Whitefield Road to Electronic City, Bangalore

Ye gods - up at 6 AM to catch my bus from ITPL. It turns out that is a 15 minute walk from our place; in the morning, the area seemed fine - might be a different story at night though. Most of the people living along our street (aside from those in the “Langleigh” complex of apartments we live in) are day laborers on the huge building project I’ve been writing about next door. Babu told me that they will first build their own little “village” out of corrugated tin and wood, and then live there while working for the construction company. When this building is done, they will tear it all down and move to the next site. It sure does look really temporary! On my quick walk to the bus stop, I saw many people just waking up, stirring outside their houses, a group of women building a fire seemingly getting ready to cook... and then a few more who were right on the side of the road doing their morning business. Yowza. Watch your step, for sure. One little kid about 4 or 5 years old dropped trou and blew a pile out his butt almost bigger than he was, *just* as I walked by, literally a step away - sorry if that sounds gross, but it truly was, and it happened so fast I didn’t even have time to look away. I know that many of my friends here in India are going to read this as well and I just hope they don’t think ill of me for writing this part, but it happened. So many people have come up to me and said “oh, I read your journal of India from 1997” that it must be getting passed around the ranks of Infosys - I just don’t want anyone to think I’m picking on India here; this public “relief” may be gross, but I’ve seen worse, really.... I mean, this can’t even begin to compare to Steve Crisp’s infamous “Ryan’s Steak House” misadventure that actually happened right in Raleigh (don’t believe me? Just google for “ryan steak house raleigh story” and you’ll find it, guaranteed. And please don’t say I didn’t warn you - definitely the most hysterically funny and disgustingly gross story I’ve ever read!).

Anyway, the bus pulled up to ITP gate just a tiny bit late; I’m the first person to board the bus on this run and there was no one else waiting there, so I was getting a bit concerned that I had missed it already, given my experiences with the RTP transit system during green commute week: in RTP, they ignored me sitting at the stop for at least two bus rounds - that’s what I get for reading the last of the Steven King Dark Tower novels while waiting - finally I had to wave down the last one of the evening and thus ended my brief foray into public transit in the US! Anyway, fortunately nothing like that here - the driver was the one I met yesterday and he was definitely watching for me and waved me over. Great! As we pulled away, I pointed out the street our apartment is on so that tomorrow I will only have about a 3 minute walk! Excellent! 10 more minutes of sleep! So far so good.

The bus is really hopping this morning - we’re early so traffic is light (means we can speed) and the Hindi music is on full-blast. It’s just me and two drivers and they check several times to make sure I’m okay - heck, I’m having a blast! We’re zooming through residential streets, passing everything, bouncing over ruts and washboarded out roadways, they’re laughing and singing along with the radio- I *gotta* get this on video some morning. What a riot! Finally we start picking up some more Infoscions (that’s the official name for Infosys employees, kinda like Nortelian, I guess... we’re all a bunch of geeks) - the stereo gets turned down a bit and a bit more sedate, until we’re full and get on the main road to Electronic City. About an hour and a half travel time this time.

Just a normal day at work; although a bunch of us took an ice cream break in the afternoon to check out the dessert hot sauces I brought. One of the guys on the hang gliding mailing list invented some great hot sauces (“Toad Sweat”) with lemon, lime, cranberry and orange-chocolate over a habanero base. I thought this might go really well to the Indian palate and everyone did seem to enjoy it over the ice cream. I was glad I packed them.

The trip home was uneventful as well, except that the bus was packed! We were sitting 3 to a seat until some folks got off. I was one of the last ones on so sat way in the back - didn’t realize it would help to move in between the wheel base after the bus emptied until one of the drivers got my attention and called me forward - and it was *much* smoother up there!

Since I got home so early (7pm) I walked in on Babu (Mehnoush’s driver) in our living room, chatting on the phone! He was quite surprised and stammered out some excuses and basically fled the house. I wasn’t acting scary or mad, really! Mehnoush came back around 11 pm and said that he was very apologetic on the drive and said that his mother in law was sick so he had to call his wife (but he had told me that if he waits in the car the flies bite him). Evidently he had been asked not to go inside the house by his boss, but the temptation for phone calls and TV is too great. Not sure what we do about it now - in principle it would seem fine to have him in the house while he waits for Mehnoush to get off from work, but he has evidently abused the phone while driving for the previous tenant here. Bummer and it makes it a bit awkward now.

Take-out Thai food for dinner from a place in the ITP center. Not too thrilling, although the Tom Yum was pretty darn hot.

Finally, a day to catch up on journalling! I’m missing my notes for the weekend travels with all the place names in them, so I’ll get back to last weekend when I find them - sorry! Those were the two most interesting days too.