Here's what I can recollect:
I arrived at the airport in B'lore at 4:00 am, and didn't splurge for a room, so I had to wander the streets until the 9:00 am wedding. This was a pretty fun little journey in the dark. I dropped my bag off at the hotel that I would be using the next day, and started wandering the streets. I wandered for a few hours and finally found a coffee shop open and managed to explore until the wedding time came. I took a quick three-wheeler ride over to the Hindu Temple she was getting married in.
When I walked in I had no idea what to expect, let's see if I can explain how it works:
First, it appears to be a completely informal event, well from an outsider's eyes. There is only one formal part, right at a certain time ( Muhurtha ), when everyone throws rice and cheers, as that's when they are officially 'Wed' ( I'm assuming ).
When I got there ( about 90 minutes pre-Muhurtha ), the bride and her family hung out on a stage inside a 4-poster enclosure section. It was decorated with thousands of flowers, had a nicely decorated bench and many floor cushions...very beautiful. While sitting around there, they went through multiple customary proceedings ( that I was clueless about ).
After a while, she left the stage, and the bridegroom and his family took the stage for similar activities. At Muhurtha time, the bride walked through the crowd with someone holding a wicker square thing in front of her face ( this was so the groom could not see her prematurely - see below ), she then made her way up to the stage for the culminating moment... where we all yelled bad spirits away, and threw rice at the couple, and eventually cheered!
As you can see, Kavitha was all decked out in necklaces, bracelets, henna tattoos, formal sari, and the headdresses. From the moment I first saw her, she didn't move her head a lot... she moved only calculated maneuvers to keep her 'situation' in place... seemed like hard work! More hard work for her ( in my opinion ) was the whole format... Since it was informal, it seemed that she had every aunt / uncle / cousin / friend / neighbor bugging her the whole time, asking her millions of questions, and needing constant attention... It was like the wedding was everyone's day... that someone was just happening to get married as well...
Well, after another hour of celebration with snacks, and little coffee drinks in the crowd ( 300+ people ) we all went to lunch in shifts. I had the pleasure of hanging out with the groom's uncle. He was an engineer in the automobile industry, and had worked in all sorts of places in the west, and could really relate and explain the foreign customs to me. He explained what each dish was, hindu temple references, wedding procedure descriptions and so on...
After the meal was done the next group of 100 or so people shuffled to our dining area and started on shift two. As the ceremony had concluded, I went to talk to Kavitha and her new husband Radhakrishna to say congrats and hi!
The rest of the day I ended up wandering around the city and taking in what I could. I ate at a chill little bar, and had a veggie platter. For those of you not familiar with Indian cuisine, much of it is veggie... which I have been digging lately... so I managed to swing a full veg weekend. Later that night I ended up running into a pub called Pecos, which greeted me with a wicked Jerry montage at the front door... I was in heaven! The place was made out of a garage and only sold beer! Turns out that it's one of the oldest pubs in B'lore - at 15 years old. I'm told that it started out as a Mexican place and evolved into what it is today. This place only played the classics, and had the headiest bartenders in the city.
After a while there I decided to keep bar-hopping and ran into a few more places, included a bar called 'Nasa' with it's black light only 'cabin' with views of planets through the portholes, and all the staff in captain uniforms :) While there, I met up with a Ugandan named Tim who was on a business trip. Timmy and I ended up bar-hopping the rest of the night meeting all sorts of people. I broke one of the cardinal rules of walking home alone half-drunk in a new city with a half-a-clue of where I was going. Luckily for me, I managed to throw in the towel after a few wrong turns, and jump in a three-wheeler to take me to my hotel.
I woke up early the next day to have an 'excursion' out to a neighboring city to see the sites, and the land a bit. On the way out of Bangalore I was surprised over a couple of things: 1) the amount of education that most people seem to utilize, and 2) the amount of cattle in the city. I've heard of how India's economy has been evolving over the last 20 years, and I got to see a few angles of how they are progressing in just a few minutes.
After a couple of 'rough-back-seat-minivan-driving-with-hangover' hours, I managed to reach Srirangapatna. Home of Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple, a large Masjid ( mosque ), and a nice Hindu temple. Right outside of the city, we reached the main destination of Mysore.
Mysore is the home of the Mysore Palace, which is where the King of the state stays and celebrates certain nation holidays. It's quite the building! I did a full tour and took a few fotos:
On site next to the Palace was a few Hindu Temples, and a large garden. For some reason they were also providing joy rides:
After the palace and a quick bite, I was headed to what I understood to be the Mysore Jew. The driver told me all along that I would love the Jew, and that it was a highlight, but I didn't pry and try to ruin my surprise. I just went along with it. Well, when I arrived to the Jew, I still had no idea what I was spending my 50 cents on for admission... but by the time I walked through 250 children standing outside and peeked in, I realized I was heading into one of the oldest Zoo's in the world! The Mysore Zoo was built in 1892, and was quite nice!
While at the zoo, two notable things happened: 1) after a bit of antagonizing from the crowd, a gorilla decided to put on a little show. He did a dance, jumped up and down, threw a bunch of rocks high in the air, and ran around in a big circle clapping his hands and screaming! He did this a few times, and he was having quite a bit of fun with it. 2) I found out that kids, and some adults don't see a lotta 'white' folk down in Mysore, so I found myself as much of an attraction in the zoo, as the bengal tigers! I had no less that 5 groups of people come up to me ( mostly children ) wanting to shake my hand, and pose for a photograph with them. It was pretty funny, and after the third of forth group I couldn't quit laughing.
Day 3 was my final day, and I met up with an old colleague Sankar. We had no plans for the day, but he met me at my hotel at 10:00, and we found out that a big Cricket game was going on down the road. I am vaguely familiar with the game, but knew that 2 of the top two teams in the world playing so close was nothing to miss.
So India vs. Pakistan test match was going on, and the match was sold out. Sankar said that the price of tickets before they sold out, were about 200 Rupees each. Since he brought me 'round while scalping the tickets, we ended up spending 500 each! Only 13 usd, each!
During the official 'Tea-Break' in the afternoon, Sankar and I had a walk through a few of the parks next to the field. Here's a photo of me and Ghandi.
During our walk, Sankar informed me that our Cerner India office was quite literally next to the MG Park we were at. We strolled by, and I manged to snap a quick pic of our logo in the local Kannada alphabet:
We went back for the tail-end of that match, and found out that not a single Wicket or 'Out' had happened since we arrived at 10:30 that morning! This means that the batsmen got to bat for about 3 hrs each... and they each scored an extremely large amount of points, which really got the crowd going. After scooting out of the match in the last 15 minutes, Sankar and I split up and I ended up wasting the rest of my final day skipping around pubs and coffee shops.
It was a bad-ass long weekend, and I'd recommend South India to anyone.. but I would say that 3-5 days is quite enough for Bangalore alone... Also, if you are interested in more pics, click here.
1 comment:
nice story!
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