Paris CDG airport is neatly organized into terminals, wings, and check in counters, all numbered. In theory, the departure boards list the wings and counter numbers handling each flight. These are easier to use if you arrive at the right wing in the first place and your flight departure time hasn't changed by half an hour. Nevertheless, we found the numbered lane for our flight, only to learn that the lines are for economy class and the business-class lines are not adjacent. Those who regularly fly international business class probably just know these things; for those in business class on frequent flyer miles, this little gaffe puts you back in place. Flight boarding contrasts the the ultra-organization of European flight check-in. Everyone jostles into a line and pushes on board, with only the two ticket agents to regulate the flow.

Arrival and immigration in Bangalore lacked the chaotic drama I'd expected of overstuffed suitcases, diverse crowds, and a clatter of languages. There were a handful of immigration counters, with no nationality-based lines as in Europe and the States. Finding your baggage is easy--there is only one carosel--and everyone filters out in orderly pace. I suspect our eventual 3am arrival had a lot to do with how subdued entry experience.

Roads in the daytime are chaotic, a jumble of motorbikes, minivans, buses, carts, cows, cars, auto-rickshaws, and bicycles. The familiar regulators of western roads, traffic lights and lane markings, are absent or ignored. Vehicles dart everywhere, constantly filling and creating empty spaces. Honking is ubiquitous: it announces one's intended occupancy of a space, whether or not another is threatening to grab it. There is a lovely, seductive rhythm to this combination of movement and honking, readily broken when one has to cross the street. Frogger (the video game) is a good approximation.

Admist the traffic swirl, I had a sudden vision of software flows. Formal methods researchers (of which I'm one) like to bemoan the lack of software quality, yet much software does run sufficiently well much of the time. Lack of formal structure certainly makes it hard to understand or predict software behavior, but the system nonetheless hangs together. It can be maddening, it can be dangerous, but we're still standing. That's how I felt after crossing my first street here. The Bangalore roads are a beautiful illustration of how functionality emerges from minimal structure. I have no idea what the accident/death rate is, though.

After 48 hours in India, I am most struck my the sounds. Some, such as ringtones and airplanes, as familiar in isolation, but the global web of sound here has a bizarre quality all its own. Endless chords include sputtering engines, honking, construction, and the cries of street vendors as they wheel cars full of fruit, vegetables, and spices through the streets. (So far, I've recognized only the call of the vendor for a brownish-greyish tropical fruit that I don't much care for.) A tape recorder would be far more useful than a camera for documenting this trip.

The vicious thumping of laundry against stones provided the first morning's alarm clock. The second morning, a jarring out-of-tune jazz approximation drove us from our room into the front hall, only to grow louder. The musician ended up being a navascarum player in the driveway of the house, blasting away to no tune that my Indian family could identify. They believe the player is related to one who has been in the neighborhood for decades, but who apparently knew only a single song. This one was at least new, if unrecognizable.

Most surreal moment so far: on our first car trip here, the closed windows and classical Indian music on the radio blocked the usual street noise. As the cars moved against the music, the lines of the motorbikes became graceful and interwoven. It seemed so serene compared to the choreography of honking horns, yet oddly out of place knowing the original score.

I've been eagerly anticipating the food since we began planning this trip, and I've not been disappointed. In addition to my mother in-law's usual good cooking, we've enjoyed various sweets and savories from take-away stands and restaurants. The chutneys are fresh, the idlees (dumplings) light, and the burfi (milk fudge) melts in the mouth. Three days in, my greatest culinary-related delight has been finally experiencing a finger bowl.

South Indians eat with their hands rather than with utensils. This is easy enough to master with naan and curry, but quite a bit more challenging with rice, yogurt, and watery stews. Genuine hand-eating requires that only the right hand touch the food (so you have to be able to tear apart breads using just the fingers of one hand) _and_ that the right hand stay clean below the knuckles. It took a couple of years to master, but being able to eat properly with my fingers has been a mark of authenticity and cultural awareness on multiple occasions.

