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Our trip to India has some spiritual roots in Tom Friedman’s book, The World is Flat. The banner to our BeingInBangalore blog makes reference to Friedman’s flattened world.

Bangalore is a featured city in his book. In the first sentence of the book, Friedman speaks of being at the first tee of the Karnataka Golf Association (KGA) course and being given most unusual teeing instructions. “Just aim between IBM and Microsoft.”

Well, just like those who have lived in St. Louis and never visited the Arch, New York and never visited the Statue of Liberty or Atlanta and never visited the Aquarium…we were becoming people who lived in Bangalore and never visited the first tee at KGA. We recently put one more check mark on our list of places in B’lore we have visited.

The visit was without drama or fanfare. Signage at the entrance to KGA warns “Members Only….no trespassing.” The small sign is heavily rusted, as are procedures preventing our entrance. Because we are western the guard at the gate let us pass without question.

The first tee is a short walk from the club entrance. Sure enough, the advice given to Friedman was spot on. The cup of the first hole lies neatly settled between the IBM and Microsoft building. For those of you who wondered about the accuracy of Friedman’s golfing instructions, be assured he had it right.

Friedman did err rather egregiously at a more macro level of his Bangalore geography. He claimed that the KGA course was in “downtown Bangalore.” Actually, for three months we lived next to the golf course in our almost outside-of-town location near the Bangalore airport. Many a day we walked down KGA Road on our way to Gate 8 of the Diamond District and bought a fresh pineapple and other produce from the vendor Satish before heading to our apartment.

There is far less mystery to this flattened world when living among its native residents.

Checking our list, we see we still have the Aquarium to visit. Atlanta does seem so far away.

Ganesha Chaturthi

Happy Birthday and many, many happy returns, Lord Ganesha, son of Lord Shiva!

Ganesha Chaturthi is observed on the Hindu calendar month of Bhaadrapaa on the fourth day of the waxing moon. Unlike the firecracker festivities of Diwali, this festival seen subdued, more personal. Jay’s polling of work colleagues revealed that some celebrated, some did not, some did not seem to care.

We walked our local neighborhood today in search of how our neighbors were celebrating. We saw small family and larger neighborhood temples erected to Lord Ganesha. Colorful rangolis were drawn at doorways. Pooja, or worship, was offered and neighbors visited. A myriad of other rituals beyond our understanding were performed.

We also learned that there is a tradition of using a Ganesha idol made of clay. At the appropriate time near the end of the festival, the clay idol is immersed in water. The immersion typically takes place in a lake, or tank, as lakes are called in Bangalore. Once immersed, the idol dissolves. We are sure there is some mythical travel back to earth in this ritual.

Modern ecological awareness has been introduced into this immersion ritual. People were counseled to purchase idols painted only with vegetables dyes. Special immersion areas are set up in the few remaining tanks in Bangalore. Barriers are installed to prevent the clay from thousands of dissolving idols from entering the water system. Idols over five tall are not permitted to be immersed in these special areas.

The story of this elephant-like god oddly enough is encapsulated in a billboard display just outside our apartment. The legend is that the Goddess Gauri, consort of Lord Shiva, created Ganesha as a pure white being out of the mud of her body and placed him at the entrance of the house. Ganesha was told not to let anyone pass into the house. When Lord Shiva returned, he thought Ganesha was an outsider and cut off his head.

When Gauri came to know of this she was sorely grieved. To console her grief, Shiva ordered his servants to cut off and bring to him the head of any creature that might be sleeping with its head facing north. The servants went on their mission and found only an elephant in that position. The sacrifice was thus made and the elephant's head was brought before Shiva. The Lord then joined the elephant's head onto the body of Ganesha.

On Ganesha Chaturthi day, one meditates on the stories connected with Lord Ganesha and prays with faith and devotion that all the obstacles in one's spiritual path are removed. One embraces fresh spiritual resolve and prays for inner spiritual strength.

Amen…Shaloam…May it be so.

Road Rage

With the absolutely horrendous traffic in Bangalore, it is amazing that more instances of road rage are not seen. The increasing vehicular population of Bangalore has transformed this once sleepy, reclusive retirement town of Southern India into an asphalt jungle of roads snarled with cars, two wheelers, buses and autoricksaws, all spewing noxious fumes and jockeying for positions to advance their travel.

It wasn’t always this way. In 1961, there were 19,000 cars registered in Bangalore. At the start of the tech boom in 1995, 797,000 cars were jostling about the constricted roads of Bangalore. Ten years later, there were 2,130,000 cars! Many of the tree-lined, narrow roads of Bangalore have become wide, un-shaded rivers of blacktop filled with bobbing, belching machines. The burgeoning mechanized population has resulted in the evolution of a jungle-like, chaotic driving culture. Lane discipline is preached without any visible adherence. Right turns from left lanes, unannounced u-turns and vehicles zipping though red lights at intersections are common. Drivers act as if traffic signs and signals are mere suggestions.

