Ma Durga...Goddess of Good times!!

Come Durga puja and you can detect the spring in the Bengali's step and the desire to eat sing and be merry for the 4 days of the goddess's stay. The puja in Bangalore is based on the New Delhi model with great food and lots of cultural programmes. Today is ashtami the high point of the pujas and the entire family is fast asleep as they are tired from last nights bingeing!!
We started our outings on shasti, ie day before yesterday...I took the kids to get their first glimse of the goddess at Koramangala, near our house. It rained incessantly but we managed somehow to reach Indira Nagar to catch the performance of 2 little sisters of mine, daughters of my father's cousin. It was an evening of song and dance and lots of rain and some amazing egg, chicken rolls!!
Yesterday we returned to koramangala and participated in the 'anjali' thereafter the children took part in a sit and draw competition held in the pandal. The kids and I had 'bhog' and returned home. In the evening we came to know that the Brat Girl has won frist prize in her group in the drawing competition! There were music programmes all evening and we relished Nizaam's rolls and biriyani with the beautiful tunes filling the air- bengali folk, old and new Bengali and Hindi songs....it felt line being in a rock festival!!Today we will be off soon for the ashtami 'pushanjali' soon. The brat will get her prize in the afternoon prize distribution and we will go for the community feast or bhog...thereafter let's see where the mother goddess takes us.
By the way, I love the Koramangala purohit....he is soooo cute! With flowing white beard and beady eyes...but the problem is that we can't hear the anjali mantras clesrly as the words get lost in his beard!!

Fun time at Innovative Film City

This Sunday we went for a day long excursion to Innovative Film City, which is in Bidadi about 30kms from Bangalore. We had an idli-vada-upma breakfast in a new restaurant near our house and took the volvo to Majestic bus stand. The mite was asking for a volvo ride for quite sometime and as usual it was a pleasure. The Bidadi bus leaves from platform 19A at Majestic and is pretty frequent. We were however too impatient to get started so we took a bus to a depot at Mysore road only to find the Bidadi bus coming shortly behind us full of all the people who were patiently waiting with us at majestic. Thankfully we managed to get seats soon enough and off we went on my favourite Mysore road! we reached Bidadi in an hour or so. From the bus stand the Film City is a short auto ride away. We took a Rs 300 ticket for the Dinosaur House, Fossil museum, Ripley's believe it or not museum, Fossil hunt, mirror maze, mini city and wax museum. We found the mini city complex first.There was a make believe police station, veterinary hospital, bank, TV studio, radio station etc all connected by a make believe road with traffic lights etc which the children could ride on in cycles and toy motorbikes. You have to pay extra for every activity. The TV station can record live programs that you put up which would be given to you in CDs.




Then we went to the Dinosaur world, the mite clung on to me and refused to get off my lap, so we had to explore the place with him hanging from and and wailing to go home! He, however, had no fear for the gigantic dinosaur bone structure at the fossil museum which we visited next.





Thereafter we entered the toon world which had some rides, the children enjoyed the merry go round! There was a mini racetrack as well. We had an excellent lunch of lemon rice fried rice and set dosas washed down with some sugarcane juice and went on to the Ripley's believe it or not Museum.







The museum was much better than what we had expected. Its labrinthine corridors exhibited many of the marvellous and sometimes even grotesque things that Ripley collected. Among them was a funny figure made out of discarded dollar bills, metallic men made out of machine parts, model of an ancient ship out of icecream stickes. There were illusions made from projecting rays of light, including Ripley's 'ghost' that welcomed you to the museum and speaks about his quest. Wax statues of the tallest and fattest humans, and curious animals. There was a television screen which showed the feats of various people who could twist their tongue in the most curious ways, right next to that was a mirror and the visitors were asked to practice their tongue twisting skills in the mirror..I tried some of it at the mirror only to discover, later that the mirror allows people on the other side to see your antics without you knowing. When we went all the way to the other side, we had a good laugh looking at people twisting their tongue and thinking what a spectacle we had made of ourselves earlier!!







