Playing at Lalbagh Gardens

The first two pictures show kids playing soccer (football) in a field that has not been mowed. I have seen no public soccer fields laid out for kids to use. I watched these kids kick the ball through the tall grass. The length of grass can be gauged by looking at their feet. It is hard to kick a ball smoothly and accurately under these conditions. But you don't miss what you never had.




There is not a lot of public money available for park amenities. Here kids make do with the natural slipperiness of this 3 billion year old rock formation. They were having as much fun as kids on a playground slide in the U.S.

Street Entertainers

There are a lot of street children in Bangalore. They wait for the traffic lights so they can run up to the cars with tinted windows, knowing that there are affluent people inside. The first picture shows a brother and sister. He plays a drum and she dances. The second group shows brothers doing "gymnastics.'

More work outside the house

Well, I seem to be fascinated by people working here. The man is clipping by hand, the grass "hair-plugs" I featured on an earlier post. Then he moved to trim the lawn in general. There are no power mowers, electric trimmers, gas leaf blowers. etc. Everything is done by hand. The women are sweeping up the "lawn" in front of our house.

More from Lalbagh Gardens

The ficus Mysore..a fig tree, also called a Mulberry tree









The Orchid tree, also known as a Bauhinia tree. The leaves have medicinal value

Bangalorewalks.com

This is our guide, Mr. Vijay Thiruvady. He started Bangalorewalks.com He is a very knowledgeable guide; giving us a background in Indian history and all the flora we viewed on our tour. The Lalbagh Gardens are the most biodiverse in the world. Rulers from the past, like Haidar Ali and his son Tipu Sultan had their armies and ambassadors bring back plantings and seeds from the areas around the world. The British modified the gardens to look like England. In 1881, the Mysore Maharajah expanded the gardens, and had serial blossoming trees planted throughout the city. Once a Royal Garden, Lalbagh now belongs to the public.

This is a cedar tree from Lebanon. Bougainvilleas from South America
Silver Oaks from Australia
Indonesian Ficus tree

Things that make you go Hmmmm

This is truer than I first realized. The hot water tanks are tiny. They must only hold about 10 gallons. Supposedly the water reheats in 10 minutes and there are "35 minutes of hot water available." The BIG LIE.
I think this is India's answer to Kohler!!

Cows

Finally, I have a picture of some cows to show you. Notice how they are using the cross walk! On the way home, we had to swerve into another lane as 3 cows were lying down in our lane. I thought I would see cows everywhere. Not so. I don't see them in the central part of town. I see them more as we head to the outskirts of town. These cows belong to someone in that they are not strays. However, you do see cows eating garbage right along with the stray dogs, I have read that cows ingest plastic bags and other non-edibles. This can't do much for milk production!

Where we almost lived

We didn't end up here thankfully. Although the outside areas were fine and the apartment was fine, the management was in a feud with the tenants. Apparently when the building was built, the agreement was that the common areas would be cleaned by management but now the management wants money and the tenants do not want to pay. So, the central areas are dirty and have bags of garbage in the halls. There was pornographic graffiti on the elevator walls. Not the kind of place we envisioned.

Outside our house

I took these pictures of the house across from ours. Notice the short handled shovel on the ground next to the man. Talk about back-breaking work. He is digging up the lawn so it can be resod.



Now it is up to the women to plant little grass plants to resod the lawn. At the end the lawn will look like it had grass "hair" plugs. I like the next two shots showing the women working and the men sitting around. Some things are the same all over!!

Street Scenes

Every time we drive though this city we find interesting things to see. The men gathered around the stand seem to be a group of "regulars". They were eating noodles and what appeared to be samosas. This stand is at the end of a parking lot where a shiny new mall is going up. I was particularly interested in the blue arch and the Coca-Cola logo on the top. I couldn't read the rest so perhaps it is a restaurant. I wish I could get night pictures to show how the activity level increases dramatically as Indians come home from work and enter the commerce fray.

IBM at the Industry and Tech Museum

I thought this was an interesting exhibit, especially since I am here because of IBM. These machines have to be from the 1960s, I'm guessing. No hands-on allowed, these exhibits are behind glass.

Muslim Wedding

We had a treat of a lifetime tonight. We were heading to dinner at the Raj Pavilion in the Windsor when we saw a bride being ushered into one of the ballrooms at the hotel. One of the hotel greeters (the women who dress in blue suits) told us it was a Muslim wedding and we could peek inside to watch the bride meet her groom. The next thing we know, members of the family keep urging us to come into the room. So, we walk in further and stand to the side of the room. Not good enough. The aunt of the bride (she came from Bahrain) told us to move up where everyone was taking pictures ( and videos with very bright lights). The aunt introduces us to the mother of the bride. It turns out the bride and her family are from Canada. They want us to go even closer and meet the bride and groom. You should know that Sarah had a nice top and slacks from work but I am in jeans and a Harvard sweatshirt. So now we are meeting the bride and groom. The family insists we stand on either side of the couple for pictures. They then give us these gift bags. The father of the bride tells us they all came from Canada (Edmonton) because this is what his daughter wanted....a wedding in India. We were invited to stay for dinner but declined as we felt we had intruded enough. This was such an amazing experience. Both the bride and groom were dressed in fabulous outfits. No, there is no way I could go back and take pictures. Such hospitality!

The PM is coming to Town

The Prime Minister is coming to town today to address the State Legislature. As a result, the newspaper carried a story urging all office workers not to leave work until after 7 pm because of traffic congestion due to road closings. The article lists those closing by the hour. Also, because of security issues, all offices, banks, and the post office at Vidhana Soudha ( this building's name)will be closed. Staff in various departments in the building have been given the day off.

Signs like this one were all over town. Our car was stopped while the traffic cops (in white hats)waited for the official cars to drive through on their way to the airport ot pick up the PM.

Our New Home

We are finally going to Palm Meadows on Sunday. I only have a couple pictures of two of the bedrooms from earlier this month. We'll have more pictures in a few more days.