Ola amigos y amigas!
No wait, wrong language, wrong country. Here in India there are so many languages and so many ways of saying ‘hello’, it’s true that the main benefit the British left India was a common language — one which doesn’t put any particular group or region above any of the others.
Yesterday’s shopping excursion ended up being a fairly low-key one, owing to the fact that both Stephanie and I were still badly jet-lagged and exhausted. I kept apologizing to the shop merchants for asking them to repeat themselves and for being so very confusable myself. We stuck mainly to the Brigade Road / Church Street / MG Road loop, which is right here near the Ballal Hotel, and really didn’t go to very many stores. Visited PC Planet to get a UPS, an all-in-one HP color inkjet printer/copier (to augment the laser printer in transit), and six reams of paper. We also visited some other stores, mainly to look around, but also picked up some snacks and drinks at Nilgiri’s supermarket, and a really good B’lore street map at a bookstore on Church.
Today, we’re heading out in about half an hour with a hired car, to do some more serious shopping on Commercial Street — which technically is within walking distance or even just a short auto-rickshaw ride away — but we want a secure vehicle available so we can make multiple drop-offs of whatever we buy. A lot of it isn’t big, but it’ll add up quickly. For the really big items, we’ll have to see if we can manage as Alx directed us, and get one large shipment all trucked out at once. That is, say to buy the bed and living room furniture at one place, then have the other merchants work with the furniture dealer to send it all out on one truck.
I have to admit, this is the one really tricky part to the whole affair and I’m not totally clear on how one does this. But what the hey, I can ask.
Thinking about what to say… It is a little strange already to find this city familiar and welcoming, after only one prior visit (well, two, if you count the exiting transit). The most indicative moment for me though came with breakfast this morning. Again, we ordered room service, just because we found it more convenient — and got onion utepa (which is called ‘utepam’ at the ashram) and masala dosal (called ‘dosa’ up north). Talk about tastes and flavors speaking to the hindbrain! Just a meal — and yet it was what really said to some deep, subconscious part of me, "Yes, you are really here again."
About coffee though? They have very strange ideas… More on that in a future post.
