Someday I will write a poem for you and I will not
mention the air or the night;
a poem with no reference to names of flowers,
with no jasmines or magnolias.

Someday I will write you a poem without birds or
fountains, a poem that eludes the sea
and does not look to the stars.

Someday I will write you a poem that will just
caress your skin
and change your glance to words.

Without comparisons, without metaphors, some
day, I will write a poem that smells like you,
a poem with the rhythm of your pulse, with the
crushing intensity of your embrace.

Someday I will write a poem for you, the song of
my happiness.

– Dario Jaramillo Agudelo (from Love Poems, 1986)

I should have carried my camera to the dining room and taken pictures, but I was too jetlagged to remember that early in the morning.

After breakfast, we sauntered out and Mom wanted to visit St. Mary’s Basilica there before we went and did anything else. We asked the caretaker how to get there. No one around the guest-house knew where it was or how to get there. So I pointed to the next thing on my list, the fruit and vegetable market and the caretaker remembered that yes, there was a church near the market, so we decided to go there. We piled into two rickshaws with loud two-stroke propane engines (yes, Bangalore has propane/lpg public transit and filling stations) and went to the market.

Serendipitously, the church in question next to the fruit and vegetable market was St. Mary’s Basilica.

We went into the church and I was fascinated by the differences and similarities between churches in Goa and Bangalore. The confessionals are similar, no private confessions here…

Plus, it’s just possible that everyone else in the village can give a better account of your sins than you can

The interesting bit was the appropriately labelled slot, next to the cash donation box:

Then we wandered around the market, where the prices of some of the imported fruit shocked me (dragon-fruit: $10 each, kiwi: $4/dozen). Obviously, someone is buying them at those prices (typically in India, you can bargain down to about 60-80% of the offered price, even in stores).

We still had some time before lunch, so we decided to go to Ulsoor lake and have a cup of tea there. Unfortunately, we were the only tourists there at noon, so the guard would not let us in, telling us to come back at 4:00pm. We stopped to buy some more water and then went to lunch.

The Mawalli Tiffin Room was on my sister’s list, so we went there for lunch. The MTR does not have a typical restaurant feel. It was more like a large family gathering, where the other relatives were distant enough that you didn’t know them at all. They took our money, and held us all in a waiting room until they had enough people to fill all the tables in the restaurant. Then they let us in and sat us down, passing out plates and cutlery.

Then the servers came by, carrying giant buckets of food and served everyone.

They kept feeding us, and feeding us – there were about 10 or 12 dishes. I did not imagine I would finish it all, but it was delicious (I’m salivating, thinking about it now) and I did.

Dessert was ice-cream and a paan. I waited to eat the paan until I was outside where I could spit without danger of hitting anyone. Lal Bagh was about 30 meters (100′) down the road from MTR, so we went there to walk off our gastronomical excess.

Unfortunately, unlike the book, we did not find any sheep there. But there were cows around.

We sat down for a bit before wandering in the garden.

We then wandered back to the guest-house, where my parents decided to stay in while the rest of us went on to the Planetarium. After the very interesting show (which was interrupted by the ushers rushing around getting people to turn off their smart phones (which are really, really bright)), we came out and saw a sign across the road for the Indira Gandhi Musical Fountain, with a show starting at 7:30pm. We called our parents to let them know we would be late for dinner, and my Dad was tired of eating South Indian food and wanted some wholesome Goan fish-curry-rice, so we said we would bring back something suitable after the show.

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.

I can understand being detained for having drugs. But condoms?

My nephews are hooked on the matches, so I watched one. It was a lot of fun – a lot. The cheerleading surprised me and I was excited to see the TV cameras switch to them during breaks. They didn’t do any long shots, just close ups, starting a pan from a pom-pom or from the head or feet. It was the ultimate tease: they panned down from their heads or hands, or up from their feet and always cut away right after they got to the knees or just before the camera showed any cleavage.

The trusted internet has pictures you may be interested in. I was very disappointed to find out that none of the cheerleaders were Indian.

There was also a scandal about a (very tame) blog post which caused the cheerleader in question to be fired.

Sigh. Such a strange country: Sex doesn’t exist. Skin is meant to be covered up. And kissing? In public? Unless you’ve just been married (and sometimes, not even then!), forget it.

(I’m not sure if anyone kisses in private either: there seems to be so much repressed sexuality around, it is palpable. But that may just be me.)

The last time I celebrated this feast was in 1992.

I was surprised at how crowded the church was. Feast masses in general get very crowded, but this was insane. They had put in seats behind the altar, had taken over the road, and there were people in the courtyard of the parish priest’s living quarters.

I loved the priest (who was visiting from another parish) and his homily. Most priests are cut from the same mould as the TV preachers. All doom/gloom/you are sinners and will suffer in hell/JC died for your sins/and a random out of context story that’s suppose to illustrate the point. This guy was present, down to earth and funny. He had the congregation chuckling which amazed me.

He started by welcoming the zante (older dudes) who only come to church on All Souls Day, Easter and the feast day which caused everyone to chuckle and look around trying to spot the visitors. But what I loved most about his homily was his almost buddhist/zen take on things.

I have written earlier about the propensity of Goans to be negative, even when agreeing with you. The other trait that Goans have is to be dismissive and contemptive. I spent some time being depressed and torn when I recognized those traits in me and I know I’m a lot more accepting, compassionate and less of a self-centered asshole now.

Goans have been also described as a bunch of crabs in a basket. If you haven’t seen a bunch of crabs in a basket, it’s very informative: one crab will try to crawl out of the basket, and the other crabs will pull it back in. Terry Pratchett had something to say about that too, but I must add that I haven’t noticed that ‘feature’ in the people I interact with in San Francisco.

