Well, I made it.  It’s exactly 2 years since I arrived in India.

And I’m just about to leave Bangalore.  My last day at work is tomorrow, and then I have one more day after that to finish sorting things out before I fly back to the UK for a few weeks.

The last couple of months have gone by really fast, and inevitably I still have a mental list of “things I never did” while I was in Bangalore.  I’m sure I’ll be back here at some point though.

I’m really looking forward to some proper time off, and to seeing family and friends again after so long.  I’ve only been out of India once this whole time, and that was 3 days in Singapore for a training course.

Then after the break I’ll be flying back to India in mid-January to start all over again, this time 1000 miles further North, in Delhi.

On the counter next to the window are a couple of small Hindu idols with garlands of fresh flowers round their necks, along with a large bunch of bananas, half a coconut, and a couple of apples. Several different types of incense are burning, filling the shop with fragrant smoke.

The scenario plays out exactly the same as any other Friday when I’ve dropped by.

I join the long queue with my beers, and watch the young man behind the counter. While his colleague rings up the purchases on the till, he is busily doing some kind of pooja.

He’s holding a bunch of burning incense sticks in his hand, waving them around in 3 small circles over each object to bless it – first the computer, then the debit card machine, then the drawer of the till with all the money in it.  He puts the incense physically inside the drawer and almost closes it, filling the drawer with the smoke.  Then he takes it out again, touches his chest and his lips in a gesture of blessing, and moves onto the second computer.

As I’m about to pay, a Hijra in a saree comes into the shop, carrying a small yellow lime.  She re-arranges the doormat as if she’s somehow involved in the running of the shop, and then approaches the young man, who without speaking hands her a bunch of small white things that look like mothballs but are torpedo-shaped.  The Hijra pushes these things into the top of the lime and lights them with a cigarette lighter.  While the shop man carries on with his blessings, the Hijra performs her own pooja, moving the burning lime around in circles, looking serious, and blessing various objects on the counter. The manager of the shop cautiously moves a pile of invoices away from the flames.

As I leave the shop, the Hijra is outside, ceremoniously placing the burning lime in the middle of the step that leads down to the street full of speeding autos and cars honking in the dark.  Once she has done all this, she will get her money from the shop manager.

A huge black and white friesian cow comes waddling up to her, and she puts the bowl down on the ground in front of it.

As it starts eating, she touches the cow on its rump, mutters something, and blesses herself.

We  exchange pleasantries and as usual she heads straight into the kitchen, puts down her handbag and her phone, and starts chopping and cooking.  Once that’s under way, she starts sweeping the floors while the pressure cooker hisses away.

“The days are going very fast now, brother”, she says.

I agree, and we smile a sad smile at each other.

In 4 weeks I will be leaving Bangalore.

And in January I will be flying to Delhi to start a new job, in a new college, in a new city.   Chapter 2.

Well I’ll be back in the UK anyway–I’m not really sure where “home” is these days. But it will be great to see my family for Christmas, and after that possibly living the life of an itinerant couch-surfer for 3 weeks, catching up with dear friends, many of whom seem to have participated in the British Baby Boom this year.

Of course I’m looking forward to seeing everyone, but I’m wondering how I’m going to feel about being back there in the least hospitable part of the year–dark, cold and probably wet.  Or snowy. Which might be nice but then again I had just lived through 2 of the worst winters in recent memory before I came out to India, and could quite happily do without all the disruption to public transport if I’m going to be zipping up and down the country.  I think I would prefer crisp air, frosty fields, blue skies and everyone remarking on how mild it is.

I’m also wondering what it will feel like to be back there.  Many of my early blog posts here were related to culture shock, and supposedly there’s such a thing as “reverse culture-shock” that you experience when you go back home.