Hand-based eating, which occurs even in fine restaurants, leaves the problem of cleaning the hand after the meal. Protocol demands a "finger bowl", which Indian restaurants at home approximate with a warm towelette or a trip to the washroom. I finally got to use a real finger bowl today. After the main meal (but before dessert), the waiters came around with individual bowls of warm rose-colored liquid with a slice of lemon. My understanding of protocol indicated that this should be a finger bowl, but something this colorful and sweet-smelling, (not to mention garnished) seemed more suitable for drinking. One of our companions dunked the fingers of both hands in the warm water and squeezed the lemon over her fingers. While I suspect this was a high-end finger bowl experience, it was a luxurious way to clean up after a meal.

I find myself paying a lot of attention to people's feet here. Partly, I'm stricken by how many people walk and work barefoot (including many of the auto rickshaw drivers and construction workers), especially given the uneven sidewalks and general street clutter. Most shoe-wearing people seem to wear sandals of some form. Shoes that slip on and off easily are very convenient for going to temples, as shoes must be left outside the temple entrances. I also suspect that sandals are cheaper, cooler, and easier to wash off than other shoe options. Shoe stores here carry a terrific range of sandals and we picked up a set to leave at temple entrances during our travels.

I'm strangely conscious of the lack of nail polish on my toes. I suspect this comes from contrasting all the vibrant colors and patterns used in women's clothing here with my somewhat blander travel wardrobe. I don't feel out of place in western clothing (even though most women wear Indian styles of dress), but I do notice the lack of color. I end up looking down at my toes a lot (necessary to navigate the roads and sidewalks), and they seem a prime way to blend in better from a color perspective.

A friend took us to a traditional dance performance. Traditional dance is done barefoot, but with jingly bangles around the ankles. This gives the effect of tap shoes, but with a bit less precision in the sound. Part of the technique appears to be in controlling the vibrancy of the jingle through the foot movements, the rest in the gestures that suggest different deities and requests. Before the show, we heard a 20 minute Powerpoint presentation by the head of the state tourism council about the future of local tourism. I learned that the state sent 8 representatives to a tourism conference this year and that the German representatives received them very well. None of the other tidbits stood out nearly as well.

We've begun using auto rickshaws (simply called "autos") to get around the city. An auto rickshaw is a three wheeler with room for 2-3 people in the back seat. It's much like a cycle-based rickshaw in concept, though motorized abd fully covered on the top and partly on the sides. Local autos have bright yellow tops and are as ubiquitous as taxicabs in New York or Mexico City. They form the intermediate level of transport here, being between motorbikes and cars on the vehicle scale, and between buses and car-based taxis on the price/comfort scales. Some of them are ornately decorated, with garlands on the front, icons of deities or movie starts on the dash, or artwork on the inner sides and roof. We rode in one all done up in a quilted-form of plastic seating upolstery. It rather reminded me of the art car parade, one of our favorite events in Houston.

Riding in an auto brings the Banglore roads right into your lap. Vehicles ride and weave so close together that it would be easy to grab onto someone in the vehicle next to you. The exhaust from surrounding motorbikes and autos blows into the cab. Luckily, the drivers turn the autos off (in an attempt to save gas) when stopped at one of the rare traffic lights here. The Dolby-surround horn noise keeps you constantly aware of the vehicles about to pass on either side. It rather reminds me of the way in which one is part of the water while kayaking: the road dust runs over you as the water runs down my arms and onto my head when paddling a kayak. I taste the road much as I taste the waters as I paddle. It's visceral and real, if a bit throat-clogging.

The bike-handling skills of these motorbike drivers astounds me. I road cycle a bit, but am very uncomfortable riding in packs because I don't trust my skills riding so close to other bikers. Vehicles here pack in as tightly as a pack of road cyclists, though here the vehicles are not all of the same size, speed, or weight, nor are they necessarily going in the same direction. The motorbike drivers squeeze into the smallest spaces around other vehicles, usually without missing a beat. I think I'd know I'd truly conquered this place, and developed some serious balls, if I could ride a motorbike in the height of the day without hitting the brakes until I got home.

I've decided that next time I come here, I'm going to attach a small bicycle horn to my handbag so I can toot with the rest of them. It's a universal language here, this honking, and pedestrians are disadvantaged not being able to join in the conversation.

Everything I read before coming here referred to Bangalore as the cosmopolitan city of India. Growing up near Manhatten, and having traveled a lot in the US and Europe, I had a good mental image of what a cosmopolitan city would look like: clean lines, lots of glass, ethnic restaurants, nice hotels, etc. I found almost none of this in my first few days in Bangalore. The city is certainly multi-lingual--lots of people speak at least some English--but it lacks the kemptness and the overt classy style that I've always associated with being cosmopolitan.

