Touring Bangalore

"Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings."

Unknown

Yes, I'm back in Malacca and yes, it's for good this time. I meant to update but my sudden urge to go KL yesterday put that on hold till now. I bought a good load of books (though it’s only half of what I usually haul back – petrol prices, inflation and all that, y’know). I’d like to get right onto updating about the best of the two weeks I’ve been absent from my journal here but first, a bit of a primer; Bangalore.

Bangalore was the first stop Phoebs and I made from Salem. We’ve both been there before but never together. It’s sort of like a touchdown city for us students of Melaka Manipal Medical College (in Manipal, me) and Penang International Dental College (in Salem, Phoebs) and in my opinion, Bangalore is the best big city to shop in India. It’s not quite Singapore (or even KL for that matter) but when you’ve lived in India as long as I have, it’s fucking New York.

Also, the only reason we were even making a stop in Bangalore was that Phoebs would kill me if we didn’t. She’s not going to be dragged halfway across the backwater south of the subcontinent without getting a bit of proper shopping done. Never get between a woman and her malls, I always say.

One of the best places to start in Bangalore is the ever-happening Brigade Road,
When you see the red Levi’s cube-shaped store, you’re there.


Phoebs boning up on the essentials in a bookstore off Brigade Road. It just shows how unenlightened Malaysians are – we don’t have an erotica section in our bookstores. Like WTF, right?

Brigade Road is a tributary of the ubiquitous M.G. Road (every city worth its salt in India has one – they love Mahatma Gandhi A LOT) which, by itself, is a pretty darn awesome place to shop too.

And nearby within a very walkable distance away, you have the Garuda Mall,

Why it was named after a mythical Hindu super-bird, I have no idea.

I spotted this adorable little kid in one of the ladies’ store there toting the cutest little handbag, trying to emulate her trophy wife Mom, who was standing nearby doing very important mommy things like buying overpriced shoes.

Those are Phoebe’s legs behind her, by the way.


She’s her Mom’s daughter alright.

Midway through the day, we took an auto rickshaw to Forum, a place a lot more of my speed (by the sole virtue of having a kickass bookstore in it),

Look’s like a pretty neat place, by any standard.

The Landmark outlet inside is more like a tiny mall within a bigger mall than a bookshop, but I am always pretty impressed with their selection of books. I actually managed to get two books which I had on my list for awhile now; The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss and The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch – both I’ve read over the hols. They are surprisingly good and a review will be forthcoming soon from me, I promise.

Later that night, we had dinner at a place called Sunny’s which is so posh that I actually went to get a haircut and bought a nice shirt before I dared to even set foot into the establishment,

Ack, I can’t breathe. There’s too much atmosphere in here.


And how do I know they are posh? They give out appetizers for free!

Phoebs somehow managed to completely use up the entire bowl of garlic butter (mmm, garlic butter…) on just those two tiny buns. And when we were done, they brought a whole new basket! Whee!

Theoretically, you can just order a glass of mineral water (not plain ol’ water ‘cause that’s free too) and just sit there, eating your fill everyday. It’s a great place for travelers on a serious budget. They even have a massive projector screen hanging over the dining room with the sport’s channel on, showing the latest Beijing 2008 Olympics highlights so you can entertain yourself while sitting on your cheap ass mooching.

But if you do that, you’d miss out on their great pasta,

Phoeb’s fettucine. I don’t remember what they call it but it has seafood in it.


My lamb lasagna looks like dysentery in a bowl, but was actually quite good. Really.

And it’s heartwarming that they are actually taking 10 rupees from all their ridiculously rich expat and Indian elite patrons to help what looks like a dog-shaped rat and monkey failing at cuteness,

I wonder if anyone ever objected to the donation. The waiter will probably shout from your table to the counter, "This guy’s not donating. Strike the measly 10 rupees off the bill!"

And just look at their bar,

Temptation is pretty.

Phoebs and I were suppose to leave Bangalore that night for Mysore, so as you can imagine, it’s a bit of a rush trying to get to our hotel after dinner, pack and rush our heads off to the bus station which, for all practical purposes, appears to be located right on the other side of town. And it certainly didn’t help matters that the street outside of Sunny’s was turned into a river by a freak rainstorm. The city council seriously needs to do something about the drainage system there.