Anyway, the homily touched a lot on these two traits and that made me very happy. I was also surprised: Change? Coming from the Catholic Church? What next?

Church of the Holy Cross in Santa Cruz, Goa.

More pictures after the cut.The feast meal:
We were going to celebrate our parent’s 41st wedding anniversary on the feast day, but logistical difficulties prevented that from happening – most of our friends and relatives were busy. So we decide to have a small family feast celebration instead.

The fair:
The last few weeks before the monsoons hit Goa is when everyone stocks up on everything they need for the rains. This is the time to buy pots, pans, machetes, buckets and most importantly spices. The spices are taken home, dried in the sun for a week or so, then stored and used in the rains.

Anyway, I was excited to find out that Google maps gives out directions for Goa, so I thought I should conduct an experiment to see how the directions differ. Here’s the result.

Well played, Google. Well played.

Edit: the landmarks are important because cardinal directions are only used for macro directions (as in Kerala is to the south or that-a-way (point in a random direction)). And most streets do not have names (those that do have illegible signs/signs placed in unreadable -from-the-road locations).

The cab driver was a character. We spoke for a while in English and we both seemed to have accents so we exchanged our origins. He was from Brazil and got really excited when I told him I was from Goa and started speaking to me in rapid Portuguese. He got even more excited when I said “mia famila fala Portugues, mais eu nao” saying “no, no, that was fluent – what would you think if I said My family speaks English, but I don’t?” Then we switched to talking about music and he put on some Sambas and danced me all the way to the terminal.

I got to the airport, and was one of the last people to check in. I was also the last person to get on the plane.

I’ve always loved take-offs and landings. But the last few times I’ve travelled, I’ve noticed that I can’t seem to stay awake once the plane starts moving. It’s like a drug or something, the plane leaves the gate, starts its engines and I nod off. Very frustrating, specially when it makes me miss the drinks cart when it comes around the first time.

After a long a boring flight, half of which I slept through, I landed in Bombay/Mumbai at 1:20am. The Lufthansa pilot was very apologetic for getting us there 20 minutes late. There weren’t any other flights that landed with us, so I got through immigration really quickly, picked up my checked in bag and headed for the red channel, ignoring the customs officer that was directing me to the green channel.

If you’re every flying into Bombay and know you are carrying more than the duty free allowance (Rs 8000/$200), save yourself some grief and head for the red channel. Everyone’s luggage goes through the xray machine when you head out the green channel and for a long time I thought that the only reason they directed you through the green channel was so that they could pull you out of line and demand bribes for walking through the green channel when obviously you have goods that exceed the allowance. I may have had only half the picture there.

The officer sitting at the red channel tried to convince me to go through the green and I told him I was carrying two laptops (an ipad and a laptop actually). He asked me again “are you sure you want to pay duty? and do you want a receipt?” and resigned himself to dealing with me when I said yes. He picked up my passport, the customs form with the declared value (Rs 55,000) and the receipt for the ipad, went and spoke to his superior officer who was operating the xray machine on the green channel, and came back and tried again “customs duty is 36.2%, it will come to around Rs 20,000. Do you want a receipt or should we reduce it?”

He pulled out his receipt book and handed it to his subordinate asking him to prepare the receipt. I began to see why they prefer to get bribed instead of doing the right thing. The way to pay customs duty in India is as follows:
1. get the duty invoice from the customs officer. This includes all details of the item you are paying duty on, including the make/model and serial number. It also includes all the details from your passport, including your fathers name and home address.
2. you take this form, leave your cart with the office and head over to the bank (which is located about halfway down the terminal), pay the duty (cash only, no checks or credit cards).
3. when it’s your turn (you were standing in line, weren’t you?) the bank clerk will stamp the form, give you another one and you take both of these back to the officer.
4. The officer will copy details from the stamp on the form and the other form the bank clerk gave you back into his book and the customs declaration form and return everything back to you.

I’m not sure how painless it is paying customs duty in other countries, but there’s still some way to go to make it less of a hassle in India.

While his flunky was filling out the paperwork, the customs officer I approached started chatting with me about Goa. Turns out he had been posted to the Goa customs department some time ago and wanted to talk to me. My uncle had worked in the customs so I asked him if he knew my uncle. Turns out he did. Now how small a world is that?

I got to the domestic terminal around 2:30am and was excited to see the ‘free wi-fi’ signs everywhere, so I pulled out my laptop and tried to sign on. Unfortunately, I could not. India seems to have gone SMS crazy. The way to get a wi-fi connection at airports in India is to go to the landing page, enter your cellphone number and the wi-fi provider will text you a password, with which you login. I have become so reliant on google voice that I didn’t bother to check if my cell-phone worked in India (it doesn’t) so I was in the strange position of having to have an internet connection in order to get the password that would get me an internet connection.

I suppose I could have chatted with some of my fellow passengers with working cellphones and seen if anyone was willing to let me get a text message on their cell, but I had a book with me and movies on the laptop, so I stayed offline until I got home.

Step 2: take it to the local mill and get it pressed.

Back when we were poor, the leftover cake was used in cooking. Now, it’s used as mulch.

Step 3: let the oil cool overnight and then disinfect/dry it in the sun.

I’ve picked the a day at the beginning of the month, on the theory that I’m more likely to do it if it’s right at the start of the month. My X-day is tomorrow. And I’ll be modifying the ‘vow of silence part’ to mean that can speak when spoken to or only if necessary, at least for the first few months.

If you need to get hold of me, you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way. I’m also planning on being at Muddy’s on 24th and Valencia from 6-9pm, so thats a possibility.