Today I finally encountered a bit of the cosmopolitan sheen I'd expected. A friend took us to a yuppie Italian restaurant for lunch. The styling was like a good place back home, with prices almost (but not quite) to match. It, and I, felt totally out of place. We walked past some of the branches of western stores trying to look glitzy in their somewhat run-down outer buildings. None of it felt right. As we got closer to the neighborhood where Shriram had gone to school, we explored some of the bookstores and side streets he used to hang at as a teenager. Tons of bookstores stocking mostly English-language books. Cookbooks from all parts of the world. Guidebooks on how to understand the dialects and regional culture from other English-speaking parts of the world. Little signs here and there that people here are broader than the local region, broader than just India. Those signs are just a bit harder to see in a place that hasn't had the resources or desire to rebuild itself to appear cosmopolitan in the language of the west.

Ironically, I borrowed a friend's copy of "The Beauty Myth" (by Naomi Wolf) a couple of days ago. It grabbed my attention as I started thinking about, and feeling guilty about, the nail polish. The book talks about the culture and expectation of beauty constructed around American womanhood, and the ways in which it holds women back by forcing us to remain focused on our looks rather than on who we are. My reaction to "cosmopolitan Bangalore" drove home the Beauty Myth I've absorbed. Here I was looking for a gloss on the city, rather than at what values the city projects in its more organic guises. As we came home through the local bazaar, those organic features were all the more potent. This place has felt very real since I arrived, but now it's starting to have depth as well. Bangalore certainly has its surface-level problems that may slow its economic growth (road and sidewalk infrastructure among them). I just hope that more of the people who come here will be able to look for the unique ways that this city can develop itself without trying to force it into a shallow replica of somewhere else. Given what I've been hearing about the California-style suburbs sprouting outside of town, I'm a bit wary. More importantly, though, I'm humbled.

Back home, we rarely go out for Italian food. Partly, Italian food for vegetarians isn't all that interesting (another pasta primavera, ma'am?) and partly my ancestors were Italian so we cook a lot of that cuisine at home anyway. When we do go out for Italian, it's for some nice form of stuffed pasta with a sturdy sauce and minimal veggies.

Today, we ended up in an Italian restaurant because a friend needed some blander food. Shriram and I spotted salad on the menu and jumped at it. Greens! Veggies! We were able to count on two hands the number of veggies we'd had (not times, veggies themselves) since arriving in India. Our diet here has been more of blends of rice and legumes with sauces made from blends of herbs, with potatoes on the side. We decided that veggies were most assuredly in order, and ate them with gusto.

At home, we go out for Indian when we are tired of eating too much pasta and want to get some veggies (usually in a North Indian curry sauce, but veggies just the same -- our local Indian place, Kabob and Curry, is very health conscious while also being quite tasty). We explicitly choose a non-veggie night when we go out for Italian. Our sudden desire to avail of the chance to get veggies at an Italian place gave us both a good laugh, and suggested that a platter of kale stew will be high on the list of things to make when we get home.

This year is my first away from the western world at Christmastime. While I'm not religious and could do without the holiday onslaught starting immediately after Halloween (Continental was playing jingle bells in the plane when we left the US on Nov 2nd--good lord!), I expect to see lights, stars, and lots of red and green in December. I love the festiveness in the air, the cookies, the lights, the cookies, and the music (starting after around Dec 8th or so). I've been away from the US for the holidays before, but always in some place such as the UK or Switzerland that keeps the spirit alive (with almost as much commercialism as in the states). When we left for this trip, I wondered what it would be like to spend the holidays without the holidays, and brought along the advent calendar that my Mom sent (one every year, thanks Mom) to follow the season from India.

So here I am, opening the little advent windows every morning in a state of utter disconnect. It isn't the warm weather, as I lived 4 years in Houston and got used to Santa in shorts. It's the total lack of Christmas anything. No signs, no mention, so jingle bell rock, no salvation army ringers. Most of the time, I don't notice it missing, but if I get reminded of the date, something seems oddly out of whack, as if I've suddenly forgotten my phone number or other core piece of identifying information.