Road noise is overpowering. More than anything, the horn is invoked to negotiate the many impediments faced by drivers. Autorickshaw operators who survive on narrow rupee margins are notorious for operating with defective silencers (mufflers). Aging city buses billow dark fumes and pass with a deep-throated rumble that deadens all competing noise. We are frequent walkers and find that, because of the intense noise, our conversational volume is just one notch below shouting. But it is the horn, the constant honking of the horn, that is the most ubiquitous companion for any man or beast that may venture forth.

In Bangalore, and India in general, the previous generations of transportation have not yet surrendered to the combustion engine age. Bullock carts still ply the roads in Bangalore. In Rajasthan camels are commonly seen pulling cart loads of wood or other goods along busy roads filled with trucks, cars and buses. Elephants are still used as beasts of burden in many areas in India. When visiting the tea plantations of Munnar in Kerala, elephants with their mahouts (handlers) were seen ambling down the twisting mountain roads mingling comfortably with a variety automobiles, vans, buses and trucks.

It was surprising, then, when we read a newspaper article indicating that an elephant in Gajanur in the Western Ghats had gone amok and pushed a tourist van with 10 people off the road. The area is known for its elephant training camps, and a lumbering pachyderman passing an automobile is a common sight. Elephants have been known to go amok when they are unfed. The story indicated, however, that this elephant had recently been fed and bathed before he dragged the van for 30 meters and then deposited it in a ditch. The bull elephant was calmed down with the help of a cow elephant. What was the cause for this outburst of elephant road rage? It turns of the driver of the van reverted to his jungle driving culture and had been honking his horn at the elephant. Moral of the story: Any creature that weights 12,000 pounds has a distinct advantage over any modern day motorized leviathans…regardless of how loud one may toot their horn.

End of the Empire

August 15 is Independence Day in India. We celebrated by joining a small group of expats on an early morning Bangalore Walks tour. The tour was fittingly called “End of the Empire” walk. We enjoyed the “Victorian Walk” which we took earlier this year. On that walk, Arun, our guide, told the story of the early days of the British Empire in Bangalore.

The Empire Walk started at St. Mark’s Anglican Cathedral. St. Mark’s was founded shortly after the British victory over the native ruler Tippu Sultan in 1799. The British now ruled the Deccan Plateau in Southern India. It was time for church-building and settling into a comfortable life on a large swath of land which would become Bangalore.

By 1831 the British ended local rule of the Mysore Kingdom and made Bangalore the seat of government. For 50 years the British ruled the kingdom directly. More churches were built, railroads inaugurated, Sunday declared a public holiday, and the elite Bowring and Bangalore Clubs were founded along with the Bangalore Golf Club.

The British laid the cornerstone for St. Mark’s in 1808 at 1 South Parade Street. From the small hillock on which St. Mark’s stands, one could walk to Cubbon Park, visit the museum, the high court building, the exclusive men’s clubs, tea rooms and a very British import, the pubs. The feeling of empire must have been present.

Today, one can still walk across the street to Cubbon Park, but South Parade Street is now called M.G.(Mahatma Gandhi) Road. A statue of Queen Victoria still stands at the entrance to Cubbon Park, but across the street in another park is an elegant statue of Gandhi. In yet another nod to the cooling embers of the empire, the road we crossed from the statue of Victoria to Gandhi’s is called Kasturba Street. Kasturba was Gandhi’s wife.

Soon we stood at the old front entrance (now the back façade) of the bright red museum and saw the equally bright, red high-court building built by the British. As our eyes continued down this line of sight through the trees in the park, the towering image of the Indian-built government building called the Vidhana Soudha came into view.

The location of the old cash market, where the civilian population of the-then very British military town shopped, is now a Ford dealership. Tiny homes of the previous well-to-do now sit on an abandoned, dead end road behind it. Many other old homes have been torn down to make way for multistory apartment buildings or offices.

Despite the passage of time and the clear signature of Indian sovereignty on Bangalore, there is one bit of British heritage that Bangalore now calls its own. A short walk from St. Mark’s is Church Street, the venue for many weekend pub crawls. The demand for beer by the former British overlords apparently also took root in the hi-tech, mobile-phone enabled generation in Bangalore. Fortunately, the weekend bacchanalia takes place away from the ever-watchful gaze of both the Empress of India and the frail Hindu from Porbandar who ended her rule.

