First Day in Bangalore

Rain Tree canopy, as seen from my balcony.

It's Monday morning, and I'm up earlier than I need to be sitting in a robe on my balcony with an espresso so I can catch up with blogging, since yesterday offered no free time for writing. My view is the garden and pool, including the huge canopy of the 118-year-old Rain Tree that is the "guardian" of the hotel. Just above the tree I see two satellite dishes mounted on the roof, each with dozens of birds sitting around their rims. It's overcast, but it's pleasantly cool with low humidity. Quite a drastic change from northern India.

Arrival at the Delhi Airport went rather smoothly. We had time for a sit-down dinner and I exchanged cash. While boarding, an Indian man asked to take a picture of me shaking his hand. I didn't know he had already asked for pictures with some of our students. I obliged, and Tia was there to snap the photo - but she was being devious. Unbeknownst to me and this man, she snapped a bizarre close-up selfie. When she handed the phone back and he looked at the photos, he was scrolling through the pictures and I was slightly horrified to see the picture of Tia, mostly teeth, on the camera. He must have been surprised as well, because he kept scrolling past it, then back to it while I looked on nervously wondering why this unflattering photo was on his phone. We had a good laugh about it later. That was just the beginning of the laughter, as the long day characterized by our students shouting on the bus had gotten to Nandini. She, Tia, and Karleigh sat in the row behind me on the plane where, due to a misunderstanding amongst themselves while we waited for takeoff, they could not contain their giggles. I had no idea what was going on, so I did like the locals do and pulled out my phone to capture them in the background of a selfie. The resulting photo was fantastic.

Silliness on the plane.

Our hotel here in Bangalore, The Oberoi, is amazing, as Tia said it would be. They've thought of everything in the rooms, including a button to push for butler service, and there is always a staff member in the hall to make sure everything is ok. (This is similar to the hotel next door, where I've stayed before.) Yesterday morning, said staff member asked me about the room, and I mentioned off-hand that it was a little humid at times, but it was quite nice. I headed to breakfast. About 10 minutes later, a man in a suit appeared over my shoulder to say "I understand there was a problem with the humidity in your room? We will send someone right away to fix it." Who knows if there was a problem with the AC or what they might have done about it, but I do know they adjusted the thermostat during the day and the room felt better when I returned. Last night I couldn't figure out how to turn on the lights, so I told the man in the hall and he came to show me how to turn on the master switch. I said "Oh; I didn't realize that's a master switch, because the writing is worn off." He immediately told me he would send someone to fix that in the morning, so I'm curious to see what it will look like when I get back this afternoon.

We had a great morning yesterday, when we visited the Jude Felix Hockey Academy, which is an NGO located at a local orphanage where children from the orphanage and the community learn to play and develop hockey skills, ultimately helping them to improve confidence, academic performance, life skills, and opportunities. This was Kelley's fifth visit to the Academy, but I had never been there before. It was founded by Jude Felix, a former national star in the sport. Mr. Felix arrived while we were there learning about the NGO from the director, and I spent a nice amount of time sitting and talking with him one-on-one about hockey, sports, and his experiences playing test and World Cup matches in Pakistan, It was super interesting, and really cool. NBD, just a leisurely chat with Jude Felix. Meanwhile, our students were playing hockey with the Academy students and having the time of their lives. When our students were finished and sat to rest, the boys of the Academy started a scrimmage. One of our students, Madison, play club field hockey at IU, and Mr. Felix had commented to me that she was good. (I later told her, and she seemed thrilled.) She was invited to join the boys in the scrimmage, and we had a great time cheering her on while she got a pretty good workout. At the end of the match, they presented her with a JFSA t-shirt. Madison later told me that it was a surreal experience and that the game went much faster than what she was used to. Needless to say, she felt honored and will never forget the experience. After the Academy girls scrimmaged, we toured the Academy facilities and orphanage before returning to the hotel for lunch.

Learning about the Jude Felix Hockey Academy.