The Christmas season finally showed itself today. We'd gone looking for one of Shriram's former high school teachers, who is now the principal at another school. The private high schools here seem to all be religiously affiliated, even if that religious touch is lightly applied. Shriram attended a Jesuit high school that replaced catechism classes with "moral science" (which he parsed as "moral signs" for some time -- ask him about the lesson on "sex and violence" sometime). The school we were visiting is Christian-based, so there was a tree with lights in the foyer, Merry Christmas banners hanging around, and a set of asian-pop-rock covers of carols over the playground loudspeakers (including "Auld Lang Syne", so getting ahead of ourselves holiday-wise isn't limited to the US). I've seen Santas in the entryways of other Christian schools here, and even a (somewhat skinny) Santa among the sarees in a clothing shop in the western-style commericial district). I also passed one street vendor hawking cheap santa hats, though he didn't make a single sale that I saw.

There's no real insight to this entry, no lead-in to a comment on religion in India. Just a reflection on how muted Christmas is here, as those of you reading this are in the thick of it all if you're following as I write these notes. It will be odd to get back to the states right as it is all ending. I haven't missed the cookies one bit this year, perhaps due to the number of pieces of burfi I've eaten instead. Gingerbread burfi hasn't hit Bangalore yet. Perhaps there's an opportunity waiting to happen. Watch your Christmas packages from us in 2007.

The costs of things here, when converted to dollars, still floors me. A taxi ride across town (5-6 miles) costs 75 cents. Good quality cotton shirts, 5 dollars. A glass of fresh-pressed pineapple juice, 50 cents. You can feed four people lunch for 2 dollars at a sidewalk take-away food bar. Shriram and I decided to pig out on dinner tonight and only managed to spend 5 dollars (having eaten hearty appetizers at each of two roadside stands, followed by a sitdown dinner with drinks and dessert). While these prices obviously are consistent with the wage standards here, contrasting them to my own earning power makes me stop and think sometimes.

A couple of our meals have been as more yuppie-style places with prices to match. Some of these have been protocol, when one of his old friends who has done well for himself here has taken us out to eat in styles consistent with his financial position. These places aren't fancy in the sense that we think of Michelin-star restaurants in the west, but they are clearly very upscale and the desserts cost as much as a whole dinner at one of our favorite stands. Once was with a friend who had a hankering for a particular place that is clearly catering to the "up and coming" crowd. While the prices were still fair in dollars, they were on par with what I'd expect to pay at a standard middle-class establishment in the states.

Price differences here do not reflect food quality as much as atmosphere. The food in these fancier places has been good, but the places I've wanted to revisit have all been in the lower price category (perhaps the extra frying has something to do with it). In some cases, the menu items are similar. But one level is targeted at middle-class Indians and the other at rising upper-class multinationals. Back at home, if I eat one meal that costs an order of magnitude more than another, the more expensive one is usually a lot tastier, healthier, and smaller than the cheaper meal. The difference between a slice of pizza and hand-rolled tortelloni is noticable. Here, the more expensive food is perhaps a bit healthier (not as many fried foods, though not all cheaper options are of this sort), but the portions are similarly sized and the flavors simply not that different. The more upscale places do offer certain guarantees (filtered water instead of the risk of local tap water) and amenities (toilet paper instead of a rinse bucket), so the extra cost goes to something. That something just isn't as much culinary as I'm used to.

Overall, this trip has let me experience aspects of being very wealthy, and I'm finding it interesting which parts of that existence I like and which I could leave aside. Flying business class? Keep. Having a driver when a car is required? Definitely keep. Being driven everywhere? Reject: local trips in autos is too much fun and doesn't require the hassle of parking and finding the driver again at the end. Upscale dining? Only for special occasions, and only for really good food.

Jewelry and clothing? Not grabbing me. Silk is everywhere here, and while it has a sleek look, it simply doesn't interest me. Too heavy, at least as it seems used in sarees and kurtas. The gold doesn't appeal to me either. I love the clothing styles here, but I'd rather them in soft cotton instead of fine silk. I'm still sorting out any implications of all of this, but in the meantime, it does mean that the merchants who hope to make good money off of westerners with disposable income and appreciation for value in finery aren't getting much benefit from my visit here.