One thing is for certain–it’s going to be weird to be cold again.  I’ve only felt properly cold twice while I’ve been in India, once in Ahmedbad in the January just after I first arrived, and again a few weeks ago when I spent the night sleeping out on the sand dunes in the Thar desert in Rajasthan.  Until then I had literally forgotten what being cold felt like.  Meanwhile here in Bangalore, all the small children are wearing knitted balaclavas now that the mornings are “chilly” (about 14-15 degrees)…

Time feels like it’s speeding up all of a sudden, and I’m counting the days.

He’s wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and a fluorescent, lime green, knitted balaclava.

It’s two years ago today since I set up this blog, just after buying my “one way ticket to India”.  Looking back now it’s hard to recall the trepidation of making such a commitment to jumping into the deep end, applying for the visa without understanding how it all worked, wondering about how I would find somewhere to live, and what it would be like to live and work in a country I had never even visited.  But everything fell into place and it all seems to be working out pretty well.

Probably the most important thing I’ve learned here is to stop worrying about things so much, and to trust that things will work out.  So far, everything seems to have done so–touch wood!

I’ve just come back from a great week’s holiday in Rajasthan, visiting Jodhpur and Jaisalmer, so hopefully I will get some photos online soon.  I hesitate to say I’ll write it up here, given that I’ve still not written up Part 2 of the Uttar Pradesh trip I made way back in March.

Now all I can think about is finally travelling home at Christmas, to see my family and friends for the first time in 2 years.  I’m not looking forward to the cold though, I have to say…

As seen in today’s Times Of India: “Rare sight of seven persons on a motor bike spotted on Siddhaiah road on Friday morning in Bangalore”.

It’s another holiday!  Today is Gandhi Jayanti, celebrating the mahatma’s birthday.

After a very long wait between Good Friday (6th April) and Independence Day (15th August) we’re now into the best season with 3 holidays in October and 2 in November this year.   It’s pretty disruptive to the teaching–our 4th term of the year starts in college this week–but very welcome nonetheless.

One of the big surprises about moving out to India is that I’ve become a morning person.  (Or it could be my middle-aged hormones kicking in.)  This morning I was suddenly wide-awake just before dawn, around 6 O’Clock, so I got up,  made a cup of coffee and enjoyed the spectacular sunrise.  And especially the peacefulness–being a holiday there wasn’t a single car on the roads, and not a honk to be heard.

I have a great East-facing flat here, usually filled with sunshine right after sun-up, and somehow I’ve got used to harnessing that energy.  Having a day off meant being able to do nothing, which today was pottering about in the small garden on my balcony.

I’m a big fan of gardening but before moving to India I ended up with 13 years of not having any outdoor living space at all. Mind you, with the Scottish weather that’s not such a big deal.  But moving out here and being able to enjoy Bangalore’s climate made me all the more enthusiastic to get my green fingers up and running again.

In my previous Bangalore flat I had a lot more space and grew quite a few vegetables, but here I’ve been mostly cultivating tomatoes and a few herbs.  Even then, the tomatoes haven’t been a huge success due to the troop of Macaques that hangs around, and comes raiding the apartments on a regular basis.  Once they’d discovered the tomatoes the same routine would play out again and again…  I would hear a thud as something obviously heavy lands on the garden table; I would look out the window to see a big fat grey-haired monkey chewing on a green tomato; I would open the doors to shoo it away, and it would just look at me as if I were insane; and then I would throw some water at it and it would leave, looking quite surly but not at all afraid.

A few weeks back the monkeys started to become quite a nuisance generally, and an e-mail debate raged on our residents’ association mailing list, with the subject “Monkey Menace”.  The “against” camp were suggesting that monkey-catchers should be called in to get rid of them (they’re in the phone book, as are snake-catchers).  Someone even recommended hiring Langurs–which are actually another type of monkey!  They are sometimes trained to scare away other, more mischievous primates, as with the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi.  And the “for” camp were pointing out that they were god’s creatures and had every right to be here.

