Dreams From a Traveling Life

Centuries of Cultures, Religions and Life Side by Side

This morning an excellent guide and native of Bangalore, Arun Pai, took us on a walking tour. He recounted how General Cornwallis recovered from the notoriety of being defeated by the American colonists by winning a battle over Bangalore against the King of Mysore. We saw a drawing of a toy made by the king celebrating an earlier victory over the British: a tiger is eating a British soldier. By pressing a button on the tiger's head, one could hear the tiger roar, and the soldier scream. A young British cavalry officer spent three years in Bangalore, growing roses and reading books, but itching to cut his soldier's teeth in battle. He wound up fighting in the late 19th century, in Afghanistan; unlike many of his comrades he survived, and became the Prime Minister of England, Winston Churchill.

Indian soldier preparing a rocket for launch

Churchill in Bangalore as a young man

Our guide, Arun

Arun had these and many other stories to tell as he led us into tiny pockets of colonial houses with spacious yards, a long driveway away from the mad honking bustle of modern Bangalore traffic, the Wild West of the IT world, and the site of rampant development, favored as the chic city for young Indian yuppies. One of them was about the best military rockets in the world, which came from Bangalore. The line "and the rockets' red glare" supposedly refers to copies of these rockets.

Golden Arches, Indian style

McDonalds delivery cycle

Mc Donalds in India has no drive-through. Instead, they do delivery.
In the restaurant itself, people expect to be waited on. Since 50% of India's
population doesn't eat beef, they do not serve the Big Mac, but provide
chicken and vegetarian substitutes.

Mickey D's Indian menu

Construction site scaffolding

After a visit to a colonial period church, Arun led us through the ritual of crossing a street that is actually the confluence of four different streets, into a rural village right in the middle of the city.

Every morning here, he told us, women rise to decorate the area in front of their doors with intricate chalk drawings.

A man told us excitedly that a calf had been born just this morning from one of the many cows in the village. Later we found the calves were actually two; and saw then being licked by their mother in the middle of chaotic village traffic.

Many of us had hand-sewn garlands of jasmine flowers pinned to our hair by smiling women.

As we looked at the details around a Hindu temple, I learned that the reason for the 33 million Hindu gods is that the concept of the gods is constantly personalized by worshippers, so that each transmutation of a god takes on a different aspect and a new name. At least this is what I understood. Arun, used to conducting tours with IT groups, put it in terms of software: Hinduism is like the open source or Linux of religions: the authors are anonymous users who are constantly adapting the philosophy and the symbolism to meet their individual needs.

I have included more pictures pf market produce, the temple, street scenes, and a video of a man who played and accordion in the village as well.