Every south indian I know does a little head-shaking gesture that has always reminded me of those bobbling-head dashboard dogs (or Mexican turtle toys, if you've been to the main market in Mexico City). At home, the head bob usually happens concurrently with someone saying "yeah, sure" or "of course". I've always gotten a real kick out of this move, the mechanics of which confound me as do those of cricket bowling. Only the head moves, in a twisting, rolling, figure-8-ish motion, while the face wears a decidedly non-commital expression. It requires neck muscles that I apparently don't use much; Shriram laughs in horror whenever I try it.

Here in India, the head bob is ubiquitous and covers a wider range of situations. It seems to generally be a form of acknowledgement. Ask for the bill at a restaurant, head bob from waiter. Ask for the price of an item at a market, head bob from clerk as they state the price. Ask an auto driver for a route, head bob again. It sometimes stands for "thank you", sometimes for "I heard you", and sometimes seems to happen simply because south indians learn the head bob from birth and can't help it. I'm practicing, as being able to bob is a basic form of communication that belongs in a "10 essential phrases for travelers" volume (along with honking).

I actually lied a bit earlier -- almost every south indian I know does the head bob. Shriram is my one exception. The head bob came from indian friends who came to the US only for grad school (Shriram came as an undergrad), or from relatives who lived in India or for only a short time in the states. Shriram's head has never bobbed, and it was one of the subtle ways in which he stood apart from my other Indian friends as more of a westerner.

A couple of days ago, over lunch with one of his Indian friends, I swore I saw his head bob. I jumped, then stared. Didn't happen again, so I figured I was hallucinating. It happened again over dinner, at which point I couldn't help but comment on it with astonished delight, as if to say that he was more Indian than he usually lets on when we're in the states. He grinned, did it again for show, and has been merrily bobbing along ever since. He's defending himself on the grounds that this is a necessary part of the communication protocol. Yeah, sure, but deep down, I think he's letting a little more Indian out this week. Not so much as to stop wearing shorts (which pegs him immediately as a NRI=non-resident Indian), but enough that I see more of his roots. They were one of the things I'd hoped to see here, but I'll be the first to admit that the head bob was not something I came expecting to see.

Off to loosen my neck muscles ...

Our journey outside of Bangalore took us onto the national highway system. These roads are (generally) paved and two lanes in each direction. I suspect they resemble the pre-interstate routes that cross the USA: mostly decent roads that pass through numbers of small towns and villages. A few features are distinctly different, however. Indian highways have the same variety of vehicles (motorized or animal-drawn) as the city streets, so speed varies continually (especially when an animal cart comes up the highway the wrong way). Speed bumps are not announced in advance (the sign is at the bump) and are designed to really make you feel it if you hit one quickly. Temporary gates sometimes block parts of the road to slow traffic down (everyone has to funnel through the space left for a single car). And there are no rest areas (though some appear under construction).

Two sights stood out on the roads: petrol stations and heavily-loaded vehicles. Petrol stations, even the older ones, are incredibly sleek and shiny. Most other roadside buildings are shack or small-warehouse style buildings with only the ads (often for oil companies) bearing fresh paint. Often, petrol stations consist of no more than 4 gleaming pumps on a dirt lot; newer ones have the small convenience stores common in the States. These stock less by way of junk food, however, as roadside stalls selling fresh Indian snacks are all along the roadsides (vada versus fritos? no contest, despite similar deep-fried fat content). I took it as a sign that road-travel is on the rise and will become much more of a business here (major limited-access highway developments are already underway).

Vehicles of all shapes and sizes carry all sorts of cargo along the highways. We passed one bicycle loaded down with about 40 5-gallon pots, another carrying a large 15-foot wide bundle of (what looked like) bamboo poles. One animal cart bore a pyramid of quarry-size rocks. Others were piled with 10-foot high haystacks with a farmer perched on top like a cherry on a mountain of whipped cream. The animals pulling these carts seemed at their limits: the team pulling one hay cart were both leaning precariously inward, yet balanced just enough to not fall down. A real image of "back-breaking" labor. US highways are generally void of images of the lives of small farmers, instead bearing only the trucks of large-scale commercial enterprise or leisure travellers. Indian highways still haven't separated the poor/rural from the leisured/industrial.

In another sense, though, Indian roads separate wheat from chaff. On the local roads, it was common to suddenly find the road strewn thick with hay. Vehicles have no option but to drive over the hay, which does some of the thrashing work for the farmers. The farmers would be doing some hand-trashing by the side of the road, but exploiting the cars for as much as possible. Gives a whole new meaning to the term "multi-use highway".

