Outside Bangalore

I slept a bit this morning and tried to get a bit more organized - put away my clothes and completely unpack the suitcases; Babu came up around 11AM and asked if I wanted to go out - surely! “My choice or your choice?” he asked, and since I was just looking through books, I let him lead the way to a natural area about 48 km outside the city.

Of course, it’s lunchtime now, so I ask him if he knows of any quick and easy place - we check with the gate guards of the apartment complex on the way out and get a recommendation from them. Perhaps not the wisest decision of my culinary career! Just across the road from ITP itself is a very local kitchen - 10 rupees buys you a “rice bath” (pronounced “bot”) - kind of a ball of brown rice with some rather unidentifiable spices mixed in. I also had a wada with sambar there (that’s the doughnut shaped thing soaked in a spicy soup). You eat standing up, with your stainless steel plate perched on a ledge. Looking at the kitchen, I am now a bit worried if I’ll make it the rest of the day. My hand was actually shaking a bit as I ate... nerves, I hope.

We headed out of town to the southeast on Varthur Road, over a couple of lakes created by a large dike. This lead to Sajapur, a pretty good sized little town, and then to Atibehleh (a village) and finally to Anikel which is where is wife’s parents live. Past that town by 18km lies Mutyala Muduvu, or “Pearl Valley”. It’s a little nature reserve catering to the local picnic crowd - a Ganesh temple at the bottom for the devout as well.

The main attraction in the rainy season was the gorge, river and waterfall; however, right now, there was little more than a trickle of water. We spent some time at the overlook, hiked down the side of the gorge to the river, and then back up the other side for a better view. Lots of birdlife, but I wasn’t actually stopping to identify anything. Babu says there are also elephants here as well, which sometimes go marauding and destroy houses. Hmmmm... well, who knows?

On the drive out, probably 35 km outside of Bangalore, was a brand new business park opening up: “High Tech Park.” Ground breaking had just begun and there’s mostly just flat earth and mud to see - but the signs advertising this place are everywhere in the city. That all seems fine except for one thing: the road to get here is *one lane* - not kidding, the whole road is about 12 feet wide - really not enough room for our small car and the myriad of bikers and foot traffic which were using the road. When an Ashok Leyland comes up, you just get off the road!

Next to one of the huge old fig trees, we stopped to look at several bees nests - Babu says that the honey is harvested somehow, but these are wild bees about 50’ up in the trees, and there are more than 5 hives present in the top! I sure wouldn’t want to be the one who has to go get the honey!

On the way, back, we stopped to meet Babu’s in-laws. The house was very similarly sized and arranged, but because it was in a village the air seemed much clearer and there was a lot more space. They also had power looms dominating the ground floor, kept brighter and cleaner here as well - the city must really take its toll on equipment.

The sister living there had already started getting ready to make dosas! Very nice chutney, and soft fresh dosas served on stainless steel plates was SOOOO much better than our lunch! They served a special treat at the end, tiny little bananas, a carrot halwa sweet, and some “store bought” chaat-style snack - salty and a bit spicy.

Only two of the sons here spoke any English, and the parents did not at all - we talked through Babu, and the 18 year old son (Babu’s wife’s brother, that is) was interested in working on his English - he gave me his notebook from school and asked if I would “grace” him with my autograph - so I signed my name, thinking that was odd. Anyway, after a bit more conversation, I realized that he wanted something real to read - so I wrote a paragraph about how nice their whole family was and how much I had enjoyed meeting them and experiencing their hospitality - I heard him reading it out loud later on, kind of fun.

The father asked if I regularly attended the mosque and if I had found one here all right; I surprisingly said, no, occasionally I would go to church though (well, *very* occasionally lately ). This was a point of confusion for awhile until Babu asked “But I thought madam was from Iran, so she was muslim.” At that point, they discovered that we have a “love marriage” and not an arranged marriage, since we are of different faiths and backgrounds - there was a lot of discussion then for sure! They found it highly amusing (not bad, just really funny) that people would marry outside their faith. I was concerned that they would be offended by it somehow, but Babu said that was not an issue at all - they just didn’t see very many love marriages in that village - they knew about them, just didn’t see many.

In this home, I was invited to view their family temple room like I was yesterday; entry was again forbidden - we would have to wash and pray to enter it, as he said that each of the family members do daily. Here, there was enough room to have a separate room dedicated to the statuary, gods, and paintings of gods - babu pointed out Kali, since we’d talked about her before! Ganesh was the main god as expected. Also, a photograph of Sri Sathya Sai Baba, apparently a modern day saint (who Babu also called a god?) who has donated enough money and effort into establishing the Sri Sathya Sai hospital, just a few blocks away from ITP. This is a state of the art cardiac facility for the free use of the poor - many people have pointed out the hospital on our way by it, and Babu mentioned that many people worship this man as holy, and to bear that out, there was his photograph in the orange robe right in their family shrine. Hopefully, I am not violating any trust by describing this; I felt honored to be shown the room where they pray.

Drove about 70 or 80 kms round trip total and made it back into the city just as Mehnoush called Babu for a pickup from work.

We ordered delivery food from Herb and Spice - another Indian/Italian restaurant. Dal Palak, some kind of paneer, some naans, and maybe something else. Mehnoush said that their Indian food was much better than their Italian!