Wanderlust

Bangalore is still having the windy evenings. The vague hints of a subtle rain do lurk in the clouds at times.
What more do we need for a happy walk back home after work?

I have got into the full pace in enjoying my new city. Discovering, absorbing, meandering.
And meeting people!

There was a time when I really really looked forward to trying pani puri; Warmly choreographed scenes where I walk through the wide streets and snatch a pani puri from the road-side chat shop. I am disappointed to say (and I apologize to fans of pani puri) that reality wasn't all that smooth. I am not criticizing a popular food from a neighboring culture, but let's just say I am no more looking forward to having any more pani puris. May be I was having it from the wrong places. May be my tastes will change in the future. For now, though, I am content without pani puris in my life.

I have a couple of doodles to share with you folks today. These are from two different places, depicting observations from my first visit.

The first one is from Richmond park, which is close by my work location. It is a small park. People do come to have evening walks, but have to walk several rounds to have any satisfactory exercise. The benches - if you exclude the fact that they're mostly occupied - promises a good place to sit and relax and read a book perhaps.

Some interesting persons I came across there:



The next one is from Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum in Bengaluru. The history, science and technology exhibits were indeed fun and informative. It is interesting how the constant crowd in the building includes all varieties of people.

I came across this very simple man who was operating the control on a mathematical exhibit:



He was obviously oblivious to the properties of this peculiar curve or the equations governing it. But he was energetically turning the handle which would rotate the three rods, their spinning plane describing a hyperbola; There was something for everyone in every exhibit.

It was nice to see the exhibits as well as to observe how different age groups and different types of people respond to various exhibits. It was a good day.
Although the food was bad. Then again, the taste of homely food is something you'll always miss despite all the colors of a distant land and the wanderlust.


Happiness is found in pot plants etc

It took me a few weeks before the new daily activities in the new city became part of the unconscious routine.

Once everything from waking up and welcoming the not-so-fresh sun rays, to the office commute, to the software engineer's 8 hours, to the visits paid to nearby food outlets became repeated, automated things, my eyes finally got into the creative mood and started absorbing the finer details. I should mention that absorbing or even merely noticing the finer details of cleanliness in the dinner outlets may give you incentive to take up night-time fasting on a daily basis.

As an attempt for daily creativity I started keeping a daily sketch book. Of course, days are skipped on end but at times it turns out to be a medium which surely captures the curious observations/epiphanies of the day. I intend to accessorize the coming blog posts with selected sketches.

Converting my single room in a PG ( paying guest) to my own habitat inevitably involved filling it up with weird goodies. My choice of a pot plant as the living companion was to ensure its good health even when I was away for days on weekends. Let us also reflect at this point, on the fact that water and drinking-water (swapping these things in Bengaluru can cause you ending up with typhoid etc) are on an unreliable supply at this above mentioned PG.

As of drinking-water crisis, it is caused by a phenomenon what I personally prefer to call "water drainers". The beings in question look almost as depicted below:


However, it wasn't too late when I started to recognize this as the final result of an evolutionary process in our PG ecosystem; It was survival of the one with the most number of filled bottles.
And it wasn't too late when I found myself collecting extra plastic bottles and start filling them up with an expression similar to above :P

It is a happy thing that I don't hate mondays as I did when I was in college. The fifteen minutes walk to office can become an eventful thing if you'll just look around with open eyes. I can now spot familiar faces who'll pass me if I start at a particular time, and even find subjects for amusing paintings.
Here's a quick sketch of the girl in purple top who shared the walk with me from office to home one day (not necessarily together :D):


Awkwardness starts when people start walking with you at exactly the same speed as yours; You can't overtake, neither can you be overtaken. The above was one of such situations.

I have bid my farewells to the PG and the water drainers and my extra plastic bottles. I now write this from an apartment which is currently shared among four other people. And it is currently a mess. But my pot plant sits in a corner silently and reminds me that everything will be always okay in the end. Silly pot plant.