Floating face down on seas of delectable bliss

I have not yet found my voice. Though it would seem that I have found my feet. And while my feet wander free, it is not often that I feel the looseness drift up into the throat that I might share stories of my time here. There are reasons for this, but this is not the place. Suffice to say that whenever I sit down to share (not write, for the private writer knows little inhibition), a self consciousness seizes me. What the hell do I think I am doing? Publishing random bits of information about my poorly arranged life? What audacity! To think that anyone should read these unimportant stories about some lost stooge who has thrown himself into the vaguely unfamiliar, hoping that his life might rediscover some aromatic wind of adventure. Forgive me if you're reading this. I shall do my best to stick to details, external to myself, that might somehow amuse the reader:

Taking up the challenge from the hipstamatic posters...

In my quest for good local places to eat buttery dosas and thalis,  I recently discovered an excellent blog published by a Bangalorean woman: 

http://aturquoisecloud.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/the-great-bangalore-breakfast-specials/

Unfortunately my apartment complex is about 12kms north of Central Bangalore, and I don't like the idea of travelling too far for breakfast. But I've recently been getting out on the local buses, and this added to the excitement of going on a quest for food. Not to mention that on weekends my alternative is to spend the whole time lolling about in my apartment, which will make a brother crazy.

So with a list of potential venues in the Malleswaram suburb (and a few traditional music schools to inquire at) scribbled into my diary, I set out on a bus that looked like it had been an air-conditioned, luxury vehicle in a previous life. As proud as I was of travelling on the bus, with the locals (working faces not necessarily pleased to see a foreigner on their early commute), it took bloody ages for me to get to my destination. As in most parts of the world, buses don't run so regularly on weekends, and my chosen route was an obscure one. But my efforts did not go unrewarded.

The rickety bus hurtled past one of the venues on my list. The exterior of Veena Stores boasted a crowd that would rival the Boxing day opportunists moments before sale time, so I decided to catch the next stop and try my luck at Central Tiffin Rooms. From the outside, CTN appeared to be crawling with people in a manner not unlike the hordes of ants that laboriously dissect the carcasses of recently deceased spiders in summer time. My appetite won out over the waves of anxiety and I elbowed my way into the sweet smelling darkness. It appeared that finding a table would be like trying to locate a contact lens in a spa bath. I pushed my way to the back of the cafe, parried a series of startled looks, experienced an intense moment of self doubt before hustling my way back to the entry. The person in charge of collecting money from patrons gave me a curious look, then pointed to a table that had one seat free in the furthermost corner. One of the waiters took it upon himself to lead me there, wipe my seat then ask me what I wanted. Do (2) idli and eck (1) butter dosa, I blurted and he folded back into the heaving darkness. My neighbours made little effort to conceal their interest as I munched on my idlis and dosa.

I should point out that after eating in local joints for most of my time in India in 2008, and for the best part of my 3 weeks this time around, while I love the local fare, one can start to think that it is all of a similar quality. From one cafe to another, there seems little difference between vadas, dosas, chutneys, thalis. However, my perspective has received a necessary adjustment. The breakfast at the Central Tiffin Rooms was absolutely extraordinary. The dosa crackled and melted in my mouth as the corriander chutney simmered on my tongue. Amidst the grubby surrounds, barefoot wait staff and teeming crowd, I felt momentarily set adrift, floating face down on seas of delectable bliss.

I washed down the dosa with a chai and set out into the streets. An unexpected bonus to go with my breakfast: a festival in honor of Sri Ganesh is soon approaching, and to mark the occasion hundreds of women had set up in the street to create mandalas out of chalk, seeds, candles and earth. I wandered aimless among the myriad mandalas, gazing transfixed from one spiralling meditation unto the next. 

A young woman asked me how I had come to know about the event and was delighted when I told her it was an accidental discovery. It would seem I was the only foreigner fortunate to stumble through Margosa Road that morning.

