Bangalore / Home sweet home!!

City Market, Bangalore


Flower Market, Bangalore. Scents and colors are so intense that you get dizzy walking around in the market.




Shredding coconut the Indian way


One of the many delicious dinners


u talkin to me??


Kannan & Mythili @ Karanji Park, Mysore


Maharaja's Palace, Mysore




Two nymphs and two demons


Kannan loving on an ox with beautifully decorated horns


A game called Chowka Bhaara (Four Eight), played with seashells as dice


Of course I won :))


Father & Daughter Pretty in Pink

*Pictures are taken by Lakshmi Jayaram (the pretty girl in the pics)


My next stop after Goa was the fastest growing city of the South, Bangalore. As a relatively new city it doesn't have much to offer to tourists but I had been looking very forward to this stop to see my friends Kannan, Mythili and their family. I met the Jayaram family while camping next to each other in Hawaii, and we had the opportunity to see each other many more times when I coincidentally moved to the same state they were living in. Seeing my friends whom I didn't think I would get to see again after both they and I moved back to our home countries permanently, was one of the nice surprises of life. In addition to the joy of seeing my friends the visit was a great opportunity for me to experience the Indian culture and lifestyle in its natural environment without the usual touristy distraction. During the two weeks I spent with them I had unique experiences ranging from family visits (they have a large family, I was constantly meeting cousins, nieces, nephews, uncles and aunts during Kannan's sister's house-warming party) to neighborhood’s social gatherings (every Sunday the neighborhood meets at a facility and organize various events. They were holding a badminton tournament the week I was there. My friend Kannan, who is officially 60 years old but has the soul of a 25 year old, made it to the semifinals), from temple visits (we took a trip to Mysore, which is couple of hours away from Bangalore, for a couple of days with the family. In Mysore, which is a peaceful and pleasant city with its 2000 year old temples, palaces and parks, we visited an ancient temple with the relatives we were staying with at 6:30 in the morning for the morning ceremony. I accompanied them with all the rituals (except for the Sanskrit prayers they were reciting) throughout the ceremony, of which I wouldn't be able to attend as a tourist anywhere else) to their domestic life (food is eaten on the floor by hand (right hand only, left hand is used for dishing up the food to your plate). You drink the water without touching your lips to the glass. Dirty plates after dinner are first rinsed through at a separate sink in the house, then brought into the kitchen sink to be washed. Nothing that touches the mouth goes directly into the kitchen sink since that's where they get the water they present to gods. There's a section in each house decorated with god pictures, figures and offerings where they perform their daily rituals and recite prayers. And the list goes on but impossible to write them all here) from their local games (you can see one such game in the pictures above. Did I mention I won! :)) to home cooking (Mythili was constantly in the kitchen preparing delicious dishes for me to have something different at every meal. My shyness and politeness disappeared after the first couple of days and I started gorging myself with the food. Few pounds I had lost during my journey were soon replaced in their place on my belly. I kept watching Mythili in the kitchen, hoping to learn some recipes but found it impossible to keep track of the endless variety of spices, veggies and grains she mixed in the dishes, so finally I gave up and decided I was better at eating the dishes than cooking them).
Another thing I was focusing on during my visit was learning more about Hinduism. Even though I had an idea about the daily rituals through many temple visits on my journey, I hadn't had much of a chance to learn about the philosophy of the religion. Kannan, being quite knowledgeable about his religion and eagerly learning more, patiently answered my numerous questions and gave me an introduction to the thought system, reasoning and progress of the religion.
Settling in comfortably it was hard leaving my house (as one of the household members I adopted their last name Jayaram in addition to the nickname "Prakash" I had been using in India. As Prakash Jayaram, I started pretending to be an Indian, but soon realized I had a long ways to go when I got busted by the security personnel at one of the museums while trying to sneak in with a cheaper local's entrance ticket instead of the much more expensive foreigner ticket :) ) after two weeks. Unwillingly I got on a train that would take me to Kerala, where I would be spending my last ten in India, and left these beautiful people behind with the hope of seeing them again someday.