This Chapter is called Immersion

Living in Bangalore you can largely avoid most of the rich culture of India without much trying. Unlike Delhi or Mumbai, Bangalore doesn’t have nearly as many historical buildings or monuments to explore. Outside of being a major IT hub, it has largely become known for its club/restaurant scene. There are certain things you can’t avoid which you may want to like traffic, pollution, honking, etc…but that’s a whole different story. Outside of traveling to the office I could largely live my life here like a Westerner. As I’ve mentioned before, I live in a serviced apartment in the center city with mostly expats. In the mall attached are lots of shops that I could never afford, but there are also a number of bars/restaurants serving foreign cuisine – Italian, French, Mexican, Asian, Mediterranean and Subway. On weekends, I could potentially not leave UB City at all (which some weekends I do). But over the last 6 weeks I have made an effort to become a bit more “immersed”. Since mid-March, I have visited 3 states, 5 cities/towns within India, celebrated 2 festivals, gotten involved in campus recruiting at the universities, joined a group that plays football (soccer),  attended 2 cricket matches, eaten many Indian meals and learned the art of negotiating with rickshaw drivers.

Sri Lanka vs. West Indies Cricket Match in Bangalore

Travel – In the last post which my dad and brother wrote they discussed much of the travel we did to Delhi, Agra and Mysore so I won’t repeat that. But since then I traveled back to Mysore and Coorg. Coorg is an area about 240km or 5 hours from Bangalore situated in the Western Ghats. It’s known as the “Scotland of India” with rolling hills and lots of greenery. We had a 3 day weekend in early April so a friend from Bangalore asked if I wanted to take a trip and I jumped at the opportunity. We were going to leave Friday afternoon and stay in Mysore Friday night before we continued onto Coorg Saturday morning. We arrived in Mysore a bit before 9pm and went for drinks and dinner at a nearby spot my friend used to frequent during his school days. This unfortunately turned out to be the downfall of the weekend – I got food poisoning from the chicken I ate that night which knocked me out for the rest of the week and left me in bed for majority of the weekend. Saturday morning we got on the road to head up to Northern Coorg where we were going to an elephant camp (this was before the food poisoning kicked in). It took us about 4 hours including a stop for lunch to get to the elephant camp. To reach the camp, we had to cross a river going over rocks mostly. While crossing the river I caught the lip of a rock and went down in the water so my jeans were soaked but we made it over to the other side and got to see a number of the elephants getting baths in the river which was really cool. From there we went back across the river and got back in the car to drive through Coorg to the south. In addition to the rolling hills, Coorg is known for it’s coffee, there are plantations everywhere. I had been warned before I left that it’s not the best time to travel to Coorg because of how dry it has been. Since I arrived in December it has only rained 3 times and for the last month the average temperature has been over 95 degrees! But I didn’t realize just how dry it would be, unfortunately everything was brown and most of the coffee plants weren’t in bloom so we didn’t get much of the coffee aroma. We stayed at home stay in the Western Ghats which was absolutely beautiful. We were really out in the middle of nowhere without any phone service. I had hoped to go for a hike, but they said there were too many elephants around to wander far from the house. I was really looking forward to the food, I had heard that the pork/non-veg meals were fantastic. But by the time dinner rolled around I wasn’t exactly up to eating. After 16 hours in bed, we got back on the road to Bangalore. On the way home we crossed through the Nagarhole National Park where we saw elephants, monkeys, deer and birds but unfortunately we didn’t see any tigers. We did learn there had been a tiger sighting just about 30 minutes before we arrived. In all, it was an ok trip but certainly don’t wish food poisoning on anyone.

Elephant Camp in Coorg

Home Stay in Coorg

Festivals – Over the last month I’ve had the opportunity to celebrate both Holi and Ugadi. Holi is a festival of colours and sharing love which signifies the beginning of Spring. It is meant to be a celebration of the victory of good over evil. This year Holi fell on Thursday March 24, which happened to be the day my brother and dad were arriving in Delhi. This worked out great because Holi is celebrated much more in Northern India than Southern. I spoke to some coworkers and was supposed to go to their apartment complex to take part in playing Holi by throwing colored powder on people. I arrived in Delhi early Thursday morning and took a quick nap before I planned to go to their place. But I woke up late and realized it was going to be difficult to get a cab because people don’t want their cars on the road getting messed up with colors. As it turned out there was an event going on at the hotel I was staying at so I decided to take part in that instead. Was lots of fun running around and having color wars but took a few days to get all the colors off. The second festival I celebrated was Ugadi which is New Year for those of the Telugu and Kannada regions in India. Bangalore is in the state of Karnataka which is part of the Kannada region. I had been talking about wanting to celebrate Ugadi with my driver so he invited me over for lunch.  I had no idea what going to my driver’s house would entail but I figured why not go for it. All week my driver said his son couldn’t stop talking about meeting me, but when I arrived he was SO shy for the first hour, he eventually did warm up. In addition my driver’s wife was there along with their nephew (who unfortunately doesn’t speak any English – this is when I decided I really need to learn some Kannada). They live on the top floor of a 4 floor walk up in a very small 1 bedroom apartment but it was a very cute place and they had been preparing all week for my arrival. When I arrived I participated in puja which is the act of worship to a number of the Hindu gods and then hung around having some small talk while they finished cooking. For lunch we all sat on the floor and ate off banana leaves. They all ate with their hands but I wasn’t sure I was ready for that so I used utensils (still need some work on the immersion). On Ugadi, only vegetarian food is eaten so we had mango rice, another type of rice in sauce, cucumber, rice cakes, banana mixed with fried dough and some fruits/sweets. After lunch I hung around for a bit longer while my driver and son played cricket and then went back to the apartment. Turned out to be a very nice day.

Aftermath of Holi in Delhi

Work Events – I have started getting more involved with work events also. The AIG operation is still fairly young in India and we are still growing. As part of this, we have been doing some branding/recruiting at a number of the top universities around Bangalore. I have been privileged enough to be involved in campus recruiting to give a bit of background on my journey through AIG and perspective as an outsider. It has been a cool opportunity to see some of the universities and meet some great young talent. I also have started playing football with some guys from the office. About a month back an email came out about a corporate tournament that we were putting in a team for. I reached out to see if it was coed but was informed there were separate men’s and women’s tournaments. I tried to rally a women’s team to play but wasn’t able to get enough interest. A few of the guys approached me and asked if I wanted to join their weekly practices. You could tell they were all a bit nervous whether or not I could actually play, but they gave me the details for practice this week anyway. I showed up Friday morning and I think within the first 5 minutes I had shut them all up. One of the guys texted me afterward and said that’s the best soccer they had played since they started practicing together. It was a lot of fun to be back out on the pitch after not playing for 9 months. Going to try to join them tomorrow but 6am on Sunday might just be a bit too early for me.

Campus Recruiting in Bangalore