Kaleidoscope.

One of the pleasures of taking photos in India is the vivacity of color in this country.

Incognito.

I scorned my brother when he got one... but I have now become an iPhone camera convert. The brilliance of phone cameras is that you can take photos like these, standing only feet away from your subject... completely incognito. I love it.

Traffic rules. (aka... The Answer to Last Month's Pop Quiz)

(so, i have figured out that despite good intentions, reserving one hour every evening to blog just doesn't work. there is something debilitating about Bangalore heat that sucks all the energy out of me and by the time i get to the computer, i invariably pass out. so i apologize friends. i know i have been incredibly neglectful of all of you. i need to write you folks about a million personal emails... and i shall because i have a new, improved strategy. today was my first day trying it out... and it has actually worked. i write my ramblings on a piece of paper in my downtime between screening children at the eye hospital and then simply transcribe everything when i get home. not a moment wasted. it's brilliant. so here is the first child of my morning's labour...)

Urban planning is to Indians what sleep is to Stephane: an afterthought. Both seem to live quite well without it. Indians have a singular capacity to thrive in constant chaos--one in which one must be alert at all times because anything could happen... and I mean anything. You must, for example, be ready to find yourself inexplicably on the right side of the road as you race onto a flyover, despite having convinced yourself for decades that the left was as nature intended it (or was that the Brits?). If you were a German, you might panic (with the one remarkable exception of Norbert, of course), but as an Indian you know that everything is still under control. You must be equally quick to discern the oncoming traffic headed straight for you and the gloved hand of a policeman discretely shooing vehicles back to the left side of the road mid-flyover before catastrophe strikes. This is, of course, only if you happen to be on the flyover mid-day. That's a piece of cake. Ah, now, in the middle of the night... that is not for the amateur Bangalorean, no. No oncoming traffic. No waving hand. Just you and the road... unless you happen to miss the moment when you are to magically know that you must switch from right to left, in which case, it is more likely to be you, the road, and a pair of quickly-approaching oncoming headlights.

Admittedly, Indians were not so clever as to intentionally design such a remarkable flyover. It was, rather, the orphan child of an ever-evolving traffic experiment, where push came to shove and some clever public servant had the bright idea of changing the direction of the streets. You see, unlike the Germans and Danes, obsessed with spoonfeeding their populations with rules and regulations, the Indian government believes in its people. It believes that its citizens are an intelligent, enterprising sort fully capable of dealing with such minor traffic deviations. And so right they were.

If you haven't figured it out already... the photo of the road is actually taken on top of this one-of-a-kind flyover. And what's wrong with it? We are on the right side of the road, of course.

Rally-racing the indian way.

One of the things I love about India are its animals. Fuck zoos, farms and dog parks. Here, they have fought long and hard for equal rights among their mammalian peers. Mumbai has been largely sanitized of its bovine bounty, but fortunately, in Bengaluru, cows are still an active part of public life... especially on the roads. Cars may disregard pedestrians, but it's the cows that disregard the cars. I saw these two behemoths stationed outside my street last night, all but entirely blocking traffic. Like silent sentinels they stood as frustrated motorists honked and threatened in vain. Ultimately, it was the cows that won. Ah, there is nothing quite as satisfying for a frustrated pedestrian than to watch dejected motorists shuttle their way about the road to avoid the spotted beasts. Who needs rally racing when you have urban slalom? Cows 1. Cars 0.

Pop Quiz.

What's wrong with this photograph?

Lost in translation.

It's hard to know where to start, so it might as well be the beginning. Let's turn to page 23, step 50... and practice "self-introduction" in Kannada. It's painfully mundane to learn how to introduce oneself in most languages. In Kannada, it's just painfully hilarious....

(clearing my throat)
My name is Alefia Merchant.
I am an Indian and I live in Bangalore.
I have just completed 31 years.
I am a.....VIRGIN?!

While undoubtedly an enormous asset to the marriage-prone and commitment-inclined in this end of the Indian peninsula, is it necessarily the fourth detail one must divulge, I thought? According to Learn Kannada in 30 Days, the answer is a resounding YES. We don't have time to waste. After all, we've only got ourselves 30 days. Virgin today, married tomorrow.

This caused some serious initial eyebrow raising until... I realized it was nothing but a fortuitous mistranslation; unfortunately, yes, the reality is much less entertaining. 'Girl' in Kannada is 'kanya' which also means 'virgin'. I guess, once upon a time, they likely were. Now, we have condoms and women's lib.