Backpacking Bangalore

One of my aimless musing sessions during a lazy Sunday afternoon made me realize that I have been working too much. The thought concluded in a decision. I decided that I needed a break. I hadn't a clue as to what I was going do with the break but, I applied for a week of absence from office the very next day. The official reason I had mentioned in the request was that I was planning on visiting my cousins at Chennai and then some old friends at Bangalore. 24 hours later I found myself approaching my manager's cabin with a certain amount of ever present inadvertent caution. I was wondering if my leave for a week will ever get approved. Also, at the same time I was wondering about the number of extra hours I would be put to work before I got the well deserved break. I was in there for 10 minutes. Not only had my leave approval been a breeze but, I was offered a one way ride to Bangalore if I chose to accompany the interview panel about to conduct recruitment in Bangalore on Sunday, 9th April, 2006. As you might have guessed already the PhaKuDi (Phaneendra Kumar Divi) is not silly enough to let go of a great offer like that.

Day 0

By the evening of 8th April I had a wait listed train ticket for return journey on the 13th. Earlier that afternoon someone from my office was kind enough to notify me that the plane was delayed by 45 minutes. I utilized the extra time for some extra rest. By the time I reached airport the flight was delayed further by 35 minutes. I thought to myself that the Airlines people were trying to compete with the Railways and the Road Transportation people to receive their fair share of cribs and curses from the passengers for the delayed rides. After what seemed to be time enough to watch 5 Tom & Jerry episodes back to back the incoming flight supposed to take us to Bangalore arrived and we started boarding it. The carrier was Air Sahara and I expected a decent looking female with a broad plastic smile to welcome me into the aircraft. But, I was facing an eerie looking one wearing dark green eyeliner clad in a saree which didn't seem to go with the rest of her. I was happy to walk away from the plane's door in a search to find my seat. Most of the rest of the crew was full of men and hence, didn't hold any observational value for me. Having safely tucked away my luggage into the hold area above my seat I took the seat and fastened the seat belt. The last thing I wanted was that spooky woman in my face bossing me to fasten my seat belt. After all the pleasantries from the captain and the crew, the plane started taxying towards the runway for take off and all of a sudden one of the stewards who was in dire need of a pen dashed to my seat, opened the shutter of the luggage area overhead, collected his pen and shot off in the same direction that he came from without closing the luggage compartment. He obviously did not care about my head and about half a dozen others seated right underneath the open compartment. As was I thinking of getting fussy over this act of carelessness another steward appeared at the seat. He shut the compartment door, shot a smouldering glare in the direction of his careless colleague and threw an apologetic look at me. Though the former was lost on the back of the careless steward, I acknowledged the apologetic one. The captain ordered the cabin crew to buckle up for the take off and the air hostess I do not wish in my face appeared again. She was collecting the juice packets supplied to the passengers earlier. I noticed that she was sporting super short red hair. She was wearing a black nailpolish to affirm her eerie identity just in case somebody mistook her for a nice homely figure even after looking at the rest of her attire. The plane landed in Bangalore 1 hour past the smooth take off from Hyderabad. The HR Manager accompanying us on the trip had made arrangements for a ride to the hotel and we found ourselves oozing through the Bangalore traffic 10 minutes past the landing. During the journey towards the "Central Park" hotel we appreciated the comforts of our ride, a Toyota Innova and I realized that I left the boarding card on the plane without which I will quite probably end up paying for my onward journey too. We checked in to the hotel and were allotted our respective rooms on various floors. We decided to freshen up first and meet up in the restaurant on the first floor in half hour for dinner. The PhaKuDi knew that perennial good lookers like himself hardly needed any freshening up so he invested his time in watching a decent part of the Anupam Kher starrer "Maine Gandhi ko nahi maara" being screened on the telly. A rather bland (I think I should say tasteless) dinner concluded our day and we retired to our rooms for a good night's sleep for the tough day ahead.

Day 1

The breakfast was no less tasteless in comparision to our previous meal but, interviewing about dozen people in a day who refuse to relinquish their abysmal ignorance (or should I be a little less informal and say stupidity) is anything but, easy so we stuffed ourselves up with as much of it as we could to face the gruesome experiences lined up for us. Our venue for the interviews was a small array of cabins/discussion rooms on the ground floor of the hotel called the "Business Center". As we assembled in the lobby in front of the Buisiness Center post breakfast we were joined by two other colleagues of ours who just flew in from Hyderabad for the interviews. Armed with his interview panels our HR Manager started scheduling the candidates for the acid test. Me and my colleague Ritesh were paired up together on a panel and allocated a scanty cabin for the rest of the day. Shoving ourselves along with the candidate in to the cabin and conducting the interviews was a feat no less in complexity than making love in constrained spaces like the back seat of a car. One quirk of your head and you could create the "head banging the headboard" effect for people in the next cabin.