Refresh Bangalore

Our normal quick “stare and compare” of the front pages of our two morning newspapers provides us a balanced view of events to start our day. A few days ago, our morning ritual was disoriented. We have come to recognize the slant the Times of India and the Deccan Herald use to cover the news. That morning the Times of India (TOI) veered way off its traditional course and reported about another world.

The Vayu Express, the bullet train between Bengalooru and Mysuru, the TOI reported with front page prideful glee, had reduced the commute by five minutes. What? The road between Bangalore and Mysore is hardly finished! Bangalore is still called Bangalore. Mysore is still Mysore. There is no bullet train! Interest in the news of pesticides in colas and political intrigue in Delhi reported in the Deccan Herald barely held our attention.

The spoof was actually a clever awareness campaign initiated by the TOI to bring the plight of Bangalore’s crumbling quality of life into public consciousness. For all the wonders of modernization, IT growth and international branding, Bangalore’s quality of life has taken a beating. The TOI, on its website RefreshBangalore.com, asked readers to comment on the question, “What's wrong with Bangalore?” Readers wrote:

• Limit the pollution caused by the autos and buses
• Ensure that people do not litter on the road
• Corruption is the only real problem
• First of all population needs to be checked
• Launch a fresh green revolution
• Lack of infrastructure, poor planning
• Clean the city of garbage

One really engaged reader commented, “Hang corrupt officials and corrupt ministers in front of the public offices.” Progress does start with a vision.

There is a striking parallel to Refresh Bangalore and the Keep America Beautiful campaign started in the US in the early 1950’s. That campaign gave rise to Earth Day in 1971. The most enduring image of the early campaign was the Public Service Announcement featuring Iron Eye Cody, better known as the Crying Indian. Iron Eye Cody’s single tear helped place in the US public consciousness the need to respect our air, water and environment. Much still needs to be done in the US. To our fellow Bangaloreans we offer, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” (M. K. Gandhi).

Our Endangered Values











Mr. Jimmy Carter
Plains, GA 31780

Dear Mr., Carter,

It was with great interest and concern that my husband and I recently read your book, Our Endangered Values. We agree with your belief that religion and government should not mix. One should live by the moral values of one's religion, but that doesn't mean those values should be forced on others, especially through legislation. Like you, what is of most concern to us is the narrowness of the views of the radical right.

The part of Our Endangered Values that is particularly frightening to us is the US's current stance in foreign policy. We also feel the current administration has overstepped the bounds of decency, propriety and the law in many areas. And, as you pointed out, by stating that the US will no longer abide by previous covenants and agreements that have been signed, the current administration is endangering the lives of thousands of Americans living overseas. As expatriates living and working in Bangalore, India (along with 14,500 other expats) we are frequently asked by the natives or ex pats from other countries what we think of President Bush. To be perfectly frank, we're embarrassed and sometimes scared of what may happen to us because someone doesn't like the current American president or his short-sighted, fear-inducing policies.

You didn't come right out and state it as such, but your powerful writing lead us to believe that it's going to take individuals and groups of individuals, as blocks of voters, to change the way America interacts with foreign powers and the way it is currently doing business.

On another subject, we are from Atlanta and the stories about the subsidies for the tobacco and other commodity farmers in Georgia were shocking and appalling. How many Georgia voters would vote to eliminate those seven $1 million subsidies if they knew they existed? My guess is all but the seven recipients.

Thanks also to Our Endangered Values, we learned about some of the fabulous work that is being done through the Carter Center. My husband and I have both visited there, but had no idea of the extent of work being coordinated there to make poor people's lives better. We were both especially pleased that local people are trained to carry on once they have learned a set of skills and won't be dependent on continued aid.

We believe your influence, skill and dedication to creating a better world for all human beings is unparalleled. No other president in history has worked as tirelessly as you, after leaving office, as Thomas Friedman has written, to make the world flat. We applaud you for your continued work.

Sincerely,

Helen Borland

No Coke….Pepsi

“No Coke…Pepsi” is not only a quick one liner from a John Belushi classic Saturday Night Live sketch, it is the current position of the Karnataka Health Minister. No Coke, no Pepsi, no carbonated drinks in the school system. Kerala took the ban on sodas one step further. It banned the sweet, bubbly elixirs from the entire state! Gujarat banned Coke and Pepsi from its school system. Rajasthan did likewise. The Punjab state removed the soft drinks from its in-house dining menu. In all, seven states have placed some type of ban on the sale of Coke and Pepsi.

What’s up? Are we seeing a nascent consumer movement to improve the general health of school child and the general population?

The furor over soft drinks started a few days ago. The Center for Science and Environment reported that after testing 57 samples of soft drinks made by the two companies, results showed that they contained residues of pesticides. The agricultural pesticide Malathion was found in a concentration of 0.14 while the permissible limit is 0.1 ppb. Residues of DTT, lindame, and chlorpyrfos were also found. Not sure what lindame and chorpyrfos are, but when one sees a list starting with DDT as containments in food product, concern is raised.