It was a bit of a nightmare too really, trying to walk around the massive bus station in the rain trying to locate a bus to Mysore at midnight under a relentless torrent of falling water. Plus, we didn’t have an umbrella either. Phoeb’s had my sweater over her head and backpack, so she was spared the worst of it but I – I was drenched.

Later, sitting in a bus, I had my shoes and socks removed, and stowed them under my seat (thankfully, I hadn’t trudge in them long enough for them to start smelling). I was still pretty wet then and cold, sitting in a cramped seat on the verge of a 3 hour long bus journey in the middle of the night. I should have been feeling pretty miserable but I was a lot more worried about Phoebs, who has never traveled this way before. Phoebs, however, was taking everything amazingly well. I never suspected that she was such a trooper. She doesn’t complain or whine – she knows what’s necessary and she does them. This is marriage material, people.

I hoped to change into a drier shirt once the bus started moving and the passengers started nodding off. In fact, I even began to feel a little cheerful, knowing that the worst was over. That’s me, Mr. Brightside. I told Phoeb’s that much; "Well, we’re on our way now. It can’t get any worse."

And like a bad sitcom, a fight broke out in the back of the bus. A woman was screaming and pulling another woman’s hair and occasionally, slapping a man sitting beside her. Maybe her husband was going on vacation with another woman behind her back or something but people started getting off the bus to catch another one which was just leaving for Mysore as well. Phoebs and I stayed put though, and waited for the fight to stop and our bus to start moving as well. I don’t fancy putting on my dripping wet shoes and socks again, un-wedge our backpacks from the overhead compartment, and venture out in the rain again to look for another bus.

Of course, as luck would have it, the bus wouldn’t move with so few passengers, so yeah – I had to do all that after all.

Luckily, the second time around, we got away without any further hitches. Next stop; the royal city of Mysore. Things went totally uphill from that point onwards. More later, bye for now. I'm real busy these days doing absolutely nothing.



Back,
k0k s3n w4i

Symmetry and Patterns

Excerpt from my travel journal

31st of August, 2008

Symmetry appeals to my orderly human mind, especially in the midst of senselessness. What then, I ask you, is more senseless than the chaos of the ordinary human life? Today, I see a bit of that elusive symmetry in my life, and I see it - or rather, it revealed itself to me like the quiet blossoming of some easily-overlooked wayside flower in a drizzly morning - as I stare idly into the distant nothing from Platform One of the Salem Junction Railway Station.

I find myself once more in the company of my most dependable of travelling companions; my black bags which oft-times doubled as either chairs or footstools, whichever service I happen to require more in those thoughtful Lulls I often find myself trapped in - the sort usually found in between the Time of Arrival of My Train and the Overly Early Time I Arrive at the Station Because I Worry Too Damn Much.

And here I am on the right side of 9:45 am, waiting for the 6628 West Coast Express, the same train which I rode to Salem two weeks ago at the start of my holiday. I am a man of many fancies so indulge me a little here; it seemed to me like the last two weeks happened in some isolated pocket of time quite divorced for the real-time the train and the rest of the world ran in. While two weeks have come and gone for me, the train stood relatively unmoving outside my personal pocket of time, waiting for my return.

Okay, I'm actually waiting for the train here but like I said - indulge me.

It's not quite deja vu but it's close enough a thing, this symmetry stuff. If the world's a laptop and my life's an mp3 file, this is the part where it repeats a beat when there are too many operations running at the same time. Wait, does that happen with Windows Media Player too? Maybe that only happens to me because I use WinAmp to play my songs...

There, my thoughts have wandered out of their paddock again. This occurs very frequently when I am wanting sleep. Phoebe and I arrived in Salem at about 2:00 am earlier that morning from Kodaikanal, from our fortnight vacation, and what with the unpacking of things and repacking them, and a much needed cold shower (the cold part wasn't a choice - welcome to India), I only managed to scrape together a mean 3 hours of pillow time.

