 Bangalore is a developed, wealthy city with beautiful people. Yet there is no nightlife. Everything closes at 11:30 and most people are in bed around then. I have gone out with friends and the bars really do close. People sometimes go to house parties, but the energy tends to dissipate and the cops break them up if you play too much music.
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 The only law is ‘don’t oppose Mahinda’. General Sarath Fonseka is being arrested for “revealing military secrets and also plotting the assassination of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.” It’s a bit preposterous that he was plotting a coup with his government security and hypothetical Army deserters. ‘Revealing military secrets’ would imply that his allegations were true, which is another kettle of fish.
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 One of the first people I met in India turned out to be a Sri Lankan. His name was Felix and he was from near Wattala. He fled in 1984 after mobs burned down his house and turned his family into refugees. He’s originally an estate Tamil (not Jaffna), which they tried to explain to rioters, to no avail. I said I was terribly sorry for his loss, and our loss of him and his family. He lives in Chennai now, he was visiting his kids in Bangalore.
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 Off, all the possibilities in the world, it is interesting to run into old friends in Bangalore. Literally, I met a friend from high school and we talked about who got old and who turned out to be gay and people and places I haven’t thought about for over 10 years. I’m wondering whether to go to my reunion now. Meanwhile, I’m crashing with a French/American friend from university.
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 There’s this place called Kenko where little fish give you a pedicure. They literally crowd around and nibble off the dirt and dry skin. When you first dip in there it feels really weird like, well, fish are nibbling your feet. Then it feels kinda cool. I coulda put my head in there, but another friend couldn’t stay still or stop giggling for ten minutes. It’s a hundred rupees, in Bangalore.
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indi.ca |
 The difficulty, you see, is that there are many ways in and few ways out. There’s vegetable biriyani, dhose with vade, vade with vade, puffy pastries, folded pastries, crisps, almond milk, chai, coffee, whatever. No meat but plenty to eat. Indeed, it is possible to be consuming something almost every sitting moment, and the food is not bad.
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There is an overwhelming feeling that things must be better, could be different. But that place is rarely here, always there, this made all the more deceptive because it is truly, in a Buddhist sense, here. But, in the ass-backwardness of life, the grass is always greener or so forth, though it is not a lawn that one desires, rather another shot at the cosmic iPod shuffle. There must be a better song on.
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 I’m in Chennai, which feels like Pettah, but somehow everything feels like Pettah. It’s a big town, big highways, big buildings, imposing offices. Walking around, it also smells a bit like pee. Around the train station at least. I really regret wearing shoes, and packing my things in a handbag. Now I’m walking around this strange town with duty free bags, wearing white trainers. And nobody speaks English.
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 I had to go to the loo and I found The Art Of Travel by Alain De Botton, it has worked out quite serendipitously. The first chapter is called ‘On Anticipation’. He quotes an old Dutchman saying ‘I must have been suffering from some mental aberration to have rejected the visions of my obedient imagination and to have believed like any old ninny that it was necessary, interesting and useful to travel abroad.’ So he unpacked his bags and stayed home.
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 I’ve been planning to go to India for months but decided to wait for the election. Now that’s over so I finally booked a flight. I’ve got the travel bug quite bad recently and I’ve been all over Sri Lanka. I love it here and there’s more to explore, but I’m also very curious as to what’s going on in our neighbor to the north. I also really want to watch Avatar in full IMAX 3D, and India has the closest such theatres. I think the best place will be Hyderabad. I may just spend a few days watching movies. Besides that, I just want to take a few photos and maybe follow the Ramayana trail for a while.
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