Quite contrary to our preparedness for miles of unworthy candidates the first candidate of the day turned out to be a rather promising one. Our second one was a chubby guy who jumped to an answer even without listening to the question but, once he listened to the complete question he would give up on it. The third candidate of the morn was a rather quixotic fellow. In his 5 years of programming experience he has grown to believe that any amount of code can be optimized to any extent and made to run any faster on any machine. Let me describe his entry to you. He was dressed in absolute formals sporting a tie and quite formal looking pair of glasses. This attire of his made us (at least me) reevaluate our rather casual clothing. Just when we were hoping to snap out of all this formality induced by him in the air he zapped us with his "May I come in?". I have handled people calling me "Sir" but, I knew this one was way above them. I didn't even dare ask him to be a little less formal especially since he had already dressed for it. The fourth one came in claiming that his programming skills got rusty because he was assigned to a maintenance role in his organization. He also had a brand new pronunciation for the word "Google" to his credit. He pronounces it "Googly". I have to tell you a bit of history about me and Ritesh (my co-interviewer) at this point. We used to work together (sitting aside of each other) even before we joined our current organization and most importantly we were clowns then and we are clowns even now. All one has to do is crack a stupid PJ to make us giggle. During unavailability of others we just invoke the silliness in ourselves and make each other laugh. All this laughter of ours caused such a commotion in our previous organization that I was promoted to join the engineering team on another floor of the same building to dilute the dangerously high levels of silliness on a single floor of the same building. Even in our current organization Ritesh got moved to a seperate wing of the building. Hmm! no one got promoted though. Now that you are in possession of this crucial piece of information, you can only imagine our plight in controlling our laughter when the candidate blurted out the statement "Both Googly and Googly Earth use it.". The fifth one was a minimalist when it came to getting words out of his mouth. The sixth one was a body builder who came close to being selected. And then there was lunch as tasteless as the previous two meals.

First candidate post lunch was a dark fat chap with a distinctive air of indifference about him. Given that he didn't give a shit (pardon me) about anything in the world it was too kind of him to try and humour us with his queries about the company and the kind of work, etc, etc. Along came the next guy with aspirations to make games which were "popular". Ask him to rate himself in anything and I am supremely confident that his answer will be a 9 out of 10. I think he was just trying to play along with the good old saying "Nothing is perfect". Surprise! Surprise! he did not have the brains to back up his aspirations and his self ratings. We acted in all politeness by not stating the fact that we were already in the business of making "popular" games and that we could very well do without hiring an overtly over confident guy like him.

I have seen people emphasize vairous things on their resumés. Things like passport numbers, e-mail addresses, H1 visa statuses and so on and so forth. I have also seen people adopt various ways to lay emphasis on these pieces of information. I have seen people bolden, italicize, underline and wrap the text in decorative character patterns for emphasis. But, all of afore mentioned tricks were demeaned by one act of authoring the front page of the resume entirely in boldened capital letters and the proud performer of the act was our next interviewee. A jolly good, burly, bearded chap with borderline geeky looks lent by his gold rimmed glasses. When asked about the current project he was involved with, he told us that he is a team lead who is not reluctant to train a junior and not at all ashamed of being trained by a junior. Hmm! we didn't mention anything about any shame involved in the process of getting trained by a junior yet, he offered to speak about it all by himself. For 15 minutes he just went on and on and on with details of his character, his spirit and how he would be a perfect fit for any job in the world. We dared to stop him once in between but, he chose to go on. Given that he was too huge for both of us to handle in case he chose to beat us up for interrupting in between we didn't re-attempt the feat. While he was still going on with his self promotion I got a call to shift my luggage into Ritesh's room as my room was booked only for the night and I had to vacate it ASAP. For the rest of the trip I was going to stay with some of my friends. By the time I was done with the shifting business Ritesh had just started interviewing a young but, Uncle looking fellow with a huge rectangular ring (more popularly known as the LIC ring) with his name engraved vertically on it. I think he arm twisted the ring out of his in-laws as part of the dowry. He also wore a heavy kiss of makeup and used the English language like a gorilla uses an electric shaver. Just when I thought I was much better than him at the language, he uttered a sentence. "it be returns the value", he said and I had to re-check if whatever little English I had learnt was still in style.

One more interesting observation I have made is that based on the kind of expressions the candidates bring up on their faces while groping for answers they can be grouped into the following families ...