The afternoon was less awesome. We had scheduled a three hour city tour, and after years of experience we pretty much knew what to expect. There are a few key sites in Bangalore, and we requested to see those. The guy from our tour company had other plans, ensuring us he had something "very special" arranged. Indeed! They had arranged for a young woman to be our tour guide, and it started off well. She was hip and friendly, spoke great English, and was very knowledgeable. We started by going to Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha, just around the corner from the hotel. I had been to this Sikh temple once before, but this visit was even better than the first time. Being a Sunday, the temple was very crowded and busy with activity. In the temple itself people were worshiping while two guys performed sacred music - one guy playing drums while another chanted and accompanied himself with an accordion of some sort. Downstairs in the kitchen, people were busy preparing food for the 5000 people they serve there daily (or, at least, that many on Sundays). We were able to see the assembly line of people preparing Roti, and actually allowed to join in the process. I spent a little time tossing the uncooked flat bread onto the scorching hot stove. (There's a technique to it...) Meanwhile, a number of the volunteers enjoyed talking to us about where we are from, their experiences in America, and what was going on, in general. I had a great time, and the students did, too.

Women preparing Roti at the Gurdwala.

When we left the Gurdwara, things started to go downhill. We went to a Catholic Church which was important in the Colonial history of Bangalore. I hadn't been there before, so it was nice to see something new, and it was a pretty structure on the outside, but it was a fairly simple building dating only to the late 1800s and I was over it fairly quickly.

Our tour - near the beginning when we were still excited about it.

From there we went to another place we hadn't asked to see, the large Cubbon Park, where we walked down a sketchy street to the area of the Bandstand, pausing to learn too much about the Queen Victoria Statue. We reached the steps leading to the High Court of Karnataka and posed for a group photo, before sitting on the steps for a brief talk about the park and the Court. This is where the tour turned into a nightmare. We were held captive there for God only knows how long, while she went on and on in great detail about the park, the colonial history of the city, the court, (which we couldn't even see as it was to our backs), and the Vidhana Soudha. We kept thinking the lecture would end in 5 more minutes, but she had a script and she was sticking too it - all the while preventing others from taking photos in front of the Court, but providing them ample opportunities to stand around staring our students and slyly taking selfies with us in the background. I felt trapped, anxious, and uncomfortable, while Tia thinking we had been kidnapped  by the tour guide. Finally I turned to the VP of the tour company, who was sitting next to me, and told him bluntly that we had to leave. So they walked us around to the other side of the court where we could see the impressive Vidhana Soudha, the seat of the Karnataka state legislature. I was mildly annoyed that in two previous visits the tour guides had never taken me to this front-side street view of the building, always before having walked on empty streets to a fence on the back side where it was impossible to get a good picture or a sense of what the building was really like. There, the guide droned on about the building - even after the bus pulled up on the street and stopped in traffic to wait for us. Finally we were allowed to board, and as we drove away the woman pointed out the "life size" statue of Gandhi - a sculpture of him seated, standing probably 20 feet high.

Finally we were on our way to the Bull Temple, a site which we had requested to see and which our students had studied. All day long, they had been asking "Are we going to the Bull Temple? Are we going to the Bull Temple? Are we going to the Bull Temple?" Now it was late in the afternoon and we had the unfortunate surprise of snarled traffic, making the trip across town to the temple almost unbearable. We finally arrived to find some sort of festive procession on the street infront of the temple, with guys on a float of some sort, which had stopped the traffic. That was an unexpected and fun thing to see, even though I didn't appreciate the delay. The Temple, otherwise known as Dodda Ganeshana Gudi or Nandhi Temple, was about as I remembered it, but more crowded. It's not "all that," but I think our students were happy to finally see it and it was interesting watching the faithful pay homage to the god.

Festive street scene stopping traffic in front of the Bull Temple.

It only took us 22 minutes to get back to the hotel, but by the time we arrived it was 7:00 pm - our three hour tour had turned into 5. My plan for a relaxed evening with some solitude was shot, and I joined the other facilitators for drinks and dinner at an al fresco venue in the hotel. We laughed a lot as we filled in Nandini about the excruciating tour which she had thankfully skipped. (No way she could have handled it.) I finally got back to my room at 9:30, then, even though I was exhausted, ducked out again briefly to discover the location of the spa and fitness center, since I hadn't yet had any time to explore the hotel property. Before bed I took a hot bath in an effort to relax and unwind.

Now it's time to get ready for a day with two business visits and a debrief dinner. It's been nice sitting here, but even in the garden setting on the back side of the hotel I can hear street noise from MG Road, mixed in with the sound of dogs barking, birds, and the hotel staffers sweeping the pool deck. I hear faint but persistent tuk-tuk horns tooting, along with the occasional siren and car horn. Suddenly, there is a strong fragrance of men's cologne.