At 10 to 10, the train, in a reenactment of its slight lateness two weeks ago in arriving to Salem, was here. Once more, I alighted the S2 Sleeper Car but found my berth instead at number 48 - and the berth wasn't all that I found. A man of a grandfatherly age was already in it, snoring like a motor. I could wake him but I did not. If there's anyone deserving rest, it's the old. I understand that, being a little tired of Life myself at 22.

The seats opposite my berth were only half-filled, mercifully, so that's where my black bags and I found our little share of the train. And then it began - almost imperceptibly at first, the car started to move. I gazed out through the window, thinking shallowly and letting the memories ripple. 2 and a half years. Flaying a dead guy. A messy breakup. A ruined 21st birthday (not mine). Mum (the dog), Socks and Fifi. This blog. A wager I won in the Paediatric Outpatient Clinic in Udupi. End Point. Steak Sauce Pasta. Diwali of 2007. Boxing Day of 2007. McLeod Ganj, Dharamsala. Bangalore Bus Station. Mold. Rain. Mr Pancreatitis whose real name I still remember because someone say I wouldn't. Mr Happy! The trophy hole in my Timberlands. The rot on the back of my left wrist. Sunrises. Sunsets. Cold lips. Short, sharp breaths of something like pain...

And Phoebe.

Just Phoebe.

Today is the last of my last days in India.

And it felt - though it really shouldn't - like leaving home.

It's Just Me Now

"I am a man who would fight for your honour,

I'll be the hero you're dreaming of,

We'll live forever, knowing together,

That we did it all for the glory of love.

Glory Of Love by Peter Cetera

Who will sing this song with me now?

It's been barely an hour after he's left. And here I am sobbing at a 17-inch laptop screen like a lost little child with nowhere to go. I never realized I could feel so alone till the moment I helped him heave his heavy suitcase aboard the bus & watched forlornly as it rumbled away. This time unfortunately, I wasn't onboard. "Please don't go," I whispered to no one in particular. But I guess it was too late. It's just me now, I thought to myself.

I don't know how my feet found their way back to my room. But I knew as I sat on the bed, I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep. Not with this alien sense of emptiness encroaching upon me. Every little thing reminds me of him. The empty space at the corner where his luggage used to be, his toothpaste on the table, the smell of his hair on my pillow & his Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. I don't know how I'll ever be able to finish that book without crying.

I long for his voice & his fake complaints. The way he never fails to make me laugh or giggle with everything he says. I miss our dice games too. But I guess its just me now... holding on to fragments & slivers of memories of you.

You've asked me twice, "What was your favourite part of the trip?"

"The animals," I always replied.

But in reality, you are my favourite part of the trip, baby. You've given me the best birthday present ever. Thank you :)

Wants to walk again,

Ph0ebe

Where I Belong

The following is an excerpt from my travel journal:

16th of August, 2008

The cab drove away, leaving me standing with a large black hard case on my left, a smaller black canvas bag on my right, a black laptop bag riding on my back, and a black messenger bag swinging from my shoulder in front of the bright, neon-lighted entrance of the Mangalore Central. There is this eddying pool of emotion somewhere deep in my stomach that made me feel restless, glad and accomplished, all at the same time. There's no reason why it should be, but it felt just like coming home.

For a few seconds, I just stood there savouring that something in the air. Was it the possibilities? The sense of destination? Whatever it was, it was satisfying. Then I walked, dragging the dead inertia of the past two-and-a-half years with me. This is too much baggage, I thought to myself, and I wasn't just thinking of my circus of black bags.

I love going to a railway station with a ticket clutched in my hand. It gives me purpose, tells me that I'm going somewhere. It's not like getting into a car or sitting in an airport terminal. There is something intrinsically realistic and sensible about trains. There are tracks - and you don't go off them.

I was hungry and tired. I was hungry because I skipped dinner - packing up the last vestiges of my life in Manipal at the better part of the day. I was tired because I only slept for two hours the night before and the one hour I took at 2:00 pm didn't even begin to compensate it. There was a paper on Paediatrics, Medical Ethics and Palliative Medicine I had to study for. Fast forward to 8:00 pm, eight hours later, in front of the neon-lighted Mangalore Central, I was at my absolute limit and my mind was swimming.

But I was there. I was back at where I belonged. On track.