The residents’ main concern is that the monkeys will come into the apartments through any open doors or windows, usually to steal food.  And it appears that monkeys really do love bananas in real life, not just in cartoons.  Slightly more worrying if you have young children though.  A couple of weeks ago I heard shouting coming from next door and looked out the window to see a large male walking along my railings carrying a tupperware box.  (Tupperware is something else that features heavily on our mailing list.)   He sat down, oblivious to the shouting and stick-waving coming from next door, popped the top rather expertly from the tupperware box and started eating the nuts or biscuits or whatever was inside.

Watching the local wildlife is one of the great joys of sitting out here.  (As I’m writing this it’s now dusk, about 28 degrees, and I’m sitting outside with a glass of chilled rosé and hoping the Odomos and many incense sticks will keep the mosquitoes off–one side of the wildlife I’d rather do without, especially after that near-miss with Dengue a few months ago.)

In the past week the air during the day has been filled with hundreds of dragonflies, flitting back and forth right next to the balcony.  I can’t imagine where they come from… back home I would associate them with ponds, and even then you would only usually see one or two together.  I also get some amazing butterflies coming to visit, although they’re very difficult to photograph because they come and go so quickly, and never stay still for long.

Recently there’s been a little Palm Squirrel visiting, and he’s awe-inspiring to watch because he runs and leaps in such a death-defying way… considering he’s only 6 inches tall and I’m on the 7th floor, the view down from the handrail doesn’t seem to phase him at all.

And there are lots of birds too, particularly Kites, the large birds of prey that are often mistaken for Eagles, but which are actually scavengers rather than hunters.  A pair of Black Kites has just started building a precarious-looking nest in one of the generator-chimneys that’s next to where I live.  I’ve seen them foraging for twigs, some of them more like small branches, and swooping around carrying them in their talons.  I’m looking at the nest right now.  I don’t have a great zoom on my camera, but hopefully should be able to see any chicks when they arrive.

It’s been great having this outdoor space, and I will really miss it when I inevitably leave.  Still, I thoroughly enjoyed building up the garden from nothing in the previous flat, then shifting it all here and continuing to build my own little piece of jungle, even though it’s only temporary.

As I’ve said before, working abroad is a bit like life… you arrive with nothing and you leave with nothing.  So you just make the most of what you have while you’re here.

Today is a big, big holiday in the South and West of India–it’s Ganesh Chaturthi, the festival (and birthday) of Lord Ganesha, son of Shiva and Parvati, who is instantly recognisable as the Hindu deity with the elephant’s head.

For the last week or so street vendors have been setting up roadside camps selling Ganesh idols, and temporary outdoor stages, kitchens and shrines have been constructed in random places (often completely obstructing the road) in preparation for this big festival which actually starts on 19th September but runs for 10 days.

As I walked home from work last night the traffic was even more crazy than usual, electric lights were strung up everywhere, and people were buying flowers, sweets and huge bunches of banana leaves.   One of the little backstreets I usually walk down had been completely transformed with pulsating rope-lights, more Vegas than Koramangala.   The streets were buzzing with anticipation.

The reason for selling so many idols is that they get paraded through the streets, either carried or on the back of a truck, and then finally they are ritually immersed in a lake or the sea.  Around 265,000 are immersed in just 4 lakes in Bangalore each year.

Traditionally they are made out of plaster of paris, but this being the 21st century there’s much talk in the media about “eco-idols” which are made out of clay and so won’t result in the lakes being clogged up and polluted due to the large numbers being left there.

Some of the idols are real works of art, and the large ones are very expensive, with 6-foot ones reportedly selling for around Rs 15,000 (£170) this year.

Some of them are also rather… interesting.

photo: Ricardo Gallego

So, we seem to be well and truly into the “festive season” again now, as I wrote around this time last year, although since most of the religious holidays are based on lunar calendars they all move around from one year to the next.  There are several national holidays in October and I’m planning to join some of them up using a few days’ leave and make a trip up North… watch this space.

Meanwhile, here’s to new beginnings and the removal of obstacles!