After this was the wax museum which was also quite entertaining, some of the figures had not achieved the exact likeness but some were good, I likes the Dalai Lama figure and the Adolf Hitler figure. The section on the fairy tales and cartoon was good too.
We wanted to see the 4D movie which had been advertized a lot. We took a chance and took the mite inside, previously we had thought of seeing the 10min film in turns because the mite does not enjoy movies. However our fears were put to rest when the mite proceeded to enjoy the movie and kept the glasses fixed over his eyes. The fourth dimension was created by water spray and air jets. When water splashed on the screen some doplets fell on us to the delight of the mite! When scores of mice were shown coming at us then air jets gave us an impression of them running over our feet...there was a lot of screaming to be done needless to say!







Our last adventure was at the mirror maze. It is a dark tunnel with mirrors all around lighted by small red lights on the floor, you have to extend your hand and feel your way out of it. People were rushing about in all directions and at one time we were well and truely mirrored in! The atendant lady came and showed us out at last! We did not have the energy to see anything more...there were mock sets and a park but we decided to call it a day!! a day well spent....The film city is still under construction and many cinema halls are being built along with other games and play areas...it has great promise, I say!

Crossing Roads in Bengaluru....

" Is there any way of crossing the road at Madivala market without losing your life?" I often feel like tapping the traffic policeman there and asking him that. This police guy does not lift a finger to help us poor pedestrians. Still, miraculously, I find that I have survived to tell the tale. The Madivala market is the weekly vegetable/fruit/fish buying destination of most people in my area. It occupies a long stretch of the road with one side selling fruits, flowers, fish and the other side almost entirely dedicated to vagetables. Now, if you want to cross to the vegetable side, after buying fish and fruit (as I am in the habit of doing) then chances are that you will be mowed to the ground by a thousand buses, tempos, cars, autos, trucks, scooters and motorbikes that stream continuously down the road, without the policemen at the bus stop caring to stop the flow of the traffic to let us hapless pedestrians cross! Most of the time I employ the procedure of 'taking a dada', that I had perfected in Calcutta. This process involves the searching out of a fellow crosser, mostly male, who has that 'devil may care' look about him who is hell bent on crossing the road. Thereafter, you have to position yourself so that if this character has an error in judgement then he will be hit first by the crazy bus/car/ etc and you will have enough time to scurry back and pretend nothing happened! Some people have perfected the art of slipping in between the flow if the traffic as soon as it slows and somehow meandering in the flow and reaching the other side amidst relentlessly flowing traffic! I have a lot of respect for these people but somehow I cannot make myself do the same. I can wind through the vehicles if they have stopped at a redlight. I have to cross the busy Hosur road 4times every week day twice alone and twice with the mite as I take him to and from his school. When the larger vehicles stop at the light the two wheelers come rushing out from every crack and crevice so timing is very important if you want to escape alive! Then there is the peril of getting run over by a two wheeler on the footpath as they use it freely as the extension of the road. I have seen two wheelers going full speed on the footpath, and one even dared to blow its horn on me as I was walking towards mite's school! I mean, where are the pedestrians supposed to go?
I am a confirmed pedestrian, I love walking the streets of Bangalore. There is so much life there. The trees of bangalore are the best, large with branches outstretched....It is a pity that so many of them have to be cut for one purpose or the other. The road widening process has lead to the loss of several trees...it is heart breaking to see trees cut and lying about in pieces! I know that it is imperative to cut trees for the purpose of construction in a city like this, but is it not possible to be a bit humane about it. It will not harm anyone if the authorities pledge to plant ten trees for every tree they have to fell? Is it possible to not let the uprooted trees lie on the road? Their wood may be used by the needy...if they lie around in the rain then they will rot. I encountered these rotting trees on Hosur road where a pipe laying expedition is in progress. On the other hand I also discovered on my walking expeditions beautiful trees at the most unlikeliest of places giving shade and a certain tranquility to all who stand beneath them and watch the hectic city life go by.