Then there was more time waiting for and riding buses. Exercise at the gym and another delicious lunch served on a banana leaf just up the way from my apartment. Some colleagues and I met for dinner at the Sheraton (a valuable lesson: if the food is being served in an expensive hotel then chances are that it will be awful. The vegie burger at the Sheraton cost me $12. The lime soda was $5. Breakfast and lunch combined (with chai/coffee) was less than $3 all up. The burger was near inedible), then went to see a production of The Seussification of Romeo and Juliet (I did not know that this pantoesque adaptation existed until a few days ago), directed by a local dramatist (who I have replaced as Drama teacher at Stonehill International School). 

Despite the assorted satisfactions of yesterday's outings, I did not sleep well last night - this is how things have been for some weeks now - and woke feeling lethargic and deflated this morning. Being Eid, I knew that most of the shops and restaurants would be closed today. But, being Eid, I also knew that there would be something happening somewhere. And so I dragged myself out of the apartment and set off on the bus to the most famous Mosque in Bangalore, the Masjid E Khadriya. I had no idea what to expect as I made the corner approaching the mosque. What I found was a beautiful building bulging with men of many ages all adorned in white robes and taqiyah (prayer caps). Unable to approach the entry to the gardens, I was welcomed to join a man and his sons not far from the elaborately decorated gate. Recitations from the Quran bubbled and hissed through loud speakers with majestic intensity. The man stared into his hands and uttered prayer while his boys unashamedly stared at their anglo attendant. After a moment one of those nearby handed me a prayer cap of my own and I sat in stupefied reverence as a paparazziesque storm of camera phones hailed all about me. Insistant beggars tugged at my sleeve and the chanting thundered on. I caught glimpses of those glistening minarets. That wondrous onion dome. 

And then the chanting stopped. People staggered to their feet and handed back each others' shoes. The stream of human traffic haphazardously negotiated its way back up Miller's road, away from the Mosque, and into the wind.

I decided to walk back to the MG Road area (good bookshops, restaurants, easy passage home, etc.). A 4km wander through old Bangalore. I recall someone telling me back in January that Bangalore was a terrible place, full of American style shopping malls and commercial enterprise.

True. Bangalore is a thickening example of booming economy India. I have not talked about the skyscrapers of UB City or the various malls that pepper the city limits. They do not interest me, though they embody an extreme of irreconcilable social inequality.

But. If one ignores the well trod yellow line of Bangalore's main roads ("safe" main roads and commercial districts appear in yellow on road maps) in favor of the narrow lanes and destitute bazaars, there is a world to be discovered, rich in the twin polarities of life and death. Cows tussle over scraps udder deep in rubbish, while veiled women light candles at awkwardly stationed idols. Tiny shops pedalling all sorts of trinkets. Old men stooped over who knows what. I stopped for a chai and talked cricket (a point of reference) with two muslims.

I felt that wind of adventure (tho I shudder to call it such) for a moment there. Faint. Despairing to be found. A fleeting awareness, embedded in the crumbling walls of a melancholy street. One of hundreds in a labyrinth of human perseverance. Audacious or no, this is one more story. Unimportant. Absurd. Lived. I thank the writer, the women who create their mandalas in the middle of the road, the man and his sons. In the shade of mega malls and soaring enterprise, there is music to be heard, dosas to be devoured.

I would go on. But I won't. There are classes to prepare and a dinner to be made.

Until next time the winds are calling. I thank you. For reading.

Early days

It has been a whirlwind few days since my arrival in Bangalore. And I have to keep reminding myself about the quantitative aspect of that sentence - a few DAYS - not weeks not months but days. Because it feels like I have been here a lot longer. It also feels like I have been here no time at all.

The arrival has been smooth. The good folk at Stonehill International School have gone to great ends to ensure that all of the new hire staff (17 in total) feel comfortable, well fed, prioritised. They value their staff and this shines through in the attention to detail. The size and facilities of my apartment far exceed my needs. After sharing with students, artists, academics and cafe staff for the best part of ten years, I now have a 13th floor apartment all to myself. Gym, swimming pool and tennis courts. The muslims that run the local grocery store stare at me with unexpected affection and ask questions that might be considered invasive in Western countries. It is novel to be a novel animal.