• The Err...ers
• The Hmm...ers
• The Finger Crossers
• The Ring Fiddlers
• The Watch Snappers
• The Hair Adjusters
• The Head Scratchers
• The Eternity Gazers

One thing that was bothering us all afternoon was the lack of female interviewees. It's common knowledge that Bangalore is excessively blessed with hep looking females and both of us (me and Ritesh) wanted a fair chance to gawk at some of them before we left the city. Just as if the lord had heard our prayers, the next interviewee was a female. But, apparently the lord had only heard half of our prayers. By now one other colleague (and a good friend of mine) named Rushikesh had also joined us as he was done with his share of PL/SQL interviews. Once we started with the interview I understood that this girl like one of the guys we interviewed earlier was miserly when it came to getting words out of here mouth. Ask her a question and she'll utter a key phrase from the answer and leave the rest to your imagination. During the whole process of interviewing her I paid scant attention to her inch and three quarter long finger nails. I wondered if she wore them the same length on her feet as well. Amidst handling all these threads my mind was also experiencing an inadvertent fear that she might pounce on me with those foot long nails and rip my head off if one of my questions proved difficult for her to answer. One change in the environment that I had noticed with a female around is that the level of niceties in the room shoots sky high all of a sudden. All of a sudden you can start hearing people say things like "Oh! please feel free to attempt the JDBC program on a fresh page" instead of a plain and simple "take a fresh page". Also there was an instance when I was going through the routine of putting down the structure of a database table containing the employee records which had a "sex" column in it and I was asked to use "gender" instead of "sex" for the name of the column. Hmm! I wonder if someone should suggest the same to be taken into consideration before all the government forms are printed. Maybe they'll even have seperate forms for men and women just because there is one difference - "sex" is NICELY referred to as "gender" on the form meant for women. By now you would have gathered that I am not the NICE guy.

Post this we interviewed 3-4 other candidates and called it a day. It was time for me to part ways with the rest of the crew. I collected my luggage from Ritesh's room and set out to my friend's place in an auto. By the time I reached there the door was locked. It being a Sunday my friend and his roommates (also friends of mine) had decided to take a taxi to one of the water falls about 150km from Bangalore leaving me for the mosquitoes to feast on. It was half hour before they retruned and all the moquitoes by then were pretty much drunk on my blood. Since all of us were tired we had dinner and dozed off.

Day 2

I got up pretty late and found that half my friends had already left to their respective offices. The only one left was Suresh who worked on East Coast time. His typical work hours were 3PM-3AM IST. He was the one I was counting on before setting off to Bangalore to take some time off to show me around the city. Unfortunately he is about to quit his current company and as we all know, it's a dog's life for one who is about to quit any company. The extra work, the extra hours and extra everything but, fun. I am a big boy now so I decided to to by myself. I asked him to suggest a couple of "must see" places in Bangalore and he came up with "The Vishweshwarayya Technological museum" and "The ISKCON Temple". After a filling lunch and a short nap both of us set out of home at 4.30 in the evening, he to office and I on the Bangalore Darshan. I hired an auto to get me to the museum. It took me a good 45 minutes to reach the place but, it was closing time by then. While walking out of the museum I saw a sign board said "Aquarium 100 mt this way ->". I thought I might as well try my luck with the aquarium. Tough luck! There was a park near by called the "Cubbon Park". I took a stroll in the park and I took a stroll on the pavement along side the park. I desperately needed a better way to kill some time. I called up Rajiv, a senior from college and a good friend of mine for suggestions on the nearest mall I could visit and he directed me to "Garuda Mall".

Garuda Mall I believe is the latest addition to the malls of Bangalore. Located centrally in Vasantha Nagar it has all the common offerings expected off a mall, a coffee shop, food joints, a book store, garment shops and a mini super market. The book store was a called "The Corner Book Shop". Very aptly named I thought and went in. I asked the fellow sitting at the counter if they had "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger in stock and he replied positively pointing me to the rack where I could find it. I was thrilled to know that they had it on stock. Damn the Crosswords and Odysseys of Hyderabad which never seem to have the most popular books in stock. They didn't have "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran. I tend to get restless about things that get stuck on my mind and buying books is one of them. End result of restlessness being that I ordered "The Prophet" from Amazon for $34 including postal charges which is otherwise available for 100 rupees in India. Rest of the mall didn't hold much of an attraction to me hence, I bought a bottle of water at the food court to quench my thirst and exited the mall. I set out on foot to "Bangalore Central" at the end of the street. Bangalore Central is very much like Hyderabad Central. I just spent 20 minutes rounding up all the cloth stores and came out. Now that I had visited 2 malls in a row I thought of visiting "The Forum" too just to complete the sequence and kill some more time before my friends arrived at home. I visited "The Forum" on my last visit to Bangalore but, thought it was too crowded. May be it was just the weekend rush. This time around given that it was a Monday, the mall was not too heavily populated. I visited the Landmark and bought some books post which I paid a little visit to "Transit", the food court. I had Tacos. They were horrible. One bit of advice - don't ever buy Mexican from a Chinese guy. Absolutely Horrible! Fig-O-Honey Icecream was a welcome change post the Mexican catastrophe.