We are grateful that swift action was taken to guard the food supply. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo account for nearly 80 percent of India's $2 billion-plus soft drink market. That fact leads one to be bit suspicious about the proceedings, however.

This is not the first time Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have faced such charges in India. Three years ago, the Center for Science and Environment made similar allegations. A swipe at an outside multi-national corporation (MNC) is not bad politics.

There is some good public health science at play as well as residues of hypocrisy. General sanitation in India is appalling. Many Bangaloreans draw their drinking water from untreated, untested borewells. In our own N.R. Colony, people work the long-handled arms of well pumps, filling their plastic water jugs with water of questionable quality. The thought of drinking tap water in our well-heeled apartment building never crosses our thoughts. We are diligent never to let a wet glass or dish pass to the dining room table.

We are familiar with New York Times-style reporting, with the details of the test results printed with charts explaining the implications to the layman. When a Karnataka government official was asked to name the lab that conducted the test, he responded, “This is not the right time to reveal that information." Hmmmmm…..

Adding to the story is the urban legend, or rather rural legend, from April 2005, that farmers in India sprayed Coke and Pepsi on crops and claimed it was an effective pesticide. The Coke website is silent regarding their product either being a pesticide or containing a pesticide. For us, we will give up our occasional Diet Coke or Pepsi and fall back to an old standard. Gin & tonic, anyone?

You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet

Well, it ain’t 1927 and we ain’t Al Jolson ready to startle the world from a previously silent movie screen. But from our previously silent blog we can now share in Jolson’s enthusiastic prediction from The Jazz Singer, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!”

After some poking about on the web, we found we could upload our .AVI (video) and .WAV (audio) files from our EZARCHIVE account and link them to our blog site. We heard, however, that audio files could be heard, but the video files did not play successfully. Technical problems with EZARCHIVE appear to have been resolved regarding the playing of video files. However, we continued R&D on how to present our video files.

The popular YouTube.com web site became our new solution for video display. We can now (fingers crossed) really share the moving images and sounds that accompany our journey.

We have updated earlier blog text with a blue underlined hypertext link that will launch either a video or an audio file. We marked each hyperlink to EZARCHIVE with a (video) or (audio) annotation. We are unsure how the files will play in your browser. The files may play in a WindowMedia.com window along side our blog text or open your default media player or not play at all. We have also discovered that using the Firefox web browser from Mozilla has solved some our our publishing problems with BlogSpot. You may wish to consider a test drive.

We have also posted in new blogs some of our video files in YouTube format.

Please provide comments on this blog entry so we and others can see problems and/or adjustments you made to play the movie and audio files.

Below is a list of previous blog entries that we have added video or audio. If you click on any of them, you'll be directed to the entry. Look for the blue print in the text and click away!

Hint: The video buffering can cause the video to pause. If the video pauses, try pulling the slider that moves as the video plays back to the starting position on your media player. Click, drag, release...play again

Facing the Gods (Orig video) (YouTube video)
American Bandstand Indian Style (orig video)
Salt of the Earth (video)
Pennies for the Pondicherry Pachyderm (orig video) (YouTube video)
Killed vs Fatal (audio)
History on Parade: Kerala (orig video)
Tea and Rubber Plantations (orig video)
Kerala Boat Ride and the New Dirt Road (audio)
Chamundi Hill (audio)

City Market People

Being a bit playful with our new-found video capabilities, we have produced a very short video of one our trips to City Market. City Market is a bustling center of commerce in the old section of Bangalore. In November 2006, Bangalore is to be renamed…just as Bombay became Mumbai and Madras became Chennai…Bangalore is to be renamed Bangaluru. City Market is in the heart of old Bangaluru.

We are continually pleased that when we pull our camera out whether at City Market, or anywhere, really, that people cluster about to have their “snap” taken. We published some of our other people pictures on our Have You Seen This Man? blog.

In our novice way we pasted together some pictures, music and video to bring to you the delight we experience when we meet the people of City Market.

Pondicherry Pachyderm

Visit our original blog Pennies for the Pondicherry Pachyderm.

Backwater Boat Ride in Kerala and the Dirt Road

In February, we ventured to the southern state of Kerala with our dear friends Rich and Marion to enjoy a leisurely boat ride on the backwaters of that state. As Helen, remarked it as one of the few times that we felt “rich.”

There was a peaceful serenity to the boat ride. A pleasant release of all the cares of the world. Things did not go as planned, but such is life. Visit our original blog on this adventure Kerala Boat Ride and the New Dirt Road.

Facing the Gods

Visit our original blog Facing the Gods