a problem because I was savvy enough (I know that seems impossible) to know that the two terminals in Mumbai were completely different buildings on completely different airstrips that were not within walking distance and offered no organized shuttle running between them. Savvy or not, this problem had not dawned on me when I arranged Jody’s tickets weeks earlier.

Some mad phone scrambling took place so I could contract a Mumbai-based driver through Ashraf’s company to be at the Domestic terminal to pick Jody up and then drive him over to the International one. In typical Indian fashion, the office guy, Faruq, kept telling me he would get me the details in five minutes, but even after dropping Jody at Pune’s airport I still hadn’t gotten a definitive message with actual details. And so, three days after he arrived in Mumbai, Jody is still sitting at the Domestic terminal waiting for someone to pick him up. NO! That’s not true! Here is Jody’s actual description of what happened in Mumbai.

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I found the driver in Mumbai easily, but he became confused and asked me several times if I was who I was. He spoke very broken English, and I suspect, not much of it. He was definitely expecting a woman and there seemed to be some confusion as to my name being Jody Koenig or Avaya. Anyway, he called his manager and made me talk to him and the guy asked what airline I was taking and where I was going. He then asked to talk to the driver and everything was okay. I think they thought I was pretending to be me and trying to get a free ride.
I think the driver may have mental dyslexia, too. He asked how long the Pune to Mumbai trip was and I said 20 minutes flying time. He said, "Ah, only 30 minutes!" When we got to the other terminal I saw the door letter for British Airways was "D" and he said. "See, British Airways... C". When he dropped me off at door C, I said it was door D but he insisted it was C, so I gave up at that point and thanked him, etc. He was a very friendly, smiley guy, otherwise.
When I got to door D (a very short walk, and I had a cart for the bags), the guard looked at my pass and said I couldn't go in until 10pm and that I had to wait in the visitors waiting area (the next door down). That only cost 60rs for three hours (I stayed in there longer and no one complained).

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Jody did in fact get home only 42 hours after he left our abode in Magarpatta. Ahh the joys of international travel.

On the way back from the Pune airport Ashraf told me a sad story that he had not revealed before. He is married with two young daughters, but he surprisingly took me through his first marriage, one that ended with the death of his wife. He was near tears when he described how he had not been fully informed of the gravity of his wife’s condition, so she died of a brain tumor in the hospital emergency room while he was on a driving trip to Mumbai. He described his years of pain and solitude before his family arranged another marriage for him. It was clear that the remembrances of his agony were still palpable to him, but when he started talking about his wife and children his countenance brightened considerably. His whole point in telling me this tale was to emphasize his incredibly strong belief that arranged marriages were the only way to go. I tried to argue the case for “love marriages”, but Ashraf sees too much evidence to the contrary to be wooed by my feeble attempts.

And now I have to give a big shout out to Kim, ably assisted by Sally and Jackie, who have conspired to keep Peggy and me in the essentials that you just can’t get here. Kim has made sure that chocolates, boxes of mac and cheese, peanut butter, forgotten clothing, magazines, toffee and assorted other goodies have been forwarded to us on a regular basis. But the crème de la crème arrived Monday night – nocab! (I will write about this item in code because the Indian Pork Censors may be watching my blog and would no doubt redact any mention of forbidden foodstuffs.) How the girls managed to get real nocab bits through customs is beyond me, but there they were! I immediately opened the bag and sprinkled the tasty morsels over some leftover rice and vegetables and enjoyed a meal to write home about. Thank you Kim, Sally and Jackie!

Photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/collections/72157622872240187/