One interesting observation I have made while trotting through the malls of Bangalore is that there is only a limited set of hair styles for men whereas women have a huge variety of them. There is the long flowing hair and there's the blunt cuts. I saw pony tails and I even saw pigtails. There's the curly gurly kinds and there are straight serious kinds too. There are blondes (couple of white women I encountered) and there are brunettes. There are the plain Burgundys and there are ones with Orangy highlights. These are but a small subset of what I saw there. But, the one to beat them all was plain and simple loosely worn, long, wet, tantalizing, fresh out of the shower hair on a 5'6" beauty. Hats off to all the women (except the ones who are bald by choice) of the world for their mesmerizing hair.

Having finished my "Bangalore Darshan" for the day I returned home to find that it was just me and the mosquitoes again till at least one of my friends returned home with the key. Over dinner I asked my friends Ravi & Ravi as to how far Mysore was from Bangalore and they replied it was about 150 kms (= 3 hour drive). With all my friends at office I had a lot of free time to spare the next day too. So I asked one of the Ravis to help me hire an Indica for the trip the next day.

Day 3

I woke up (was woken up) at 7.30 and by 8.15 I was all set for my long journey ahead. I armed myself with a 8.1 MegaPixel (Gosh! do I love to boast about this camera!?) Nikon for capturing some memories for life and an IPod for some personal entertainment and a pen and a 5 page scratch pad I got from the Hotel for notes along the way. The Taxi arrived and I put my bag in the back seat. I exchanged a friendly good morningish smile with the Driver and we setoff on the journey. 10 minutes past hitting the main road the driver started the conversation (in Telugu) "Sir I am Prakash. What is your name?" he asked. I said "I am Phani and I am from Hyderabad. Sorry for not having introduced myself earlier". He said, "That's ok sir. Whatever Telugu I have learnt is from my interaction with Telugu people on a day to day basis so please don't feel otherwise if I utter something grammatically wrong in Telugu". I said "Don't worry about it your Telugu is pretty good". After 40 minutes of journey he asked me if I had breakfast. I said I didn't have any and I asked him to stop over at some good place so that we both could finish breakfast and continue further on the journey. Within 10 minutes I was sitting in front of this nameless road side tiffin center. My first impression of the place was not too great but, on close observation I found that the place was maintained with decent amount of hygiene. The best part was that you didn't even have to leave the car. They serve you at the vehicle. Prakash (driver) suggested that the place was famous for it's Idli-Vada. We ordered a plate of Idli and Single vada each. Within a moment's notice I was presented with two pristine white Idlis and a crispy Vada on a plate covered with a piece of plantain leaf. The Idli was served alongside with a generous dollop of fresh country butter. The site of the plate was quite filling in itself and the actual taste of it was absolutely out of this world. The Vada was quite commendable too. But, it was by far the best Idli I ever had. Fluffy like cotton, saltish and bland at the same time. The chutney was great but, I was in no mood to spoil the "Butter" experience. I asked Prakash to order some more Butter for me and he said "Arey Saar ki Benne Kudu" to the guy. The guy was more than happy to bring me twice the original amount of butter along with the extra Idli I had ordered for quenching the cravings of my gluttonous heart. I am sorry I can't but, make a personal comment here "Aruna! The butter was much better than what we had at Sweekar". She is a butter loving friend of mine. Getting back to the story, I keep visiting new and sometimes expensive restaurants but, my most memorable experiences with food have been at cheap/medium range places and some of them even road side places considered darned right unhygienic by most of the cosmopolitans.

After a hearty breakfast we set course to Sri Ranga Pattanam (or just Pattana), which once was the capital city of Tipu Sultan's regime. My first stop of the day was at the Ranganatha Swamy Temple. The car parking was about 200ft away from the temple. I left my shoes in the car and walked bare feet on radiating rocks under the hot afternoon sun whilst taking pictures of the entrance to the temple.

Past the main entrance lay a decaying temple appealing for some maintenance in a sad language of it's own. The broken statues of the "Dwaara Paalakas" (Gate keepers) and the missing mortar between stones in the floor seem to be the only gifts this temple has received through the years of invasion and from the endowments department. The innermost sanctum is 3 doors away from the main door. The huge rock idol of the lord resting on the "Sesha Talpa" (Bed formed out of a huge snake named Aadi Seshu) is a great sight. The area immediately surrounding the temple is also covered by an archaic rock ceiling and is only lit by an occasional ventilator or two. Once I exited the temple the walk back to my ride was painful due to the hotter road under my already scorched feet. By the time I reached the car I had full fledged blisters on my feet.