The school itself is remarkable. Large, open designed workspaces and optional outdoor learning environments for the primary years. The gardens are beautiful and security guards pepper the lawns. A bus collects the staff for delivery to the school each morning (a practice that shall be maintained until the end of the year - by which point we are expected to have our own transport - on these roads?). Upon arrival at the heavily fortified gate a guard checks the front of the bus for explosives - then gives us the ok to proceed.

The school has great facilities and employs a full-time snake catcher. Yesterday he caught a seven foot long cobra just out front of the admin building. Several staff members ran to his aid as he held the snake by the tail and warded off its coiling stabs with a short stick. He trapped its erratic movements before seizing its head while the body thrashed in opposition. A guard appeared with a fabric bag (apparently designed for the occasion) and our hero nonchalantly held the snake aloft while it bounded against his arm and shoulder. He popped it into the bag as though he were Santa delivering a sweet into a stocking, then carried it about, smiling while we marvelled at its contents. The school employs a great number of people to fulfil its many requirements.

Way back in January I was employed as an English teacher. When I arrived at the school on Monday morning I was introduced as the Drama teacher. This created some confusion. I will be teaching some English. But I am the new Drama teacher. Which spins me out a little.

Any of you who have followed my blog will know that I was, as a writer, at my most industrious when last I was travelling. I continued to write after I got back to Melbourne, but the spark had gone out of my pen - I had stopped journalling, and the occasions for publishing were separated by greater intervals. It was the desire to rediscover this spark that sat behind my decision to move overseas. I believed that working with motivated students in a foreign land might create the necessary context for reigniting that creative fire. But the subtle difference between being an English teacher and a Drama teacher makes me wonder if it might be a different set of coals that receive the stoking. I haven't written a scrap in my journal yet - and this first blog entry comes five days after my arrival - which might not sound unreasonable, but I had expected to be wilfully blogging by day two at the very latest. Perhaps it is because my arrival has been so carefully planned and catered for - I have yet to find the deep end. Perhaps it will be as simple as taking away a few ingredients, or adding a few. Or maybe a different skill set will need to be cultivated. I have only been here a few days. It has been an extremely busy few days. And it is way too soon to know.

From amid the whirling winds of Bangalore, thank you for reading.

dream

A cocoon left on a table special made new born cots and spinal correction beds. Weightless sinking into fire the corpse left beneath a bridge in late winter. I stand expectant as the military sky thunders all and quaking.

One wing strums and then another. Transparent and web formed glistening wet halogens. Struggling like a larvae

Waking.

Waking found a man not sure were it dreamt of being a butterfly? Were it now a butterfly dreaming of a man?

through the chaos of the night and the honking of the horns

Five weeks from now I will have moved out of my house in Fitzroy. I will have worked my final day with the wild youth of Melbourne's northern district. I will have packed some things, smiled at my sister, kissed my mother's cheek and held my father's arm. I will be boarding a plane for India, for a new job in a new city surrounded by new people. Five weeks from now.

It was nearly a year ago when I made the first preparatory step toward my imminent adventure. I was concerned with other things and dedicated little thought to how my decisions/actions would affect the landscape of my life. If anything, the last twelve months provide testimony to a separation between the lived trajectory and the torments of conscious thought. We make decisions and move toward outcomes and all the while our heads chase chickens up a tree.

I remember a friend saying that she would be sad if my plan was a success. I remember receiving an email and filling out a form. I remember asking my principal for a reference.

The application was not an easy process. It took time, preparation and sustained effort, and not once did I question my decision. This must be what others speak of, when they know that something is right. When they feel that they are on the right track. When everything "just works".

This sensation was... not a sensation. If Freud is right, that the only true feeling is anxiety (all others are simply variations thereof), then this was the one thing that was free of feeling. With dumb determination I just signed another page and transferred the set amount.

My brother, my sister, and many of our friends have stood before themselves and said "I do".

I have said "I doubt".

"I doubt" myself and all things.

This move to Bangalore? Of course I am worried. But there is little thought and little fear and only quiet anticipation. It is a gentle sense that something is about to change. That soon that which has long been still shall once again be moving, quickly... dancing through the chaos of the night and the honking of the horns.