I've always associated India with children, partly because our Indian relatives more often ask whether we are having them (the cousins all have multiple kids) and partly because the media images I usually see of India involve poverty-stricken children. I expected India to be positively teeming with kids. In the first 10 days, however, I barely saw any kids at all. We'd see them in school yards, but there was no sign of toddlers during the day or any kids on the weekends (teenagers, yes, but not younger kids). Perhaps toddlers are home with older family during the day. It really caught me off-guard to not see them with mothers in the street markets, though.

We spent a few days traveling outside of Bangalore. One afternoon, Shriram and I took a walk on a road leading to a rural farm village. Suddenly, we'd been marked: about ten kids were charging for us from a side road (school had just let out). They surrounded us with cries for "pens" and "chocolate" (we had neither). Shriram talked to them for a few minutes though. They wanted to know where he was from, why we were on their village road, who I was, and where my mother lives. Their curiosity was delightful and I wished we had some trinkets to share with them. They also offered to go fetch us some fresh nuts from a local field. It was one of those fine travel moments of seeing a place from its roots, and I wished I could speak a bit of the local language to join in the conversation.

Inquiries about our own (lack of) children were surprisingly sparse and discreet. A family friend asked whether our marriage had any "issues": that term referred to kids in multiple conversations about family composition. I also noted that when older Indian women did suggest that we have kids, they talked about how wonderful the baby years were, with a suggestion that the older years were less rewarding. This contrasts sharply with the comments from my women cohorts here, who may or may not like the baby stage, but uniformly enjoy their kids becoming interactive and conversational. My sample size on both fronts is too small to generalize from, but I wondered whether the Indian women enjoyed the activity of the baby stage because of the activity and role it gives beyond housework, which seems to define many older women. The older women I met didn't seem to have interests outside of home and family, so I imagine the bustle of babies could be very welcoming.

Insights from reading "Beauty Myth" notwithstanding, I've never given much though to being objectified. In parts of India, however, my role is clear: I am a source of money. I had expected this to a certain extent: guidebooks and friends who have gone to India in the past all warned about the swirl of begging that often surrounds westerners. In practice, I found very little of this (perhaps 2-3 instances, all at tourist attractions, but never in the cities). Shriram remarked that outright begging was down substantially since he was last there.

Entrepreunership, however, has given a new face to requests for money. As soon as the car pulled up near an attraction, postcard vendors would surround the doors and approach the windows. Before I could even get out of the car to see the site we had come to visit, several people would have shoved cards under my nose for me to buy. Others would follow us to the entrance with trinkets ("I made these myself madam"). The cycle would start again as we tried to leave, but oddly less aggressively than when we arrived. I don't begrudge any of these folks for trying to make a living, and it is certainly far better that begging be replaced by commerce. The problem is that being surrounded by so many people selling the same stuff makes me unlikely to buy from any one of them. A survival strategy of sunglasses and staring at the ground becomes the protocol for getting into and out of cars, none of which has the affect that the vendors want. Part of me feels badly about this--I know those few rupees are far more valuable to them than to me. But I lack the strength to support one then fend off the rest, because then I feel like I've somehow made it personal. Instead, we all become objects.

Such encounters with small-scale vendors were uncomfortable, but encounters with shop keepers were aggrevating. At one state-run crafts emporium, we were verbally assulted with calls to look at this or that from the moment we stepped into the hall. It was impossible to approach a counter without the salesperson literally thrusting the items they wanted you to buy under your eyes. I'll admit I'm not comfortable with confrontational shopping in general, but this was a whole new level, and this at a place that I would have expected to have a sense of wanting customers to find something they wanted to buy (unlike with the postcard vendors who are trying to make a more immediate living). We left in protest. At least when stores view you as an object at home, they are subtle about it. I'll need to learn strategies for handling this before our next trip.

