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. […]
Sometimes, to see something properly you have to stand a long way away from it. On the morning of 29 July 2012 I watched the opening ceremony of the London Olympics on the Internet. I watched as soon as I got up, around 7.30am, without my usually reading of the morning’s news over breakfast, to avoid any spoilers since it had gone out live the night before. As a piece of spectacle and theatre I thought it was really fantastic; […]
On a dark, busy, Friday evening in Bangalore I stop in the wine shop on my way home from work. It’s spacious and modern, with steel and glass frontage. Several businessmen are eyeing up the 18-year old imported single malt whiskey, which is very expensive. 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 […]
About 8.30am, and I’m walking to work down a residential side-street. A woman comes out of her house with a large bowl of food scraps. She goes to the corner of the street and calls something out. 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.
