Deep in the Jungle...

... a rare flower

cocoons hanging from the trees

a lost city

precious artefacts

... the end of the party

The Day After the Night Before

The party’s over
It’s time to call it a day

 

They’ve burst your pretty balloon
And taken the moon away

Now you must wake up, all dreams must end
Take off your makeup, the party’s over

______________________

(at Taj West End, Bangalore)
(lyrics from The Party's Over, By Betty Comden and Adolph Green)

More Things From (a hotel in) Bangalore

Upstairs

 Flowers

 Upstairs2

More flowers

Things Seen in (a Hotel in) Bangalore

A butler in the club bar

Sunlight picked out these leaves and made them burn with green flame - in the small back garden of the suite

Tablescape

Raat ki raani (night queen) - though it was bright morning when its flowers shed their fragrance on me.

West End Window

I love windows. I love old, untended buildings. I loved this window and this building, and painted them from a photograph which I took last year in Bangalore. While I painted I listened to songs by Kabir. Everything came together in my mind, though of course, the painting is full of flaws. It was a good learning experience. Ramesh Gandhi gave me valuable colour advice when I needed it. So there it is.

At the Bar

So we're vacationing in Bangalore, and we're in the bar, and sitting at another table is Feroze Khan, who was a filmstar once, and who is a producer, and whose son is acting in films. He was drinking with someone who seemed to be a pal of his. A little blonde girl, the child of one of the foreigners who are staying at the hotel, and who looked to me to be about nine years old, all dressed up in churidar-kameez, with a dupatta and everything, and probably feeling very grown up, went over to his table. My first thought was, Where are her parents? Then I looked again, nosy/curious, and saw that she had draped a loop of string around the pal’s hands, and was showing him how to play cat's cradle. She was very intent on the loops and twists, and when she was done both men applauded. I looked again a few minutes later, and she was sitting in the chair next to FK's, and he was showing her what looked like sleight of hand, a magic trick. He looks dramatic, a shaved head covered with a long scarf. He was doing magician-like hand movements with flourishes, and she was trying to copy him, and the light was shining down on both of them, and it looked charming. Then it was over, and she ran back to a stool at the bar, where her father or someone was waiting for her.

What We Did on Our Vacation

We went to Bangalore, where the weather is much cooler than it is here, and stayed at the Taj West End hotel. The hotel is beautiful, full of huge trees and plants and birds. I did some sketching and painting in my artless way, the first time I’ve tried it outdoors. Here are a few pictures and random notes:

The hotel has old and new buildings. I love the old, with their red tiled roofs and carpenter's gingerbread trim. This is the original main building of the old hotel

Dec. 24: Muzak in the dining room: I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. Since the only other foreigners were British and Australian, it appears that the sole target of this song was my wincing self.

On the verandah of the old building

Dec. 26: Spent much of the day looking at disaster news on TV, and anxiously phoning friends in Chennai.

A snatch of conversation at dinner, referring to a prominent local politician: “My friend, who’s a famous shikari (hunter), says that Dharam Singh is bison gone wrong.” (I love that! So Teddy Roosevelt! Now, how to use it in conversation… )

Another old building, containing offices

The view from our verandah (that green isn't right at all! It's more like parrot green. But that's okay, I'm telling myself, because the trees are full of parrots, whose throaty warble is an essential part of this place for me.)

The tree that is seen to the right of the picture above -- a tremendous gul mohur, whose canopy rises far above the part that I have drawn. That person is not intended to be me, but to indicate scale. Everything that I draw leans to the left.

Jan. 3: A friend asked me how I had first reacted, on arriving in India, to the sight of people relieving themselves in public. He was about to conduct some foreign businessmen to several Indian cities, and wondered how he could shield them from this. I said that one adjusts to things. He said, “I went to a fair once in America. You know how they have these portable toilets? I had to use one, but when I opened the door – oof, the stench was terrible! I couldn’t bear it! At least here you can go in the open.”

A bit of the living room of the suite where we stayed, and the window onto the front verandah

One of the lamps that light the pathways. Palms and elephant-ears (which look like that because I have trouble getting the colours to be dark, so I kept putting new washes on top of old, and it got messy... but I forgive myself).

Ghosts in Bangalore

I just came back from two weeks in Bangalore's balmy weather. It was 108 degrees in Chennai on the day we left, and went up to 114(the highest temperature in Chennai in 90 years); Bangalore was in the mid-eighties. The gul mohurs were in brilliant bloom everywhere.

I don't know the city well, but I found two things that weren't there. One was this gate, on St. Marks Road, near K. C. Das. It's nothing much, but I like sunbursts. I knew when I saw it last year that it wouldn't be there when I came again:

The other ghost was older. I once spent a night in a hotel called Barton Court. Now it's been torn down and a huge building, meant to impose on its neighbours, has come up in its place. The older hotel was full of signs. On the gate:

No admission without permission.

At the desk:

God Loves You.

In the elevator:

Ride this lift at your own risk and responsibility.

Outside the room door:

Please close the door gently and oblige.

Two inside the door:

Parking instructions -- Parking is permitted on M.G. Road. It is unavoidable that vehicles are parked strictly there. We just do not have any parking space to offer. Our driveway is for driving and not for parking. Inconvenience is regretted. Please cooperate and oblige.

And below this:

Please leave nothing to chance -- carry your valuables always with you. Do not leave them anytime behind in the room. We accept no responsibility. Thank you.

Under the glass on the three tables in the room were three more notices. I wish I had paid more attention to them, but I was in a hurry. Who knows how their careful warnings and sound advice might have affected my life.

---

I got a Google referral for 'Tamil word for i hate you.' I realised that I don't know it. I can say, 'I love you,' but it sounds so silly and overblown, I doubt that anyone says it outside of the movies. Or if they do, it's exactly because movies have taught them to. In fact, it seems to me - on the basis of limited experience -- that when people in Tamil (or Hindi) movies talk about love, they usually switch over to the English word - otherwise it just doesn't sound right.

I can say 'I hate you' in Hindi. The word nafrat, hatred, is very satisfying, if you spit it out and bite down on the final 't.' I tried it out after seeing the referral. So I'm ready.