Animals are routine in the ebb and flow of Indian street life. Cows wander the streets munching on trash and sometimes resting on sidewalks. Animal-drawn carts trot alongside the cars and autos. Dogs are everywhere. They are all the same type (mongrels), and come in two colors: dusty black and dusty brown. All are skinny and some are clearly ill. The most striking aspect of the dogs, though, is that the vast majority of them are lying down: on the sidewalks, streets, sacks of grains, rocks, or anywhere else a dog might find a place to curl up. They bear a weariness that doesn't show on the faces of people, but reflects the conditions of street life. They appear to be asleep, but without that look of relaxation that often accompanies restful sleep. Overall, they are the most striking picture of fatigue on offer in Bangalore and, unlike the humans, they never show hopeful faces (unlike Western puppies, whom seem to believe that love in the form of biscuit could come from anywhere). It was almost as if amongst the vitality and promise of Bangalore, the dogs serve to record some fundamental truth that the humans suppress. No doubt there are parts of the country where both humans and dogs where those same looks. In vibrant Bangalore, the contrast barks at you visually from every push cart under which the dogs sniff for scraps.

A few months ago, a friend and I were talking about our respective discoveries of "female" clothing in our 30s, by which we meant items like heels and stretch pants, rather than the khaki-and-loafers uniform of many college professors (outside of the humanities). I've long felt at a loss for an identifiable "style" in my clothing since giving up the jeans and sweatshirts I'd had since high school, and I've had a side eye out for style options in mid-adult clothes.

I rather fell in love with women's clothing in India, specifically kurtas (tunics), which are generally worn with western pants (for short kurtas) or pyjama-like bottoms called kamese (for long kurtas). It took several days to figure out why I was so enthralled with these: I often wear tunic-ish tops at home, but they don't come close to matching the draw I felt towards kurtas. The appeal, I realized, lies in the way they move. Kurta/kamese give the flow of dresses and skirts without the need to wear stockings (the threat of which keeps me from wearing skirts that don't go with sandals). There is something fluidly feminine about them, while still being comfortable and practical.

In the west, baseline clothing styles (at least in the circles I move in) are similar between men and women, be they jeans or tailored jackets. In India, women have their own style of clothes in sarees and kamese. This isn't entirely true, as (muslim) men often wear kurta/kamese as well, but the normal men's style is more of a western shirt and pant, which leaves women a clothing form all their own. Something felt liberating about that, about not being expected to blend in visually with the men. Indian women stand out in their clothing due to the vivid colors and patterns. The color splashing from women's clothing often hits like cold water: it resembles a US academic procession, but without all the pomp. It's a terrific distraction for the senses when the traffic and dust from the dry season would otherwise start to overwhelm.

There is also something liberating in a common dress standard for women that crosscuts class lines. Fabrics and embellishments suggest economic status, but the core form and style is universal. While such uniformity may sound stifling to some, the liberal use of color and pattern still gives lots of room for individual expression. That said, the shiny new stores promote western clothes (labeling the local clothes as "ethnic wear"), and several younger women sport western shirts and pants. I suspect the streets of India will be much less colorful and flowing a generation from now. I hope not though, as there is a breathtaking grace and elegance to how Indian women of all situations carry themselves in their "ethnic" clothes. For comparison, look at western women in sarees: we may figure out how to wrap the cloth around us properly, but we sure don't carry them off well (kurta/kamese is much easier). Perhaps it's as genetic as the head-bob.

A couple of years ago, Shriram and I were trying to decide what to have for dinner and I commented that we shouldn't have Indian because we'd had Indian for lunch. Naturally, he pointed out that Indians eat Indian food twice in one day. Nevertheless, I wondered whether eating the same cuisine for days on end would get monotonous. To my delight, it did not, but my introduction to the highway system left me a bit woozy and craving light and bland food, which is harder to come by in Indian cuisine, so we went looking for a change.

Enter Indo-Chinese cooking. When I was growing up, Chinese was the ubiquitous "ethnic" food: if a town we were driving through had non-American food (other than pizza), it had Chinese. Well, Chinese seems to be the default ethnic food in India as well. Many restaurants are marked "multi-cuisine", which seems to mean that it offers both Indian and Chinese (at least) dishes. We had Chinese several nights, and it was fairly similar to Chinese food in the states except with many more vegetarian options (and I hear with more MSG). One standard is sweet corn soup, an old favorite of Shriram's that's hard to find, much less in veg versions, in the US.

Is Chinese the international default "ethnic" food? Perhaps not in the UK, where Indian is a bit more common for historical reasons. It wasn't in Japan, which didn't have non-Japanese places in any number. Certainly China would need a different default. I'm just curious how Chinese came to be the default in India. Restaurants from other ethnicities were a rare sight, even in cosmopolitan Bangalore. In addition to the many multi-cuisine places, I seem to recall seeing one Thai, one Japanese, and one Italian, plus a handful of upscale bistro style places with diverse menus. I expected much more, particularly from other South/East Asian locales, such as Singapore. Instead, we were mostly surrounded by Indian restaurants.

