Seen on the Street

This little girl is standing near a public tap, waiting to fill the jugs with water. I presume she is just holding the jugs and another family member will fill them since she is too small to carry them when they are full. This sturdy, plastic jug design can be seen all over India for carrying water from whatever source is available to a family's home. I don't know what fraction of Bangalore's citizens have water piped to their homes. In the high end apartment complex where we live there is always water available at the tap. It is not really safe to drink so we have a purifying unit which uses a combination of filters and ultraviolet light kill any harmful organisms in the water. During a drought last fall the city was not able to supply water to the apartment complex and the management arranged to buy, trucked in water. We were all asked to wash cars only on alternate days and minimize watering of plants.

Meanwhile many of Bangalore's resident depend on public taps and plastic jugs. These boys are transporting water home on their bicycle. When I saw them going the opposite direction the boy in the plaid shirt was leaning forward and peddling while the other boy sat on the seat. The jugs were hanging off the seat behind them. In areas where homes do not have piped water public taps are placed along main roads every few hundred meters so people don't have too far to go for water.
This picture was taken on a fairly busy street near the Cantonment Railway station. In previous blogs I have shown workman building iron bars for windows and repairing bicycles on the sidewalk. This entrepreneur is one step further into public space using the side of the street.
This picture is pretty hard to see, I took it from a moving "auto". Auto is Indian slang for one of these three wheeled autorickshaws. If you closely you will see that two autos are connected by a foot in a white tennis shoe. The driver of the one in the rear is actually pushing the one in the front which apparently has some kind of mechanical problem. I have actually seen auto rickshaws being pushed like this several times before but was never quick enough with my camera phone before. These are actually quite light and you often see a driver pushing it into or out of a parking place. If he has to backup, the driver also pushes it since autos not have a reverse gear. Backing up is rarely needed since the front wheel can be turned until it is perpendicular to the body, giving the vehicle a turning radius less than its length.

I took this picture because it is almost unheard of in Bangalore for anyone other than the driver of a "two wheeler" to wear a helmet. It is a legal requirement to wear a helmet if you are driving a motorcycle or motor scooter. If you click on the picture to get a larger version you can see that there are actually parts of 5 two wheelers in the picture. The one in the center, carrying about I assume is a father taking his son to school is the anomaly because both are wearing a helmet. On the left two men are riding without wearing helmets although there is a helmet on the handle bars which the driver can put on if required. In front of the father/son pair are two motorcycles each with a single rider. One is and one is not wearing a helmet. Finally, following the bus on the crossing street is a scooter with man driving (wearing a helmet) and women riding behind him without a helmet. Although it's hard to tell from the picture, the woman is wearing a sari and sitting side saddle.

The two boys stopped to talk to me because they saw me standing by my bicycle and looking at the map; trying to figure out where I was. I snapped their picture as we were both riding away from that spot.

Signs in Bangalore

McDonald's version of the Big Mac for a country doesn't eat beef.

Sleeping in Bangalore

Sleeping in Bangalore

Mango time

Now is the wonderful mango season. We are not the only creatures that love these heavenly fruits. But just as in the U.S. we fight squirrels and raccoons to get the cobs of corn just as they ripen, but they pick them the night before, we also compete with the squirrels here (tree-living chipmunks with 3 light stripes instead of 2, who sound like squeaky tricycle wheels) and the ring-necked parrots. (Technically parakeets.) But they seldom wait for them to turn yellow, just like the critters back home.

The ledge you see in these pictures is the edge of the balcony railing outside our living room. Now that the air conditioner has been moved off the balcony, maybe I can get me some of those mangoes! (I wonder if I threw some pidgeon netting over a branch or two--) But then, I would much rather attract the parrots!

I think the grounds crew hate this time of year, as the sidewalk under the tree is constantly scattered with bits of partially eaten mangoes.

Green States and Orange States

Not a great photo which I snapped with my phone. The sign in the Food Bazaar store on the top floor of Bangalore Central mall says

Wine Palace
Counter Closed
from
16-5-09 To 17-5-09, 6pm
Due to Election Counting

Actually the counting was over and the event of 16 May was the announcement of the results. All wine and liquor stores were also closed from 3 days before the elections through the voting day. Eliminating liquor sales at the time of voting is primarily to reduce the number of votes that are "purchased" with liquor. On the day the results are announced, I presume it is to reduce wild celebrations by the winners and rioting by the losers. The national elections here are held on staggered dates across the country to make security and logistics more manageable. Because the government did not believe they could provide security for both, the Indian Cricket League is holding it's tournament in South Africa. Voting in Karnataka was over a month ago. But by law no results and no exit polls are released until yesterday, when the election commission official announced results at noon.

This year at a national level the winners were green, but here in Karnataka it was a good year for orange. Just as in the U.S., red has become the color for the Republican party and blue the color of the Democratic party, here in India green is the color for the India National Congress party (Cong) and orange the color for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). BJP translates to Indian Peoples party and is viewed as a Hindu party. India has a multiparty parliamentary system in which people across the country elect representatives to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament. The party with the most members will now try to find enough partners in that house to form a government.

This morning's Times of India lists 29 parties that have at least one of the 545 seats in the Lok Sabha after this election, plus 8 independents. Effectively the race was between two alliances of parties: the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) lead by Cong, and NDA (National Democratic Alliance) lead by the PJP. Another alliance, the Third Front, was hoping to be in a position to play king maker. Since the UPA, which is currently in power, won with nearly enough seats for a majority, they expect little trouble picking up enough partners to stay in power.

