Bangalore – Page 3

IISc nature

The IISc campus is one big botanical garden.

There are dozens of trees blooming on campus! I added a IISc nature photo album, featuring recent pictures.

David smells the flowers on the IISc campus in Bangalore.

I’ve been a fan of mangos for years, but the ones we get in NH are nothing like the fresh mangos we get here! Mango season has arrived, and they are sogood. So ripe, so sweet, so tasty. We eat several kilograms a week, and have tried several different varieties. At first, the kids turned up their nose, but one day Mara decided that she’d have a little taste. Next thing you know, she devoured two and a half mangos. John and Andy dug into some too – things got a little messy!

Mara discovers the wonders of fresh mangoes.

This post was transferred from MobileMe to WordPress in 2020, with an effort to retain the content as close to the original as possible; I recognize that some comments may now seem dated or some links may now be broken.

Happy Holi!

IISc celebrates Holi.

Today is the main day of Holi, a Hindu festival of spring. Immensely popular in the north, but little known here in the south, it involves throwing a lot of colored powder and colored water at other people, and generally having a great time. Here at IISc, there are grad students from all over India, and they put on a series of Holi events… a sandpainting competition, a wild color/water/music bash, and a bonfire. Read on!

Holi kids!

The kids play Holi.

Andy and Mara got into the spirit of Holi, dashing each other with colored powder and water. Holi is not a local custom – it is more common in the north – so none of the other neighborhood kids were playing Holi. Their friends had fun watching, though!

IISc Founder’s Day

Celebration of IISc centennial.

The Indian Institute of Science (IISc), my host (and our home) during this sabbatical, was founded in 1909 by J. N. Tata. Every year, on the occasion of his birthday, the Institute celebrates “Founder’s Day”. This year, the 100th anniversary of IISc, is of particular importance. We went to watch an early-morning ceremony at the main campus building, its courtyard decorated with several thousand flowering potted plants. Tata’s statue had earlier been decorated with a flower garland, and we arrived just in time to see various department heads delivering floral wreaths to the foot of the statue. Read on.

Morning sounds

The many sounds of morning at IISc.

Every morning we awake (all too early) to the sounds of tropical birds. Hundreds of birds, in dozens of varieties, each singing to the sunrise. At about 5am, the songs are dominated by a mixture of calls to prayer from several local mosques. By 6am, more birds awake and they dominate the scene for another two hours. Today I set out to record the birds from about 6:15-7:15am, the prime time, and I’m really pleased by the results. If you listen carefully, you can hear a faint din of distant traffic.

A short excerpt (three and a half minutes).

Another excerpt (5 minutes).

The whole hour: you’ll hear the occasional passing scooter, a distant train, and even the flip-flop sandals of the newspaper man as he delivers the Sunday paper.

a Black Kite, which you can hear occasionally as a nasty screeching call

Mysore and Christmas

A night in Mysore before a quiet family Christmas at home.

We spent a night in Mysore [location], before heading back to Bangalore on Christmas Eve. We had been to Mysore back in October, but wanted to visit again so my parents could see the palace and other sights. The palace is truly amazing, indeed, if they would only let me take photos inside I could share with you the carved ceilings, elaborate woodwork, and huge marble palace rooms.

The Dudley team (past, present, and future), at the Mysore Palace. Grandpa Jack, David, John, Andy.

We also visited the Mysore silk factory, which was fascinating, and deafening! Vast rooms full of electric looms, clattering away, spinning and and then weaving gorgeous bolts of pure silk, or silk woven together with gold. It hurt the ears, and yet most of the workers had little ear protection. Again, no photographs allowed, so here is Pam shopping for silk at a nearby shop.

We visited a gift shop, because this region is well-known for its inlaid wood furniture. We spent many hours there, watching the woodworkers, choosing some pieces to send home, and examining the beautiful silk. As a gimmick, on our arrival the shopkeeper had one of the woodworkers instantly and freehand sawed a delicate carved initial for each of our kids. We bought a beautiful table made of inlaid wood:

we bought this inlaid-wood table at a Mysore furniture workshop.

Christmas Day was quiet, spent in our apartment at home. The kids were thrilled to receive an iPod nano each. Amazing how Santa read their minds! Now, if we could just get them to put the dang things down and look outside the window….

See photos.

More IISc wildlife

I finally got some good pictures of the black Kites.

I’m not sure whether the RSS feed highlights new photo albums, so here’s a quick entry to point out that I’ve added another small collection of IISc photos. Plenty of flowers, and I finally got some good pictures of the black Kites. [location]

Why I love living on campus

We live in faculty apartments on the campus of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), in Bangalore.

When we visited Bangalore last August, the prime mission for our visit was to find a place to live. Many expats live in some of the snazzy new apartment complexes or walled-in gated communities of villas. We live on campus at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), and are so glad we had that option and made that choice. [location]

Forest path in the center of IISc campus.

it’s like living in a park, with trees and wildlife everywhere
there is lots of wildlife (check out my photos, or this amazing Flickr album, by a grad student)
I walk to work (2 blocks!), skipping the numbing traffic of Bangalore most days
it’s quiet – because there’s no traffic and there are lots of trees
the air is cleaner – because there’s no traffic and there are lots of trees
it’s safer – because it’s a gated community with guards at all the gates
the power, telephone, and water are reliable, unlike other parts of the city (which suffers through 4hr power outages most days)
there are many on-campus services, including a restaurant and little independent shops: tailors, hairdressors, drycleaner, travel agents, copiers, bookstore, bike repair, vegetables, milk, bread, sundries
we have access to facilities like the gym and pool
my kids’ schoolbus stops at the gate on the edge of campus
my kids can safely play and bike in the streets
there are lots of kids in the neighborhood, and they all speak English; my kids have friends
they have free kids movies on some nights
the neighbors are all professors, and friendly.

It’s not perfect, to be sure – there is a surprising amount of trash around, and a clear lack of maintenance. But this is so much nicer, on the whole.

This woman had a fascinating face and a stunning sari. I should have asked her to stop.

Monkey bars – the sequel

Always bring a camera when doing laundry.

OK, sometimes it just happens. You write a blog entry one day, about the monkeys, and the very next day a dozen monkeys come by while you’re hanging laundry. They are actually Bonnet Macaques and are common in this part of India. I used photos from our visit to Mysore, but I described anecdotes about them breaking into apartments here at IISc. Today, I happened to be on the roof hanging laundry, and a band of monkeys strolled across the roof. My new personal rule– never hang laundry without your camera at hand – paid off handsomely.

A Bonnet Macaques seeking food on the rooftop of our apartment building at IISc.

This group, with at least a dozen monkeys, traveled through the trees and landed first on my neighbors’ roof. They strolled across the connecting stairwell, around my laundry, and down into the narrow courtyard that separates us from another neighbor. In that courtyard, they scrambled across the clotheslines (and clothes), explored the windows in hopes of finding one open, and entered a foyer in hopes of finding a door open. In the foyer they found what appeared to be apple peels wrapped in newspaper. These they nibbled as they climbed back up and headed on their way across the next roof.

I took over 200 photos, but selected a few good ones.

Tag: Bangalore