My next stop was the death place of Tipu Sultan. Did you know that Tipu Sultan literally fought against the British till his last breath? Irrespective of the amount of wounds he had and the profuse bleeding Tipu Sultan killed many British soldiers and the British had to put a bullet through his head to kill him. I was standing right in front of the place where Tipu Sultan was found dead. I had goose pimples for a brief period. It felt like I was connecting with a lot of history. All of a sudden I felt immensely proud of being a citizen of the same land which has produced heroes like Tipu Sultan. I assure you that one can only experience such if one happens to visit the place in solitude. Had I visited the place in a group may be I would have just taken photographs of the tombstone and the lawn surrounding it and left the place. I left the place a happy man knowing that someone out there remembers to place flowers over the tombstone till this day. If only I had known before hand that I would be visiting the place I would have carried flowers. I was thoroughly touched.

Quite near to the spot was the Jamia Masjid. I was unaware of the customs of visiting a Masjid so it was quite easy for me to offend them by unknowingly doing something wrong. I was quite curious to go in but, looking at an ongoing infuriated discussion between a Muslim person who looked like a clergy man and a policeman right at the entrance I decided to drop the idea. I didn't want to be the cause of another fight so I restricted my curiosity to a photograph from the outside.

After a brief stop at the Jamia Masjid I was driven to "Daria Daulat Bagh", the summer palace built by Tipu Sultan commemorating his victory over the British in 1780. The "Bagh", very well maintained with lush greenery forms a perfect backdrop for a summer palace. If you thought Hollywood celebs of today having a beach property in the Marbella district of spain was cool, think again 'coz Tipu Sultan was quite stylish enough to build himself a summer palace amidst a garden back in 1780s. The palace is quite close to his work place that way he could chill sipping on sharbat for a while and order "thops" (cannons) to fire the incoming British for a while if need be. How cool is that? Photographs are not to be taken inside the palace hence, I just have a birdseye view of the palace below. All the green walls that you see in the photograph are actually boards of plywood fitted to the pillars of the palace to protect the interiors from the corrosive and abrasive effects of the weather outside. The palace is mostly made of Wood and is adorned with beautiful paintings on the ceilings and the walls. The upper level of the palace is blocked for visitors but, on display in the lower level are items like clothes, furniture, weapons, paintings and coins of Tipu Sultan's time. As a kid if were an avid watcher of the "Door Darshan" like me you'll recollect a mega serial named "The Sword of Tipu Sultan" starring Sanjay Khan. That serial is partly the reason I chose to visit Mysore, I wanted to see the real sword of Tipu Sultan but, all I got to see was couple of them "rusted specially for display and not cared for even if they are stolen" kind of limp swords and daggers. Not being able to click photos within the palace did not seem disappointing anymore. Having taken a 10 minute break underneath one of the big Banyan trees in the garden, I moved on.

My last stop before lunch was none other than the majestic palace of Mysore itself. Unfortunately cameras are not allowed inside the palace but, every memory of it is still afresh in my mind. The huge corridors, the marvellous halls, the hefty door frames and in all, everything is imprinted on my mind. Viewing the splendour of the palace is quite an experience and I am sure it will leave an indelible impression on any mind. As I was entering the palace I was offered a guide service for some meagre amount. I didn't want someone to tell me that I was done looking at an aspect of the palace because he had uttered the few memorized words he had to say about it so I refused to take a guided tour of the palace. As I entered the palace the huge teak door frames caught my eye. Made of the best possbile quality of Teak wood and covered mostly with engravings of creeper and flower patterns, every door frame invariably carries the engraving of the godess Lakshmi with two "Iraavatas" (the sacred white elephants from Hindu Mythology) one on each side at the middle on the top. The doors were magnificent too. There is an array of showcases one can walk past while strolling though the rope guided pathways in the palace. Also there are a lot of paintings which are a must see. One of the showcases had a golden palanquin belonging to one of the Princes of Mysore. Also, there is a wonderful display of all the caskets owned/inherited and gifted to the various maharajas of Mysore. The famous artist Ravi Varma's original paintings on display are stunningly life like and are a real treat to the eyes. One needs more than just a pair of eyes to capture and appreciate the beauty of the central halls with their wonderful stained galss ceilings. Whoever said "too much of anything is bad" is wrong and he/she must pay a visit to the palace. The floral and creeper patterns seem to run over all of the pillars, walls, ceilings and doors throughout the palace yet one can never get tired or bored with them.

As I exited the palace I realized that I was creating memories for myself. Memories that will last me a lifetime. Memories that I will take to the grave with me. I had some bit of walking to do back and forth between the footwear counter and the camera deposit lockers on some hot cement pathways and my feet got worse. After a lunch not worth mentioning here, me and Prakash set course to Chamundi Hill.