Trees left rotting at the roadside (below). Two beautiful trees, one at a market place and another at a busy bus stop (above)



I found a film poster on a side street wall...Jack Sparrow, anyone??? Albeit a little well fed! heh heh! The other day I was visiting a friendly neighbourhood market and there was a crowd outside the cinema hall there. The hero, whose film was running was visiting the hall. The hero was greeted by loud crackers and the young shop assistant at the shop I was going to was standing outside on the sidewalk railing. When I asked him to give me some cashew etc he came into his shop, smiling.
"Is the hero here", I asked , "yes", said he. "I have never seen any hero from such close quarters" he added, his grin widening. " Ekdum Black hai" (he is dark complexioned), "aur poster mein fair dikhata hai" ( in the film posters he looks fair). I added a few lines about how all of them are just ordinary and look wonderful on screen etc and the both of us smiled knowingly at each other. I could not help lamenting the plight of us poor Indians, spending sooo much money to watch a make believe world. The stars paid sooo much and put on a pedestal to boot and the public, struggling to make ends meet, yet spending their hard earned cash to watch strange copies of others' films. The least film makers can do is show us some originality so that our money is not entirely wasted!


I took pictures of some other disturbing scenes in this beautiful city wich is a result of callous urbanization. Tell me, is it necessary for urban development to be this ugly? Can it not be planned and organized and systematic where it does not have to bring filthy exposed drains into being. Surely there is someone goofing up around here!
I have included also the phtos of some flowers in my balcony which bloomed in August to make the post less of an eyesore!

What I could not Achieve....

A few weeks ago, the Brat Girl came to me all excited and asked me whether she could join the 'Guides', the girls wing of the National Cadet Corps."It is during school hours", she said, to my great relief, for I did not know whether I would have been able to take her to school early or bring her back if she stayed back. I remembered how keen I was to join the Guides during my school days but could not for precisely this reason, no one could pick me up after school. I was happy to let my brat join the guides. She looked so smart in the blue dress...my little daughter, looking so big and important! I thought of all the things my baby can do which I cannot....She can skate, cycle, swim(after a fashion), ride off on a horse, breeze off on a camel. She looks small and shy but she is tough inside...she went off on those crazy fair rides which has a boat shaped ride swinging at precariuos angles...the Mr came away looking a little green about the gills after taking the ride with her but she was unfazed. I don't have the guts to go for these rides, never had! All in all, I could not help feeling quite proud of my tiny gutsy Brat...may she achieve great heights!

The season of festivities!

It began with raksha bandhan... and then they came one after the other...lakshmi puja here in bangalore, then janmashtami and now Ganesh puja and the month of ramzan also in progress...lo and behold, it is that time of year when there are festivities all around. We celebrated all the festivals in our own way at home. Last year the mite was very suspicious of the string tying and did not want to tie one. However this year he wore all his rakhis (sent by grandmom and aunt and the one given by the Brat Girl) very happily. He wore one to his school too! In our house even the girl gets rakhis so the Brat also had a few of her own (sent by grand parents, uncle and aunt and one given by the mite)!
On the lashmi puja day we were invited at the landlady's place. aon Janmashtami I got a small idol of infant Krishna and the Brat made rangolis, she was also invited to make rangolis at the landlord's son's place which is just behind our house.
This time on Ganesh Chaturthi the young boys of our lane organized a one day puja right in front of our house. It was like having Ganesha in our own homes. All the people of our lane enjoyed the one day affair! We were called for the aratis and prasad was delivered at our door step. There are a few other pujas in our neighbourhood and the whole place is full of lights and joyous festivities!
This time the Durga puja of the Bengalis has also been preponed by a month and I am having that queer puja feeling from now itself! New clothes are being bought with a gusto! You can visit any mall or any place where clothes are being sold, and you will find the place teeming with Bengalis calling to each other- " Aei shirt ta Haru kakar jonno kemon hobe?"(how is this shirt for Haru uncle)..." Eta Papai ke suit korbe" (this shirt will suit Papai)etc.
Last Sunday, we had our own special festivity- it was 'craft day' at house. I went and collected two of the Brat girl's friends and the three of them made short work af several tubes of fevicol and numerous glitter packets and cut up two t-shirts and two pajamas to make 'friend' mix and match clothes for themselves. The girls had a blast and I had the afternoon to watch a film with the Mr at home. The mite cooperated tremendously and all went off well.