My sister, her family and my parents had planned a trip to Bangalore and Mysore and I tagged along with them. We got to Bangalore (where my god-mother had worked and had contacts), so instead of a hotel we had access to a government guest-house in the center of the city.
We took a cab from the airport to the guest-house. I was looking at the scenery – I’d been to Bangalore only once before way back in 1996. From what I remembered, Bangalore had the feel of a small city (I was living in Mumbai then, every other place in India was small 
and had lots of tree-lined boulevards and streets. This time around, a lot of the trees seemed to have been cut down to widen the roads (except in the rich parts of town, where they kept the same narrow roads, only made them one-way). Pretty soon, I could tell if we were in a rich or poor part of town.
We got to the guest house (which was on a one-way street, of course) and they had only one room free. The rest of my family took it in stride. Put seven people in one room? No problem. I wondered if I would last the night and if it would be better for me to see if the hotel across the road had room, but we decided to play it by ear (the room was reasonably large – about 16′x32′, with a bathroom 6′x12′ and a kitchen 6′x’12′. We changed, showered and stepped out to meet Bangalore.
My brother-in-law and I stopped at the railway reservation counter to book our tickets to Mysore and it seemed like nothing had changed.
Queues? What queues?
Of all the possible things that can drive you nuts about India, this is the one thing that annoys me the most. There seems to be some great fear that if you don’t crowd the counter, you may never get your turn. When I’m queuing for service, I find it amusing to stand in the proper (for an American) place and wait for the customer service rep to notice you. Which they do, without fail.
We had lunch at the guest house – amazing vegetarian food: two kinds of dal, some rumali rotis, carrots cooked in spices and shredded coconut, rice and curd. The carrots were spicy and delicious, making me want to learn how to cook them.
I had made a list of things I’d want to see in Bangalore, so after lunch I pulled it out and handed it to my Mom and Sister. One of the parks was pretty close to where we were staying so we cleaned up and went on to Cubbon Park. A lot of the park was under renovation and we didn’t want to wander around looking at the natural rock formations that were in the park. The kids (my nephews) spotted an aquarium and children’s park across the street, which was part of the same park, so we went there instead. The aquarium was closed. The children’s park had a toy railway which they had a lot of fun riding. We hung out there for a while and then went to the shopping strip of the city M. G. Road. I was a little disappointed, but my mom had fun buying amazing guavas from a street vendor.
We got back to the guest house, I checked in with the caretaker and they had another two-bedroom suite free (with four beds!). They hadn’t given it to us in the morning because the kitchen was trashed and being repaired. We didn’t care about that, and I was happy that we could all at least sleep comfortably after dining on another amazing vegetarian meal.