The first order of things was to get my hunger fixed. I bought a tin foil dinner box from the railway catering kitchen which had a big E.B. scribbled on the top of it. It stood for Egg Biryani; spiced rice, sautéed onions and two whole boiled eggs to call my own. I found a seat between two Indian men who looked as if they were waiting for something other than the train, erected a little barricade with my bags in front of me and tucked in with gusto. Now that's a word I have not used in a long, long time; gusto. I need a lot more gusto in my life.



At 9:00 pm, the 6628 West Coast Express pulled into the station and came to rest groaning beside Platform 1. I found my berth in the S2 Sleeping Car, an auspicious number 7.

At 9:30 pm, the view outside the window started to move and I was confused for a minute before I realised that the train was pulling out of the station. It had something to do with my mind flickering like a computer running on too few overworked processors, I guess. Time to stop writing and get that fixed too, I think. Come 10:00 am tomorrow, I'll be in Salem where Phoebe's waiting for me.

Today is the first of my last days in India.

The Cutest Little Girl I Have Ever Met

"I am fond of children - except boys."

Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll is the nom de plume of Charles Dodgson who wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. He also likes photographing little girls naked in his free time. What a creepy, creepy man.

The Darjeeling Toy Train.

This is the last entry from my North Indian travelogue series of posts but don't be afraid (or alternatively, be very, very afraid), I am embarking on yet another backpacking trip in the morrow and will return When September Comes to tell you all about it.

Before I proceed, I just want to make this as clear as I can; I hate children. Can't stand 'em. They are dirty, sticky, rude, cruel, mean-spirited, selfish little buggers who talk too loudly, scream too shrilly, and have absolutely nil sense of etiquette and decorum. I have no idea why so many kids like me but I suspect it has something to do with their inherent evilness which compels them to bug whichever person in any given room who least want to be bugged by them. There are several instances in which they damn near ruined my vacation for me - like that Himalayan Zoo episode. Kids shouldn't be allowed in zoos, if you ask me. Or in amusement parks. Or on board planes...

I recommend just caging the lot of them till their 'ickle spirits are broken. Maybe then they would stop running around screaming like their tiny asses are on fire.

Then occasionally, on a bright sunny day when you least expect it, a little kid comes along and just... gets through to you, you know what I mean?

Meet Arjunita.

It all started when I asked the little girl sitting opposite me on the Darjeeling Toy Train for her name because she kept looking at me shyly, and looking away every time I met her eyes.

She immediately launched into a practiced recitation in an Indian dialect; "Blah, blah blah, ARJUNITA, blah, blah, yada, yada." It doesn't matter which dialect it was because I don't know any of them. Then immediately afterwards, as if embarrassed by her loud declaration, she started staring at her own knees, glancing up coyly to see if I would approve of her name.

"English. Speak English," chastised her mother who was sitting beside her.

"I no speak English," she piped up instantly, making a seamless transformation from demureness into outright cheek. "I Bangla!"

And that won me over completely.

This is the best photograph I took on the whole trip. Just a little girl on a train, loving every minute of it. Whatever happened to our own simple childlike wonderment of the world around? How did we lose it?

Arjunita was a really delightful subject to photograph. I have never met a little girl half as expressive as she was in all my time before,

1. "Grrr."
2. "Hi hi hi..."
3. "Pffft!"
4. "AHHH!!!"


1. Disapproving grandmuvver
2. Marionette
3. Ballerina
4. Cat, "MRAAAW! HISS! SPIT!"
,

1. ... and it gets downright bizarre, sometimes
2. "Come in, Mission Control! Send in Mecha support! I repeat; WE NEED THE FRIGGIN' MECHAS"
3. Doing The Rock's eyebrow thing
4. "Tis' true, I'm born laik dis."

Some time in the middle of our ride, she took my bead bracelet and proclaimed proudly that she was going to perform "MAJIK!" on it. Methodically, she asked her mother and then her father to blow on them before placing it behind her. And ta-daa! She waved both her empty little palms in my face as if she had just performed the most miraculous feat in the world, and everyone clapped and cheered - even the passengers sitting on the other side of our car. Everyone found themselves inadvertently drawn to the impossibly charismatic preschooler.

