Author Archives: Chris

Independence Day

15 August, 2011

Today is Independence Day in India, celebrating the anniversary of freedom from the British. So here’s the national anthem, sung by the most famous sisters in the country, superstar playback singers Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle. The national anthem is quite notable, in that it’s a hymn, rather than jingoistic propaganda about winning wars or oppressing long-time enemies. It was written by Bengali poet and polymath Rabindranath Tagore, and is sung in “heavily Sanskritized” Bengali, which I’m still trying to […]

Skywalker

30 June, 2011

This says a lot about the lack of infrastructure here in Bangalore… The Hindu reports on a project to build a “Skywalk with lifts” in the city. It’s a footbridge. Given that you’re taking your life in your hands when crossing a busy road here, it’s difficult to believe that they previously met with a “cold response”. Maybe people enjoy the danger element.

Still Here

21 June, 2011

Happy Solstice! Today is the Summer Solstice in the Northern hemisphere — as good a time as any to reflect on the last half year. Last Friday it was 6 months since I came out to India. Obviously, daily life is now quite different in many ways. I now live in a big flat with 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and 3 balconies. (But still practically zero furniture!) More to the point, I have space for a garden outside which is […]

Monsoon

5 June, 2011

So the monsoon has arrived, it’s now officially “Rainy Season”, and the weather has cooled down quite nicely. I have to say that when I was reading weather reports and predictions for when the monsoon would arrive, I was either picturing some huge, monolithic weather system arriving here at a particular moment, or the onset of glorious warm rain and everyone feeling glad to be out in it — if not dancing in the street like they do in […]

हिन्दी

7 May, 2011

Learning a new language gives me a special buzz that’s hard to describe… somehow it feels like a different kind of learning to most other things. There’s a lot of memorising (alphabet and vocabulary), systematic understanding (grammar) and some skill in pronunciation and comprehension. To me it feels similar to learning a musical instrument in many ways. But you get to try it out on random strangers and communicate with people who otherwise might be out of your reach. […]

Power

22 April, 2011

A regular feature of everyday life in Bangalore, and apparently much of the rest of India, is the power cuts. Since yesterday we’ve been having one thunderstorm after another, and somehow whenever there’s heavy rain we seem to get power outages to go with it. Most of last night the power was off, and it was still off when I got up this morning. Given that it’s Good Friday and I’ve got a day off work, it was a big […]

120

15 April, 2011

At the college where I’m currently teaching we have 4 terms a year, with officially 1 week inbetween. Some of my colleagues went off for a week or 10 days in Hawai’i or Thailand or North India, and they’ve come back fresh-faced, relaxed and obviously well-rested. Being new to the job I haven’t accrued much holiday entitlement yet and was thinking to save it up for later in the year, so I headed to Pondicherry for 3 days, and didn’t […]

Pondy and Beyond

5 April, 2011

The last couple of weeks have been pretty eventful for me, with a lightning trip to our Calcutta campus to sort out some business for a couple of days, immediately followed by a short break in Pondicherry, an enclave of Tamil Nadu on the East coast. Pondy is a lovely place, a former French colony and still carrying many traces of those times, from the street signs in French and Tamil, to the menus in the restaurants including Steak-Frites […]

Indian Summer

20 March, 2011

Here’s today’s BBC weather forecast for Bangalore: …and it’s been almost exactly the same since the beginning of March. We’re well into Summer now, and it’s HOT! Today was around 35 degrees, with no wind and humidity around 12%. Baking, dry heat… and everyone tells me that Bangalore is a pleasant climate compared to most of India, so I guess I should think myself lucky! (Yes, I’m obsessing about the weather again. I was fantasising about walking barefoot on lush […]

The Wasp Factory

7 March, 2011

I spotted this tiny pot-like thing on my kitchen window-sill yesterday, about 1.5cm across. As soon as I saw it I thought “wasp!” — not sure why. The entrance with the lip around it is amazing. Shortly after noticing this, sure enough a wasp or a hornet-type thing appeared and went to the entrance. Strange-looking, with loads of green bits hanging underneath…. It went away and came back after a few minutes. It was only then that I realised the […]

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