18 August
2008
Namaste…. Three weeks later and still kicking on!
I’ve had to crack open and
start using my asthma puffer and preventer every day due to all my coughing and
shallow breathing from all the air pollution. Last time I used a preventer was
about 4 years ago and as for my asthma puffer, around the time I was last in
Varanasi, India about 4 yrs ago.
Besides the pollution, living in the city of Bangalore is just a little
too expensive for our budget so Ben and I are on a mission and researching somewhere
else down south where we can go to providing we find a decent yoga school or
not. We’re looking at Goa at the moment to continue our yoga but schools there
don’t open until October so we’re thinking of traveling for 4-5 weeks before
hand. Possibly starting on the east coast in Pondicherry then working our way
down to the tip of Rameswaram, then make our way to Kerala, Mysore then Goa.
Something like that.
Yoga’s going great and our teacher Sri Arun likes to push us to the
limit. His English speaking in the class gets less and less each day so I’m
forever breaking my concentration to make sure I’m doing the right thing or
else I hear a “SILVANA, LEFT LEG SILVANA, RIGHT ARM STRAIGHT SILVANA, HEAD UP
SILVANA, BACK STRAIGHT SILVANA” then he’ll turn to the class and crack a joke
making sure everyone knows that there isn’t a whole class of Silvanas but one… sometimes he calls me
“professor tattoo on her leg from Sydney” and Ben gets “Professor Ben &
Professor Ben-ja-min”.
Bangalore’s live music, pub and club scene is close to ‘0’. Almost
every day since we’ve been here there have been articles in the paper about how
all these venues are to be shut down completely or by 11:30pm every night,
weekends inclusive. They say that women are not allowed to work or serve
alcohol in these places as they think that these types of venues and alcohol
mixed together lead to dancing and prostitution. My Lord!! It’s hard to swallow
coming from such an open minded background. Ben and I dared to enter a pub
called ‘Purple Haze’ where they blasted some scary cheesy Euro Metal music, it
was seedy as, all the windows were darkly tinted and as usual full of men… no
women.
On the 15th of August, Independence day! Loads of
celebrations and firecrackers!
Security is extremely tight around Bangalore due to Terrorism, bomb
threats and actual bombs going off. Sometimes it’s a hassle going out to do
simple things like going to the shops to buy some groceries or even to the
cinemas to relax and enjoy a movie….. I’ll leave it up to Ben to tell you the
cinema story!!
I’m still enjoying the food and am close to mastering eating with the
right hand without the help of the left hand (which is used for un-savory
actions.. thank Vishnu for toilet paper). My food has pretty much got grit in
it every time I eat…. Crunch… but I’m learning to except it and not question
how it got there.
So far on my list of ‘never take
for granted & to be appreciated’ is my washing machine!! eh eh I better
be getting some pectoral muscles from all this scrubbing!!
Ok ‘till next time…. I miss you all but love being here xo
Silvana
Yes we have settled into a nice routine here, but apart from the yoga
there really isn’t anything on offer for us except for empty wallets and large
amounts of carbon on the lungs.
September looks like the month of travelling around the South a bit. We
hope to get to a National Park and a few temple towns as well but who knows
where we will end up.
Last week we visited the Bangalore flower show (pics in the photo
section) which has been much hyped since we arrived here. I don’t know if it
was all the hype but I was a little let down by it all. The main attraction was
a flower replica of a stone chariot which was pretty cool as well as the
portraits carved out of pumpkins and melons of famous poets and writers. The
rest was fairly half assed (which is pretty Indian). There was supposed to be a
replica of a famous area called Hampi known for its amazing landscape of
boulders and rocks. I didn’t see any rocks not even a pebble but there sure was
an unexplained mountain of capsicums that were everywhere. Maybe it got lost in
the translation.
We went to see Dark Knight on Thursday, which was a test of patience.
After been given the wrong ticket and Silvana asserting her authorata to get
the right ticket we walked through metal detectors and they wouldn’t let us in
as she had her camera (not allowed because of the high
security/terrorism/bombs) in her bag which we could check in at the front of
the mall i.e. leave it with someone and collect when we were finished. We
didn’t see the movie……The trip there was exciting though as the truck in front
of us lost some foam sheeting which we ran over and got like “3 feet of air”. I
thought we were going to tip over.
Speaking of rickshaws tipping over there was a crash out the front of
our hotel last week. Still unsure as to what happened (depends on who you talk
to) but the end result was a rickshaw on its side with a smashed windscreen. No
one was hurt luckily.
In the news here:
India won their first ever individual gold medal (for shooting) and he
is the ducks guts at the moment with various political parties tripping over
each other to give him cash rewards and honorary titles. It’s a shame no
institution in India ever helped him to achieve his medal. He has rich parents
who built a private shooting range for him and sent him to Germany to train.
His Dad is giving him a 5 star hotel which is still being built for winning the
medal.
The police have caught the two masterminds behind the recent spate of
bombings in India.
And the first 2 -3 pages of the paper seem to always be about which
government official was caught in some bribery, laundering or embezzlement scam. It’s very funny
though as the Department that does the investigating and the sting operations
doesn’t have the power to arrest them only to confiscate items that they
couldn’t possibly own on their salary. So it takes up to 8 years to charge them
by that time everyone has forgotten and the person in question has been
promoted several times and no one wants to charge him now. What a system!
That’s about it. Next installment may be from a new town which will
hopefully give us something interesting to say…….
Ben
p.s. we won’t be getting a mobile phone either. Because of tight security
and us having to hand over id/documents… it’s just too big of a pain in the
butt… plus we don’t really need one.
