india in the first nutshell

*brushing off cobwebs with the halves of nutshells india is prepared to be stuffed in*
it's been a while since this humble resident return to my cyber world hub. life at home is juz amazingly easy :) time seems to pass like rapid current.

in a blink of eyes, it's already a week after our return from africanation india and good old singapore. oh, yeah, it did happen, the carbonization and dehydration. but not as great an extend as we imagined it would have been :)

i lost dad's new camera in chennai, the only one i brought. i can only blame my own carelessness. so, sorry folks, no glimps of the famous indian train travel where passangers hang one handedly outside the doors that never shut (now we see where did the malaysian indians who used to grace the doors of the sardine packed pink panthers (KL bus minis) learned their stuffs), no brightly coloured spices and temples and saris, no breath-taking-lit-by-more-than-100-thousand-light-bulbs-mysore-palace, no random holly cows scattering the streets of the silicone valley of india.

india was like a live replay of the malaysia during my childhood. it reminded me very much of mom's hometown in penang of old, played in a scene with rumah ataps replaced by the karnatakan flat roofs and tamilnadu low ceilings, where the kids play in gangs on the brown sand streets, the busses un-airconded and un-time-tabled, the coconut leaves sway and the oil lamps burn.

*break, ran 3km in 17:29. lost my breath a bit. still in the 2nd course of my antibiotics, doc says most probably not H1N1, i'm already feeling good enough to run 3k anyway... back, sweating*

it was my first ever couchsurfing experience. i have hosted ppl but this was the first time i surf another's couch. alysha and her sister was our host in bangalore. we arrived at her place no earlier than 1am, after a long search of the address with the humble cab driver who drove us from the airport. the sisters gave us the warmest welcome in the chill of night, and the beds adorned by the pirates of the carribean sheets with captain jack sparrow's head on the pillow cases was most welcoming after a long day, since i took the overnight train down to singapore from kajang the night before. i drifted into dreamland under an endless series of crow croaks.

the crows must have croaked an even number of times the night before, as we woke into a refreshing morning. the first taste of a week-long experience of awesome indian food came as early as our first morning there. june and i was at the dark little coffee shop across alysha's house. clueless to how to place an order, we just told the person behind the bar that we want a vegetarian dosa and an idly, recommended by alysha. we ended up having a masala dosa and a plate of steam plain idly, served with different kinds of curry we cant name. the first bites have already made us resolve to not consume any of the packeted food we brought from malaysia in precaution ^^

some shopping in the morning as june hunted of salwar kameez and ended up buying a gorgeous sari of red, black and gold. the morning then ticked away in a walk that included side stepping women sitting on the streets selling jasmin bands, witnessing men pissing at sidewalks, inhaling CO2 and SO2 and NOx exhausted from the chaotic traffic, and waving back to school kids yelling hellos to two east asian faces from their dust-caked school bus windows.

afternoon brought us vineet and tejas the vishnu ^^ we were at MTR, a world reknown restaurant, having our first ever southern thali, which was a 12 course meal, opening with tequilla shot sized fresh grape juice, served with poori (fried chapati), pappar, rice, bean and shreded coconut mix, salad, two sweet pastes and five different kinds of curries. a fruit ice-cream concluded our meal. we were again awe strucked by the way indian use spices to make veges taste so wonderfully good. i ended up eating pinang for the first time, immitating vineet, mouthing the whole pinang wrap. as they have warned me, i spitted out half of it XD

we then went to burn the calories we had just consumed, in lalbagh, the botanical garden in the city of gardens - bangalore. lalbagh is famous for its crystal palace, where as neither bangalore nor chennai is a touristy place, the crystal palace might as well be the one and only famous place we visited in those two cities. vineet lived up to his name tag as a bird watcher, and we learned much from him about indian birds. his trained eyes has also helped us spot quite a few fascinating species, which includes a carnivorous predator falcon and a water bird that dries itself in the sun like washed laundry.

tejas the vishnu (or god of protection) then gave us a crash course to the 330million hindu gods as we visited an art centre. indian arts are highly influeced by hindunism, like european arts are influenced by christianity. the lord siva in my old history textbook came dancing back into memory.

we whiled away the rest of the day seeping cold beer in a semi open air place. kingfisher, indian brew, i liked it. we talked about many things over the drinks and snacks, about travelling, about our countries, even about smoking weeds, and coaxing good-boy-vineet into smoking weeds with tejas that very night XD the alcohol went as quick as it came to my head. it was the weather, i decided. after the drinks, we had paneer cheese and tandoori chicken for a light, but as taste buds pampering dinner.

the evening talk with alysha and her sis was yet another solid prove that, as june put it, like minded ppl dont have to come from a same country/culture/religion/skincolour/wotever$h!tuputhere. a sigh and another kind of gan3dong4.

tired as we were, the cool bangalore night was quick to bring us into slumberland.