Oooooo, that's REALLY Scary!

Well, Deb and I tried to bring a little American culture to our Hyderabad neighborhood and we were very successful because there is so little American culture left that we bumped up against the Halloween cultural contribution limit at about 98%. If I could have found some of the orange icicle lights, we'd have made it to100%. For our Southeast Michigan friends, you might recognize Tom Ryan's "Count Scary" in the title. Between Tom Ryan and Dick Purtan, I have some of my fondest Deeetroit radio memories.

I must admit, we were competing with a BIG, and I do mean BIG Indian festival period: Diwali. The US is just starting to become more aware of Diwali as our NRI population grows. Oak Tree Street in Edison, NJ is, no doubt, aglow with its Diwali festivities this week. Here are wishes to you all for health, happiness and wealth this Diwali. But don't confuse the wishes for wealth in Diwali with the prayers for prosperity during Durga Puja which ended two weeks ago.
However, I believe you can still petition Durga during Diwali if she missed your supplications during the Puja. It's like sending Santa a follow up list just after New Years Day. Durga, in Sanskrit, means "she who is incomprehensible or hard to reach." Lordy, Lordy, have I had some clients who could be characterized that way! And speaking of Lordy, Lordy, we made up some decorations for Halloween. Deb wanted me to try to soften the scary parts so I found a few graphics that were "kid friendly", but I couldn't help myself and found a Tammy Faye photo that I used for our candy compote pumpkin. See the similarities?



I do hope that Tammy Faye rests in peace, though her fashion sense will tragically live on in parts of Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, and, well, you get it.

But Deb and part of her crew had fun on Halloween so we had Hindus and Muslims celebrating a pagan ritual connected to Christianity. I just love India! Here are some of the highlights.

They started out at the bowling alley. Deb had been wearing bowling shoes before this picture. Some other players on the lanes next to us bowled barefoot.

You guess who you are by asking questions. Deb was Bill Gates.
We had bobbing for apples

And tossing water balloons.

And carved pumpkins. There were no large pumpkins like we're used to in the US because they would be eaten before they could be carved.

And we mixed the Diwali and Halloween themes which was another China Town-Faye Dunaway revelation moment.

But everyone seemed to have a great time. And the spider on the balloons was a decoration. I've only found cockroaches that big.

We hope everyone had a great Halloween and are getting pumped up for the holidays that will be upon you shortly. Sadly, Deb does not have Thanksgiving off here in Hyderabad and when you say "drumsticks" in India, here's what you get:
Have a great day!

Baubles, Bangalore, and Beads

While it is the last post for our trip, we actually started in Bangalore. We have been much happier with the smaller B&B-type hotels than with the larger hotels in both Bangalore and Mysore as we had in Pondicherry. The Royal Orchid in Mysore was a traditional hotel that started its life as a princess' villa but not the same scale of Sheratons or Novotel. In Bangalore, we stayed at the Villa Pottipaty. As you can imagine, the immediate image that comes to mind, hmmmmmmm? Well, far from it! The villa was in a busy section of the city, but had all the charm and quiet of a more secluded venue. The Villa is owned by the same entrepreneurs as own the Hotel L' Orient in Pondicherry. It is an old home of a Brahmin family that is charming.
The room we selected was small, but comfortable. The garden court was outside where the stables had been. We had the time to read the paper and be served lunch. Oh, so colonial.

On our tour, we stopped at the new government buildings designed to look like the Indo-European architecture of the Raj, go figure. But the old high court house building below is the REAL colonial building and it was THE happenin' place while we were there because a group of 16 dissident legislators who were recently elected but then kicked out because they were going to vote 'no confidence' for the chief minister, were having their appeal heard. So the news trucks were all over the streets awaiting a verdict.

. Then we traveled to the botanical gardens which was patterned after the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. Once again, the old "I love you, I hate you" comes out as Bangaloreis come out to enjoy a stroll through the park.

We went to the Big Bull Temple, no we didn't transport back to Washington, DC, this was a real big bull, Nandi, Shiva's vehicle. Unfortunately, Nandi has two horns, so you can imagine what it's like when Shiva is stuck in Bangalore rush hour traffic. Oh, the humanity. Of course, there's a Shiva temple right next door to the Big Bull temple.

We went to dinner at a happening place, the Halli Mane but I failed to take a picture, much to Deb's disappointment. But the street vendors and stores were all getting ready for Bangalore's celebration of Durgha Puja or Desara or oh, skip it.


The next morning we had a leisurely breakfast in the courtyard before Mahaboob picked us up for our trip to Mysore.
If you follow the next two posts down, you'll have our entire trip which was really delightful. I'll tell you about my guest lecture gig at the University of Hyderabad in my next posting.