Chamundi Hill, as the name suggests is a shrine of the godess Chamundi located on a hill which affords great views of the Mysore city. Midways to the top of the hill there is a huge statue of "Nandi" (the sacred bull which is the vehicle of Lord Shiva) and a small temple of lord Shiva. Once I took leave of Mr. Nandi and reached the top of the hill I got to know that the temple was closed and will be opened only in another half hour. I had to move fast to be able to cover the rest of the places and still make it in time for dinner with my friends so I moved on to the next site on our list, The Brindavan Gardens.

As we were leaving the Mysore city I was reminded of my friends mentioning a famous church in the city. I asked Prakash about the same and he was more than happy to turn around and take me to the church. It was my first time in a church. I found the whole experience a soothing one. People just walk in, touch the holy water, sit in front of the lord and pray. Apart from the peace and quiet of the church one more attraction was it's structural beauty. The church spires rise to a height of 165ft. The stained glass lends a brilliant yellow light to the interiors and adds to the awe of the high set pristine white cieling. I admired the beauty of the church, offered my prayers to the lord and reached the car to shoot off towards my next stop.

The next and the last stop of the day was at the Brindavan Gardens by the Krishna Raja Sagar Dam over the Cauvery river. I loved the scenic drive from Mysore to the dam. The entrance to Brindavan Gardens is about 250m away from the parking and given than I had badly blistered feet which were sticking to the shoe soles I lost all my will to stroll through 150 acres of the garden by the time I reached the gate. As I paid for the ticket and entered through a rather flimsy gate I noticed to the left that there was a desolate aquarium named "The Vishweshwaraiah Aquarium". Brindavan Gardens is a very busy and bustling place and part of the reason why it attracts such huge crowds is it's name. For all the young (sometimes even old) couples seeking some "behind the tree love making/fiddling" the name symbolizes the place where lord Krishna used to carry out his set of amorous activities and for the spiritual/retired kind of people who come for a walk/picnic in this park and who form the other half of the visiting population it symbolizes the peace and quiet one would experience in the presence of Lord Krishna himself. I wonder how interesting would it have been for people to visit, had they named it "Dr. Mokshagundam Vishweshwarayya Gardens". I suspect that the former half of the vistors would have showed up anyways since all they needed was a tree to do it behind but, the later wouldn't have showed up I think. Coming back to the name of the sad looking desolate aquarium. Since they had already chosen a provocative hence, remunerative name for the gardens already and taking into consideration the fact that the Krishna Raja Sagar project owed it's existence to Dr. Vishweshwarayya and they had to name something after him, they started an aquarium as a mercy tribute to the great technical mind. I reached the entrance of the aquarium and found a table which served as a ticket counter. A 7-year old came running from inside surprised to see that they had a visitor. I paid Rs. 5/- for the ticket and entered. As I expected, half the tanks did not have fish in them and the boards indicating the name/species of the fish were missing infront of the other half. I reached a tank which had some Black fish in it and one of them was lying side ways at the bottom. I realized the fish was dead. As I stood there sympathizing with the poor dead fish, a human hand appeared in the tank which grabbed the dead fish and took it out for performing proper last rites, a gentle flush down the toilet. Having spent 10 more minutes in the aquarium I decided to rest on a bench beside a huge pool of water. "Shot through the heart and you're to blame..." sang Jon Bon Jovi into my ears through my IPOD. I sat there for half hour sipping on some Frooti procured from a stall a bit too far away for my blistered feet. I watched water striders, tadpoles, sparsely populated lotus leaves and an occasional carp or two form an interesting eco system in the pool. The 30 minute break from the busy schedule of the day reminded me that I had to get back to Bangalore ASAP. I got into the taxi and let Prakash do what he does best, drive.

Being tired from the day's journey I fell asleep most of my way back to Bangalore. When I woke up we were about 25 km from Bangalore. I noticed all through my trip that Prakash kept getting a lot of calls whenever the cell network was within reach. Looking at him take all those calls and none to my own credit I started worrying that I was not required at office and neither was I missed at home. Just to strike up a conversation with Prakash I asked him

"Do you have a lot of friends Prakash?"

"Yes sir I do."

"Are you married?"

"No sir. Marriage is tension sir. I don't want that tension right now in life."

"How old are you?"

"I am 25."

"81 born?"

"Yes sir."

"Me too."

"What do you do in Hyderabad Sir?"

"I am a software engineer Prakash"

"Do you have a girlfriend Prakash?"

"Having a girlfriend is also tension business sir. But, I want to achieve some goals in life before I go looking for a girlfriend"

"Goals like?"

"I don't want to work as a salaried employee sir. I want to start my own business."

"What kind of business are you planning on starting?"