To be fair, Indian cuisine offer very different regional styles, so a set of 6 Indian restaurants in India would offer far more diversity than 6 Indian restaurants in the US (most of which seem to offer the same menu, with the rare exception of a South Indian restaurant). One can go out to eat at an Indian restaurant in India and get totally different food than what one would get at home (naan, for example, is restaurant food in Shriram's family). And the styles of restaurants vary from sit-down, to take-away places with tables to stand at, to chaat (a kind of snack) bars. The experience was never the same two places in a row, which no doubt kept monotony at bay.

Fresh fruit juice also deserves a mention here. Most restaurants offer a variety of freshly-made juice, which is a handy alternative to bottled water. I've never had such flavorful pineapple and grape juices, not to mention sweet lime juice. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that fresh fruit juice had the rich flavor of, er, fresh fruit but the delta was beyond what I'm used to between Tropicana and most fresh squeezed orange juices in the states. [The photo at right is of Ghandi Bazaar, one of the two main markets in Bangalore and just a few blocks from the house. This photo was taken on the fruit block; other blocks cover herbs, veggies, and flowers.]

Updating an earlier remark about Christmas: Christmas did eventually come to Bangalore. Not in the all-encompassing way it does at home, but there nonetheless. Around Dec 21st, many retail stores painted santa/snowmen images on the windows and sidewalk vendors started selling santa hats. The petrol station near my in-laws' place had two stick-thin santas pumping gas on the 25th. One wore a jacket in the just-above-knee length of a kurta (Indian tunic) -- I'd discussed Indo-western hybrid fashion with a friend, but this was my first sighting of it in a holiday line.

Basically, Christmas is viewed as an excuse for a party. Most of the nicer restaurants throw dinners and parties, much like New Year's bashes in the states. The 25th was a government holiday (though a neighbor said that they take whatever the closest Friday/Monday is to the 25th as the holiday each year, not necessarily the 25th itself). It's a quieter event, in that Christmas music is notably absent (and seemed rather out of place when inserted from my iPod). No jingles, cookies, salvation army bells, or other sensory inputs that I generally associate with the season at home.

I found it ironic that the holidays, which I usually love at home for encompassing all my senses, became sense-less in one of the most sensuous places I've ever been. I also got to experience something I've claimed to want for years: a Christmas holiday that starts closer to Christmas than to Thanksgiving (much less Halloween). The holiday does start too early at home, but I discovered that I don't want it to start too late either. Savoring the things I enjoy about the holidays takes time, and the 4-day version didn't ferment enough for me. I'll also record that this marks my first holiday without eating even a single Christmas cookie (or any other cookie, for that matter). And I didn't miss them. Coming from a kid who said "cookie" before "mom" or "dad", this is a strong indicator of the extent to which India engrossed me during my visit.

Returning home has provided yet another new experience: severe culture shock. The disorientation I've experienced since being back has far eclipsed any that I've had when going somewhere else. Home seems sterile, shallow, and way too quiet. On the drive back from the airport, the taxi stopped at a red light and as we sat there I felt an urge to shout about why the *&&#$ was he waiting at a light at 1am when nobody else was around. Then I remembered where I was, or more importantly, where I wasn't; there were no horns on the roads to ground me.

Obviously, India has left a huge impression, and it will take several weeks for me to process it all. I loved meeting all the people and places that Shriram and his folks have so long talked about. I treasure the insights I've had into him after seeing all of this. By the time we left, I did see why Bangalore is viewed as cosmopolitan; it just took time and the experience of visiting other places to appreciate the visual language of Indian worldliness. Bangalore has a lot of infrastructural issues to address in the coming years, but this city is going places.

I have included very few pictures because I didn't take many. The few times I looked through the lens, I didn't see how to capture what mattered to me using just a camera. Apologies for those who wanted the photos to travel vicariously. Shriram did take several, especially at the temples we visited, so keep an eye on his website for his blog about the trip. In the meantime, I'm slowly adjusting to life at home again and brainstorming ways to retain the vitality I saw in India. I have ho doubt we'll be going back well before another 15 years have passed.