After she brought the bracelet back from her err, personal nether dimension, she refused to hand it over, declaring that she wanted to perform another "MAJIK!". She got her parents to blow on it in turn again and... she repeated the whole act, pound for pound and part for part.

And she did it again. And again and again and again... I guess what they say about kids under a certain age is true - they simply won't tire of the same game no matter how many times they play it.

At about the sixth or seventh time she announced "MAJIK!" to her entire audience on the train, her mother chided her, saying that "Uncle is bored" (what? moi, uncle?!) and asked her to perform a different magic trick.

"NO NO! SAME MAJIK!!!" she refused theatrically. Some guy sitting five seats away snorted in laughter. You simply don't negotiate with the maestro.

Her father finally decided to take matters into his own hands at the ninth encore and spirited the bracelet away from behind her while she was busy showing everyone her empty hands. And in the prestige segment of her act... OHNOES, WHERE DID IT GO? She stood up and examined her seat closely, searching earnestly for any sign of thaumaturgic malfunction while her dad stealthily passed the bracelet back to me over her head.

She squealed when I reproduced the mysterious missing bracelet and snatched it right out of my hands possessively. You don't mess with her props.

"SAME MAJIK!" says Arjunita obstinately. She simply couldn't understand why her mom and dad wouldn't consent to blow on the bracelet anymore.

"I very strong!" *kisses biceps*

According to her mother, Arjunita's talents weren't just limited to the art of repetitive prestidigitation. She took tae-kwando lessons as well.

She showed me, natch,

"Kachu Tenshin AMAGURIKEN!!!"

I'm not kidding you when I tell you that the little girl can really pack a punch. I never knew that kids can hit that hard. And it actually hurt when she twisted my thumb!

"Trust me - your thumb can point in the opposite direction of where your index finger's pointing, LOL."

I couldn't keep up with her at all. She was relentless, tireless and totally hyper. After spending a few hours entertaining her kiddy whims, I found that I simply couldn't go on anymore. So I feigned dozing off (but I finally dozed off for real because I was just that exhausted).

Joon Keat, who was sitting beside me, apparently took over the job of playing with the kid while I was cutting Z's. When I woke up goodness knows how many hours later, I found that both Joon Keat and Arjunita were on the verge of doing something dastardly to my hair.

I never did find out what they were planning though.

Before Arjunita and her parents got off the train at Kurseong, she borrowed her mother's camera phone and snapped a picture of me - me, that weird Chinese Uncle on the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway who couldn't understand half the things she said; who spent hours playing stupid games with her and introduced the concept and pastime of camwhoring into her life. Am I tucked inside a holiday photo album or in a memory card somewhere in their home? Will she remember me a year from now? Two years from now? Ten years?

I wonder if there's a chance that she would read this post someday when she's all grown up. I have some questions which I would like to ask her then.

Like what was it that she and Joon Keat were plotting to do to me while I was sleeping, for one.

We rode the diesel engine train, not this steam one, regrettably.


Some old blokes sitting in one of the stations we passed who looked as if they have been sitting there since the time when photographs were still sepia-coloured.


The train runs right alongside the road and at times, right past shop entrances. It's easy to swipe stuff as you roll along.


... or swipe other people's underwear right off the clothesline, if you're inclined that way.


How many of you have railway tracks laid just inches from your doorsteps?


Smell the scent of freshly, slaughtered poultry as you chug-chug by.


I wonder if a truck ever rammed into the Toy Train when its driver lost control while rounding the corner.


Damn garbage spoilt this picture.


My best picture of the Toy Train, in my opinion. I wished I took it with my own camera though.

P.S. The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway is overrated, in my opinion. If you have a low threshold for mind mushing boredom, just take the steam train till Kurseong for a joyride. It's a lot more antique than the Kalka-Shimla Railway, and it will rock your boat if you're the right sort of enthusiast, but the Kalka-Shimla line covers kick-ass sceneries which totally blew Darjeeling out of the water.

P.P.S. Yes, I took these pictures. Except the sepia one with the steam engine. Torng Lei took that one.

P.P.P.S. Beverly will be blogging in my stead while I'm away. Play nice.



Misses childhood so damn much,
k0k s3n w4i