"Well I was planning on taking up this old garment factory along with couple of friends of mine but, the deal was broken at the last moment by the guy selling it. We were slightly delayed in gathering finances and he sold it off to someone else."

"Hmm! Don't worry I am sure you'll get better opportunities your way."

"Look at us, at the age of 25 you are a software engineer sir and I am just a driver. I have a long way to go sir. I have set myself a bug goal but, I don't know if I will ever be able to reach it."

"We all do things sometimes they are things we like and sometimes they are things we must do. Don't worry there are lots of people in the world who are clueless as to where their life is going. At the age of 25 you have the clarity to set your goals and work towards them which is way better when compared to wandering aimless. I am honoured to have met a budding entrepreneur like you."

"Thanks sir!"

"I can only hope that you'll remember me when you become a bigshot some day."

"Stop joking sir!"

"I am serious"

"Will you be going back to Hyderabad sir?"

"Yes. I'll be leaving on the 13th."

"If you come back to Bangalore call me sir and I'll drive you around. There are lots of other places to see on the Mangalore route as well."

"I am absolutely free tomorrow. My friends are going to office anyways so let's go visit all those places."

"Ok! Sir! It's a slightly longer road so it's better if we start early."

"Ok"

The conversation made me re-think where my life was heading. Both professionally and personally. The dangers of this re-thinking business are you never know on which re-think you'll actually get serious and kick yourself into action and and which you will let go as just another re-think. The one at hand I knew was a serious re-think.

We reached Bangalore and I paid Rs. 2500, the bill for the day. I tipped Prakash with Rs. 250/- excluding the 100 buck I paid him for lunch. I asked him to come down by 7.30 am the next day. My friends were already home preparing dinner and I jumped in to make Egg curry. That left the disappointed mosquitoes mourning over a lost chance to romance with me.

Day 4

Normally it should have been a pain to get up in the morning after a grueling 423 km ride on the previous day. But, I was up by 6.45, ready and waiting for the car by 7.15 for a 500 km drive ahead. I was in the mood to do some driving so as we hit the outskirts of Bangalore I asked Prakash if I could drive for sometime. He very politely said "No Sir!". That's the quality of a very professional driver. They never trust you with their life no matter how much you tip them with. All my "early to rise" enthusiasm had died down by the time we were 30 km out of Bangalore and I declined to sleep asking Prakash to wake me up when we arrive at our breakfast joint. 60 km further we stopped by "The Maurya Hotel". Having started early and delayed on the breakfast we both were very hungry. We placed an order for the good old idli and vada. There was nothing heavenly about the Idli or the Vada. They were purely commercialized versions and the "country"ness was missing from them. What else could one expect from a KSTDC certified hotel? Somehow I found that using my hand for eating an idli served on a plantain leaf was more filling than the spoon eaten Idli of the day. We decided to order one more round of "tiffins" since both of us were hungry. Prakash ordered Poori and I decided to give the plain dosa a try. "Dosa ke saath Benne kudu please" I said to the waitress and she threw a brilliant smile at me which read "I am used to linguistic mishaps like you all the time". The Poori arrived shortly while the Dosa took time. I checked for butter alongside the Dosa and couldn't find any. I queried the waiter regarding the same and he pointed me to a tiny spot in the middle of the dosa and said something in Kannada which I gathered meant that the butter had melted and the fast disappearing little spot was what was left of it. The Dosa was bad. It was even worse without the butter by the side. By the time I forcefully finished it I had lost all will to eat. So I ordered some coffee for the both of us, especially for me 'coz I wanted to wash off the lingering grogginess. The filter coffee was wonderful and it managed to patch up my soul which was broken up over the bad dosa. I ordered for 3 mineral water bottles for the journey, paid the bill and we set out once again towards Hasan.

Hasan, is the district head quarter surrounding which were the places I meant to visit that day. The plan was to visit Hale Bidu, Belur and save Shravana Belagola to the end because it involved climbing 500 steps and also because it was slightly off the route to the previous two places. Enroute Belur was the beautiful temple of Halebidu. Halebidu was once the capital of the Hoysala kingdom. The specialty of the temple is that it has twin Siva lingas with twin Nandi's facing them. Also both the temple's exteriors and interiors are adorned with astoundingly ornate sculptures. I think the beauty of this temple is best viewed than said ...

Having captured the beauty of the Halebidu temple bith in my camera and on my mind I got back to the car and once again we were on the road to Belur. Belur is about 15-20 km away from Halebidu. It was the capital of the Hoysala kingdom before Halebidu and is famous for it's Chennakeshava Swamy temple. The temple commemorates the vicory of one of the Hoysala kings over the Cholas. It is said that the building took about 103 years for completion and the helmsman for the whole project was the Amara Shilpi Jakkana. Once again, a picture is worth a thousand words ...

