BENGALURU (BANGALORE), KARNATAKA - 22nd October 2009
5 hours east from Chikmagalur, we cruised up to a wall of traffic marking our entrance into India's "Garden City". The nickname probably came from British - situated on a plateau with one if India's most temperate climates, the Raj's top brass would have felt right at home. Three quarters of a century later, however, and Bangalore is now India's fastest growing city, and recently overtook Chennai (Madras) to become the fourth most populous. As such, the "Garden City" is getting gradually choked - traffic volume matches Mumbai but without any sort of system, and Bangalore presently lacks any sort of effect mass transportation. All in all, driving around is pretty grim.
Our route into the city took as past Chinnaswamy Stadium - home of IPL's Royal Challengers who, as it turned out, were playing their final match of the Champions' League T20 that evening. Personally I've quite enjoyed the whole Champions League bonanza - there's something refreshing about international players playing against one another in mixed up teams, and the tournament has seen some pretty spectacular hitting. The highlight has definitely been the success of Trinidad & Tobago, who were massive underdogs to start with (having no realplayers of international repute) but have proceeded to thump everyone and anyone straight back to last Christmas. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that there's a real argument for West Indies cricket to be sacked off and just allow T&T, or any other Caribbean island, to play independently - at least for T20. The way these guys play, they'd beat anyone in the world.
Enough about cricket though. We arrived at Mervyn's place on Saturday night and went over to a neighbour's place for a Diwali dinner. Diwali is, obviously, a massive deal over here, and the three days of celebration (Saturday, Sunday and Monday) are marked with a veritable war of firecrackers. Despite being the "Festival of Light", light-based explosions are fairly rare... "Festival of Noise" is more the theme for the majority of kids running around the streets blowing up God-knows-how-many-thousands-rupees-worth of gunpowder.
The neighbour is an old man called Subhu (spelling could be wrong) who, as it turned out, was a massive fan of Britain and British culture, and a massive fan of cricket. Naturally, I was introduced to him as Dean - comes from London, is a member at Lord's, etc.etc., and within about 5 minutes he was talking to me as though we'd been best friends for years. He'd has quite a few by the time we left, but come 1pm the next day my uncle gets a call asking what I was doing, and whether I'd like to play golf with him! Great character all round.
Golf didn't happen, but instead I was able to catch up with a whole swathe of cousins from my Dad's side of the family - he's one of 6 children, and one of only two not to have a child in Bangalore. We also checked out the famous Bangalore Club, but I'll write more about that at a later stage.
Jumping to Tuesday night though, and my cousin took me to a bar called The Beach (sure enough the floor is sand), where him and his friends meet every week for a quiz-come-music night called "Question Mark". Quality night - despite the fact that I did rubbish (not surprising considering how high expectations of me had been raised) - good music and great entertainment from the Quizmaster/comedian Mark. The night will be remembered for a hell of a long time more, however, thanks to this morning's Bangalore Times - a page 3 feature about the "Question Mark" night included yours truly grinning back at you along with Carry (short of Carissa?) - one of my cousin's friends. International celebrity stardom, here we go...
Unfortunately, they clearly misheard me saying/spelling my name. The caption of the two of us reads "Carry and Team"...
5 hours east from Chikmagalur, we cruised up to a wall of traffic marking our entrance into India's "Garden City". The nickname probably came from British - situated on a plateau with one if India's most temperate climates, the Raj's top brass would have felt right at home. Three quarters of a century later, however, and Bangalore is now India's fastest growing city, and recently overtook Chennai (Madras) to become the fourth most populous. As such, the "Garden City" is getting gradually choked - traffic volume matches Mumbai but without any sort of system, and Bangalore presently lacks any sort of effect mass transportation. All in all, driving around is pretty grim.
Our route into the city took as past Chinnaswamy Stadium - home of IPL's Royal Challengers who, as it turned out, were playing their final match of the Champions' League T20 that evening. Personally I've quite enjoyed the whole Champions League bonanza - there's something refreshing about international players playing against one another in mixed up teams, and the tournament has seen some pretty spectacular hitting. The highlight has definitely been the success of Trinidad & Tobago, who were massive underdogs to start with (having no realplayers of international repute) but have proceeded to thump everyone and anyone straight back to last Christmas. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that there's a real argument for West Indies cricket to be sacked off and just allow T&T, or any other Caribbean island, to play independently - at least for T20. The way these guys play, they'd beat anyone in the world.
Enough about cricket though. We arrived at Mervyn's place on Saturday night and went over to a neighbour's place for a Diwali dinner. Diwali is, obviously, a massive deal over here, and the three days of celebration (Saturday, Sunday and Monday) are marked with a veritable war of firecrackers. Despite being the "Festival of Light", light-based explosions are fairly rare... "Festival of Noise" is more the theme for the majority of kids running around the streets blowing up God-knows-how-many-thousands-rupees-worth of gunpowder.
The neighbour is an old man called Subhu (spelling could be wrong) who, as it turned out, was a massive fan of Britain and British culture, and a massive fan of cricket. Naturally, I was introduced to him as Dean - comes from London, is a member at Lord's, etc.etc., and within about 5 minutes he was talking to me as though we'd been best friends for years. He'd has quite a few by the time we left, but come 1pm the next day my uncle gets a call asking what I was doing, and whether I'd like to play golf with him! Great character all round.
Golf didn't happen, but instead I was able to catch up with a whole swathe of cousins from my Dad's side of the family - he's one of 6 children, and one of only two not to have a child in Bangalore. We also checked out the famous Bangalore Club, but I'll write more about that at a later stage.
Jumping to Tuesday night though, and my cousin took me to a bar called The Beach (sure enough the floor is sand), where him and his friends meet every week for a quiz-come-music night called "Question Mark". Quality night - despite the fact that I did rubbish (not surprising considering how high expectations of me had been raised) - good music and great entertainment from the Quizmaster/comedian Mark. The night will be remembered for a hell of a long time more, however, thanks to this morning's Bangalore Times - a page 3 feature about the "Question Mark" night included yours truly grinning back at you along with Carry (short of Carissa?) - one of my cousin's friends. International celebrity stardom, here we go...
Unfortunately, they clearly misheard me saying/spelling my name. The caption of the two of us reads "Carry and Team"...
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