Road Trip

Last weekend Donna and I took a road trip with Jaya, our housekeeper, Ram, her husband and Joseph our driver. This was a birthday present for Jaya. We visited several interesting tourist sites, which I hope to find time to write about later. For today I want to share some interesting sights along the way. In several places we saw men and oxen or cattle plowing fields. You can't see it in these pictures but there is a steel plowshare or blade, down below the ground.



I included the second picture to illustrate several things. First, the man has to work quite hard to hold the plowshare down where it will break the soil. Otherwise, it rises up and just drags over the ground, not doing any work. Also, notice that the man is barefoot. The plow consists of the steel plowshare and the steel handle rising up high enough that the man can lean on as he walks behind. This mounts on the wooden shaft and is held in place with rope and wire going all the way up to the cross piece which goes across the draft animals shoulders.
The hotel were we stayed over night is in the town of Hassan. We had lunch and dinner there. We reached the dining room by taking the lift down to the ground floor, then walking up to the dining room. We did not realize that we could hit the 5 button in the lift and get out on the floor between ground and 1st where the dining room is located. In most tall buildings in India ground floor is called "0" and next floor is "1". I'm not sure if they actually consider floor with the dining room fifth floor or if they didn't have an appropriate button.

This very substantial looking road sign is built of bricks, covered with cement and painted. We saw this same message repeatedly along the road which was a two lane national highway (NH-48) and in quite good shape. The highway carries vehicles with a range for cruising speeds. In order of increasing speed, these include: ox drawn carts carrying farm produce, tractor drawn carts carrying construction materials, motor-scooters carrying families of 5, three wheeled trucks, government buses, private autos and high end motorcycles carrying young men with neither helmets nor any fear of death. If your vehicle is toward the high end of this range you spend a lot of time trying to pass the low end and the signs are to remind you that there is convention of driving in the left lane...A concept which is slowly catching on in India.

Sunday morning we stopped at this village market and purchased some vegetables. Compared to an American supermarket fresh fruits and vegetables are very cheap in Bangalore. But outside the city in local markets they are half that price or even less. For example Jaya paid five rupees (about $0.10) for the kilogram of squash in this picture.
In the US, when you buy purchase by the pound they put a sticker on it which gives the exact weight and a price calculated to the nearest penny. I know a couple of supermarkets in Bangalore that do that, but most give you more than kilo for the stated price per kilo. And aren't happy if you want them to sell a certain number of items that don't come to an easy number to calculate. Here you see a simple hanging balance with a 1 kilo weight in one pan and more than a kilo of squash in the other.
At the corner market near my apartment the boy who sells produce will sometimes take a large piece of fruit off the scale and substitute a smaller one to make the weight is closer to one kilo (but of course still somewhat more). At this market I didn't see anyone do that. Whatever was on the scale when it tipped was delivered to the customer. In the case of Jaya's squash, after dumping all of these squash into a plastic bag the woman threw in a couple more just for good customer relations.

Jaya pointed out that when we were standing next to her one vendor quoted her a price they cost twice as much as she eventually at a different vendor. As she said this the first vender was nearby, and he just smiled at us. Of course, I don't know if he understood English.

I included this picture of a private home to show you how they are used for advertising. I don't know what kind of financial arrangement the home owner has with the advertiser, but it must be worthwhile to both, because it is very common to see the sides of a house and some times even the front used as a billboard. Often you'll see several houses in a row all advertising the same company. In addition to building materials, I remember "billboards" for cell phone companies and insurance companies. And there were many ads which were entirely in Kannada as in the last picture of this posting.
But that is not why this picture is here. To understand this picture you have to know that in India there is a celebration call "Holi". (see our posting from 22 March 08) This holiday is observed by spraying, throwing or smearing colored water or powder on pretty much anyone within range.

Donna's turn:
The day before I'd seen some goats standing by a roadside shop that were bright pink. "Pink goats? Why are the goats pink? Oh, Holi was a while ago. They've been Holi'd.----Wait,Wait! This is way too good to pass up."

But by the time I processed this all, we'd driven on a ways, and Joseph, our driver (yes, it's confusing) didn't want to turn around and go back. He said, "We'll be coming back this way tomorrow. We can stop then."
Since he had just said that we should let him know if we wanted to stop anywhere, and he'd stop, and I doubted the pink goats would be there the next day, I was a bit annoyed. But since there were other people in the car, I decided not to hold everybody up just to get a picture.

The next day, when he realized I'd wanted to get a picture of the pink goats we'd passed, he was very apologetic. So we were driving very slowly, looking for pink goats, when we discovered the farmer's market.

Well, I think someone above thought it was funny too, because when I got out to go check out the market with Jaya and Joseph, I spied a pink goat an a nearby house! Not nearly as pink as the ones the day before, but it was pink. I was just about to take a picture, when a man came to lead the goat away. "Can I just take a picture first?" I asked. Just then another man and three boys walked by, and I asked him if they would be in the picture too. So I got the image I'd seen the day before. Here you see: The father, the sons, and the Holi'd goat."

Birthday !

Donna is an artist. When she decorates a cake it is a work of art. The base frosting is carefully worked to a smooth surface. The writing is calligraphic and surrounded by tastefully arranged, exquisitely formed flowers and other decorative elements. It is almost too beautiful to eat.
Joe is an engineer. When he decorates a cake it is good to eat. (He spells like an engineer too.)
Based on this information, perhaps you can surmise whose birthday we are celebrating.