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Sunday, April 22, 2007

Escape from Bangalore

Writing from the Frankfurt airport on Sunday morning German time and Sunday night Bangalore time.

I will go back and blog about my last afternoon and evening in Bangalore but I want to describe the truly third-world conditions at the Bangalore departure terminal.

Like most international airports, the departure scene in Bangalore was somewhat of a clusterfuck, with a United Nations of thousands of departing passengers all being forced through the same bottlenecks. Narita in Tokyo is no better, so I have no complaint there. And I had already known that the departure waiting area was bare-bones. Passengers are fortunate to have a coffee stand that stays open, as nearly as I could determine, all night.

No, what was truly bizzare was that when a heavy cloudburst hit the airport, the ceiling started leaking. Streams of water poured down onto the floor and then into some strategically placed buckets, right among the seats where people were exhaustedly waiting. Because flights were delayed due to the weather, all we could do was stand and watch the filthy water filling up the buckets as mosquitoes buzzed us. One of the buckets was nearly full -- it was at least 7 gallons -- before we were allowed to board our flight, about 90 minutes late, so I never got to find out what the staff´s response would be to the overflow.

Someone with a European accent who was watching the leak said to me philosophically, "Well, it rains all over the world."

"Yes," I said, "but usually not inside the airport terminal."

Update: Read this news story on the rain that night and its effects.

Labels: Bangalore infrastructure, Bangalore trip, Bangalore weather

Friday, April 20, 2007

Mango rain

Last night Metblogger Anita arranged a meetup at an impressive top-of-office-tower restaurant on M.G. Road. The restaurant, Ebony, has a terrace outside, and it was nice and cool up there. While my hosts and I waited for Anita and the other metbloggers to show up, several co-workers of my host Charles showed up -- they're all visiting from the Ogle headquarters in California. They took seats at the table to have drinks with us until the metbloggers showed up. Then it began to rain, and while the awning kept the rain off for a while, the rain grew heavier and we moved inside.

Anita IMed Charles saying she was stuck in traffic on account of the rain. And the Ogle people decided to stay put for the same reason. So we started having dinner. I told the Ogle people about my book and its working title, "Dear Prudence." The rain began falling harder and harder, and there were flashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder. Someone said something about the rain and I explained that this wasn't the monsoon but the normal mid-summer rains called the "mango rains."

"Mango Rain," said one of the Ogle people. "That's a better title for your book."

"Hmm," I said dubiously. "It makes it sound kind of like a chick book."

"Well, it's about an American girl, you said, so why not?"

"I like 'Mango Rain' too," said everyone else.

Finally Anita showed up, rather drenched. We had a very nice conversation; I wish it could have been longer, but she had a dinner date elsewhere. So out into the rain she went.

We spent several hours there, leaving at about 11:00 pm. The rain was still falling. Before we left, there was a conversation about dickering with auto drivers. As I've said in previous posts, the auto drivers will sometimes try to overcharge foreigners. So we all agreed 30 rupees* was a fair price for a ride to our neighborhood at this time of night and in this weather.

When we got downstairs it was raining steadily, and there were about 5 autos waiting for fares. The party split up into several groups, as the auto can take only two passengers (especially large Americans, though I've seen more than two Indians in them). I wound up climbing into an auto alone. I told the driver my destination and he said "60 rupees."

"No way," I said, "30." *

"No," he said.

"Okay then," I said, calling his bluff and climbing out. But he wasn't bluffing. So I gave the last auto to the last two Ogle people and just started walking.

I was quickly drenched, but it wasn't uncomfortable. The air was quite warm and the rain wasn't cold. The only real problem was that I'm wearing glasses on this trip and they were covered with water. This is great for my book, I told myself. But after a hundred yards, I flagged down another auto. This time I told the driver my destination and he didn't say anything, nor did he engage the meter. Not sure what I would be expected to pay, I directed him to my corner and got out -- the rain had now slacked off a lot. He still didn't say anything, so I gave him 30 rupees and said thanks and went home.

