Two New Yorkers spend six months 18 months!?! in Bangalore and other places in India.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

What We'll Miss

Don and I are both due to fly out of Bangalore and back to the United States next Friday. If this time is anything last the last time, I predict that next week will be light on posts and high on silence. Although I intend to keep posting even when we're out of India, at least for a while, I thought it would be good to start thinking of some things I'll miss when I'm gone.

  • fresh lime sodas
  • people who are friendly and patient even when you don't speak any of India's mother tongues
  • clothes that are all at least 25% more vivid than anything in New York City. It's going to be hard to go back to black, grey, and black.
  • A dialect of English that didn't always make sense to me but was always interesting. Here, you always "avail offers" rather than take advantage of them, and have "power cuts" rather than "power outages" (we had about five yesterday, so it's on my mind). And why say just "OK"? Say "OK OK OK" instead. And if something (like power cuts!) is hardly worth mentioning , you can say "power cuts are there."
  • paan
  • high purchasing power. Obviously, having dollars and the large amount of rupees that they buy has made for a better time.
  • cable TV and the amazing channels inside. One favorite right now is the Udaya channel, which broadcasts in Kannada. They have a great cooking show, in which housewives come on and make a dish and are then given a sari for their trouble. We would love it more if we knew better what they were saying/making, but it's already fun the way it is. There was a guy on it once, too.

Next time, some of the things we won't miss so very much.

2 comments:

mwr said...

My favorite "there" sentence was while dining at Sunny's, which was named after one of the owners dogs, the waiter was explaining that Sunny was no longer there, but "Sunny's granchildrens are there".

Anonymous said...

I miss you Monkeys !