I'm sore, You're Sore, We're All Sore in Mysore

If nothing else has become crystal clear during our various trips here in India: It's always been better to be the king than to be the guy who sweeps up after the elephant. And Mysore is another example of this axiom. And talk about a love/hate/love/hate/and so on relationship with the British, Mysore is one of the prime examples. Look beyond the Hindu/Muslim change of hands ruling the principality of Mysore, the history even has Napoleon and Wellington involved in the outcomes of events in Mysore long before Waterloo. But enough of this part of the history. Mysore is celebrating 400 years of partying with the Maharajah for Dhurga Pooja or Desara or Denera or Chanapuramanasamanana, hey, hey, say goodbye. Oh, sorry, the festival that celebrates the story of Parvati, you remember, Shiva's consort, in which she defeats a demon that eventually the people of the area name the town after the defeated demon which just seems so strange to me, but then again, it's India.
Let's start out with where we spent the evening before the REALLLLLLYYYYY BIG party, which was the former home of the Maharajah's sister which, it goes without saying, it is good to be a family member of the king if you can't be the king.
The princess lived as a relative pauper to her brother's little shack, but it has that cosy feel that you get from any manor house. Our room was in the new section, so it tries to capture some of the sense of the style from the original open architecture like this shot off our balcony. Nothing terribly special about the Royal Orchid, but it was located in an enclave of princessly and princely homes near the palace. Since this was the 400th anniversary, the town swelled from the normal crowd for the celebration to more than double its size. People were pouring out of the train station looking for relatives or transportation or simply walking aimlessly in the general direction that everyone else was meandering. This meant that traffic was slowed beyond a snails pace.
Deb and I went to church in the evening and, lo and behold, a Gothic church of St. Philomena, though most of the Mysoreis call it St. Joseph for a reason I really couldn't figure out. And the school associated with the church was named "St. Mary's" which our guide, Mr. Kiren, attended as a boy. The church was a gift from the Maharajah. Go figure. For as large as the facade appears, the interior is rather small. This mass was celebrated in Kannada, the local language, so Deb and I got through with simply knowing the whats and whens of the mass. But it was as if you were at one second before Pentecost. Our obligation complete, we had planned to have our driver take us over to the palace to see the "must see" event which is the lights on the palace and surrounding buildings. Well, guess what, Deb and I and about a million of our close personal friends had the same idea. The traffic was stopped for blocks around the palace area, so we decided, with the advice of our driver, Mahaboob (thankfully drop the last "b" for the proper pronunciation) we decided to leave the car and walk to the palace and catch a tuck-tuck back to the hotel. Now, the weather in Mysore is relatively moderate, so everybody and I mean EVERYBODYYYYYYY, was walking to the palace. Here's what they were there to see:




Now I am not sure if they take all these lights down after the festival, but if they don't, they are in good company as most of the folks at the trailer park near us in New Jersey leave their Christmas lights up all year long as well. After a short time, the crowds started to become more unnerving than exciting, so Deb and I fought our way through to the gate, found a spot where we eventually hailed a rickshaw who gave us the price he was looking for, wouldn't budge and we were on our way. However, not knowing the city, and being at night, Deb was nervous that the guy was going to run us all over the city, stop and say it'll be another 10000 Rs to get us back to the hotel. So sorry. But he didn't and we got back to the court yard filled with lights.




Earlier in the day, we toured the summer palace of Sultan Tipu, a local hero (of sorts)who took on the British with a little help from the French. Remember, Pondicherry isn't too far away that an expeditionary force couldn't come from there to Mysore with much trouble. And they did, defeating the British before the future Duke of Wellington and then Lord Cornwallis, yeah the guy who lost the Americas, came to reassert British authority, which they did.

But Tipu, preceded by his father, was a wheeler-dealer in politics. He enlisted the Nizam of Hyderabad to help him beat the British, with French help, but the Nizam thought better of the deal and backed out, eventually making nice-nice with the British (and his dynasty made boat loads of money because of it). But Tipu had a summer palace which was pretty nice place down by the riverside, down by the riverside, down by the riverside, oh Tipu had a summer palace down by the riverside. Sorry, just get caught up in the whole royalty thingy. The first photo is of the forerunner of e-mail which was pigeon mail. Tipu had two of these on the palace grounds to keep in contact with what was happening around the principality.




Well, Tipu is considered one of the first Indian freedom fighters to free them from the yoke of British oppression, just like the Americans did (with the help of the French). Well, two things happened. Wellington came and defeated Tipu by sending his troops through the Watergate entrance to the palace, which Tipu didn't count on. In fact, Tipu didn't count on much else since he was killed during the storming of the fort.

But he ended up in the tomb with his mom and dad. But Tipu's wife ended up outside the tomb in the general family graves because it was her brother, Tipu's defense minister who gave away the Watergate entrance to the British. In fact, Tipu's wet nurse got a better spot just outside the door to the tomb than Tipu's wife, though her stone is shrouded with a royal cover.



















Next posting will be about Bangalore. Look for it soon.