* Keep in mind what small change we're talking about here. Thirty rupees is like 75 cents.

Labels: Bangalore trip, Bangalore weather

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Field trip to supermarket, Goethe Institut, power failure

We took the car and driver to another area of the city, which I don't quite know the name of but it's out on this long street called C.M.H. Road. The road goes past a "tank" or reservoir and then immediately skirts this low area where there's some serious third-world poverty. Gradually the land rises and as it does so, the affluence of the surroundings grows, until a couple of miles down the road we were once again in a middle-class area. The Goethe Institut was out there, and it had an exhibition by the people behind the Blank Noise Project.

Then we went to a supermarket across the way -- a very modern supermarket, it had every modern product and decor. I noticed some other western people there, so the neighborhood must be fairly cosmopolitan, what with the Goethe place and all.

On the way back a few drops of rain fell. I was very excited by this, because rain and floods figure large in my novel. Unfortunately (from my selfish perspective), the rain barely got the windshield wet.

When we got back to the apartment, the power was out. Debbie had told me it had gone out the day before, too, when I was out on Brigade Road eating pizza. (The power flickered at the pizza place, too, but came on in five seconds. I hadn't even been sure it was a power failure until I went out and saw that every single shop had a generator blasting away outside its door -- making the sidewalk even more hot and polluted than it was, something I wasn't sure was possible.) After the rain shower, it was actually a little cooler outside, so we opened the doors to the balcony and sat near them, reading. That was really pleasant.

In early evening I went out again to the little internet place to blog. After the fairly big breakfast and the fairly big lunch I had no desire to eat dinner so after blogging I just walked around some more, and then I finally realized I was really, really tired, so I went to bed about 8:00 pm. I knew this was, more or less, giving in to jet lag and would mean that I would wake up long before dawn. But I felt too sleepy, and after showering I fell right into bed and slept deeply.

I haven't said anything about the shower here. There's no automatic hot water; you have to turn on a little heater on the wall if you want some. But it's so hot outside and the bathroom itself is not air-conditioned, so I have just been showering with the "cold" water (which is cool but not that cold, definitely not as cold as the cold water in SF).

Labels: Bangalore trip, Bangalore weather

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

The heat

A friend wanted to know how I'm coping with the heat here. Back in SF whenever it gets over 75, people just freak out. No one has air conditioning at home, for good reason, because there are only 5 days a year when it gets hot. As someone who used to live in the Midwest and in Texas, after 20 years in San Francisco I lost my ability to cope with heat, and I freak out just as badly as anyone.

But it hasn't been so bad here, perhaps because I expected it. Take this morning -- I took a long, hot 45 minute walk before breakfast, because the only place I can find that serves breakfast is a big luxe hotel. When I arrived I was hot and sweaty and had also just walked two miles without anything to eat. But no matter how luxe the hotel is, because I'm a white man they don't even look twice. The big luxe hotel was made for sweaty white men like me, and our business colleagues from around the world. So I had another expensive (for here) continental breakfast. And then, because it was so nice in the air conditioning, sat in the lobby for another hour and read.

But as I was saying, the heat is not killing me. St. Louis in the summer is much, much worse.

Labels: Bangalore trip, Bangalore weather

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

It might not be so bad

I've been monitoring the Bangalore Buzzspot news aggregator blog for some time, long before I thought I would be able to actually go to Bangalore. One of the things I've learned is that this is the hottest period of the year. But according to a post today, something they call "Mango" showers might cool things off soon.

Not only would that be a welcome dip in the heat for everyone, especially me -- having lived in San Francisco for almost 30 years after having grown up in the Midwest and in Texas, I have utterly lost my tolerance for hot weather, especially hot humid weather -- but I write about rain a lot in my novel and it would be good to see whether the city's drainage infrastructure really is as completely messed up as the news I've been reading for two years says it is.

Labels: Bangalore trip, Bangalore weather