365
It’s exactly a year since I arrived in India. Almost impossible to believe that 12 months can fly by so quickly.
Category Archives: Bangalore
Moving On
So, after being in my current apartment for nearly 11 months, I’m going to have to move again — or “shift” in the local vernacular — partly because the landlord wanted to put the rent up, and partly because I’ve realised I need to move somewhere cheaper anyway. The place I’m in now has been great, but it’s huge and I only use half of it. It’s also way more expensive than what I’d been budgeting for, but I was […]
One
Moong Daal is one year old today. On 2nd November last year I bought my one-way plane ticket and decided to start this blog to document the adventure I was about to embark upon. Today also marks my first visit — at long last — to the cinema here. A friend from the UK is staying with me just now, so we went along to the big multiplex next to college to see Ra.One, Shahrukh Khan‘s new block-buster Bollywood/SciFi crossover […]
Festive Season
So we’re reaching the peak of the Festive Season here in India, or so it seems. It’s Diwali just now (aka Deepavali) — a national holiday. Probably the biggest festival for Hindus, and celebrated by Sikhs and Jains as well. Buildings are festooned with rope-lights, fancy goods shops are bursting with lanterns, and street vendors are selling huge mounds of the tiny ceramic diyas (oil lamps) which are so symbolic of the festival, and which give it its name. Meanwhile, the […]
Equinox
Today is the September Equinox, and back home this would be considered the start of Autumn. September makes me think of long shadows, bright but cooler days, and the evenings starting to shorten quite noticeably. Leaves are changing colour, and there’s a melancholic feel in the air. It’s almost the start of another academic year. Not so here in Bangalore… I think we’re coming to the end of the Monsoon. The lack of recognisable seasons is one of the things […]
Skywalker
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
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
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
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
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 […]