Post Belur we had to return to Hasan before taking the route to Shravana Belagola hence, me and Prakash decided to have lunch at Hasan. Though it was a typical rice-dominated south indian meal, there were 2 absolutely delicious highlights to it. The first highlight of the meal was a heavenly tossed salad of grated coconut, carrot, cabbage and yellow split pea pre-marinated in water which Prakash told me was called "Kosamurai". Though we got a generous amount of it in the first serving we couldn't abstain from a second helping. The second highlight was a variant of vada from a small town near Mysore called Maddur. Made out of rice flour, rava and onions the Maddur Vada was crisp as a wafer and like a well made vada, very low in oil content though it was deep fried.

Post the meal, we hit the road to Shravana Belagola. It was a 45 minute drive. I kept getting calls from office while there was coverage. By the time we reached the place I had finished 3 parts of a single call and was yet to finish the final part. Also, prakash got a call from one of his friends informing him of the death of Dr. Raj Kumar and the subsequent commotion in the city. There was also talk about a curfew to be put in place and the checkposts being closed due to the disturbances. Prakash took charge of getting updates about the city while I prepared myself for a 500 step climb infront of me. I was in no mood to test my feet any further hence, I decided to sacrifice a pair of socks for the climb. Half way through the climb I had to catch my breath and stop over to finish the final part of the phone call from office. By the time I was near the 250th step I was huffing like crazy. I sat down for a long break and started hoping that the sight of the largest monolith statue of the lord Gomteswar would be worth the effort. After what seemed to be an endless set of steps I was facing a temple like structure but, I was soon informed that the actual statue was still about 150 steps away and for a change the steps were steeper this time. I was parched by that time and was not sure if I really wanted to go all the way. Somehow the obstinance in me pushed me forward. I stopped at a pillar called "Tyagada Kamba". The pillar symbolizes the renunciation of wordly pleasures for the sake of greater good and/or moksha. It is believed that the pillar used to be the venue for most of the charitable events conducted by the verious kings and ministers of the late 10th century. Once I reached the temple hosting the monolith, I was simply memerized by the size of it. In other circumstances the sight of a bare male statue in all it's anatomic detail would have caused me to giggle. But, the long climb had knocked the boyishness out of me and made me see all the difficulties that one would have to undergo to create a perfectly beautiful statue like that considering that even the smallest of mistakes would have meant finding another hill or another monolith for carving the statue. After the darshan I dropped some amount in the "Hundi" (the anonymous dono'r box) and started my descent. The descent had to be slow and controlled in order to avoid myself rolling down the hill like a huge pumpkin. While struggling with the balanced act of descent I also had to watch out for brief cases which came flying down along the stairs from people on the 300th step.

I reached the car, guzzled the whole bottle of mineral water and asked Prakash about updates from the Bangalore city. He said that things were getting worse and that we had to make it fast if we were to reach Bangalore before the probable curfew. I made my contribution to expediting the journey by dozing off and letting Prakash drive in peace. As we approached the outskirts of Bangalore things looked peaceful on the main roads and we assumed there was not much commotion afterall. Prakash stopped on the way to get one of his friends to keep him company on the way back home after dropping me off. We finally reached BTM Layout, having driven past an angry mob of 20 people who set fire to an auto with 4 police people as witnesses just because the auto fellow was a little late on complying to the "Band" announcement. I paid Prakash as usual, thanked him for the wonderful journey and retired to bed soon after dinner.

Day 5

I was planning to visit one of our family friends at Whitefield and set out to Hyderabad by the evening train along with a friend of mine. But, looking at the horrible videos on NDTV of the police people being kicked and showered with blows by angry mobs of Raj Kumar fans, I decided to stay in. All my friends' offices were also closed because of the "Band" and we stayed home with nothing else to watch on TV except for the life history of Raj Kumar and his angry fans all day.

Day 6

All the buses and trains were booked and the air fares for that day were off the charts. I decided to get back to Hyderabad at any cost and booked a ticket on the Jet Airways flight in the evening for a very high price. I spent the day with a friend cum ex-senior of mine and his beautiful female friend from office. We had terrific butter mushroom fried rice at a chinese place called Magnolia in Koramangala. Later on we stopped by "The Corner House" located in Carlton Towers, Indira nagar for some ice cream and a time-killing general discussion ranging from house loans to Shaimak Dawar's dance school. Once I got to the airport I found that the flight was a 62-seater ATR (one of those smaller propeller based thinges). Though the ATR did not sport any lamps on the wing it was spacious inside. The legroom was definitely more than on an A-320 economy class seat. As soon as I was out of the Hyderabad airport I reached home sweet home, met up with couple of friends at Secunderabad and started writing this blog. Phew! quite a long one ain't it?

Keep the commentary coming!

/PhaKuDi