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Bangalore|Karnataka

a coffee-table story of Angadi

January 13, 2010
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There isn’t an outlet that serves a decent cup of coffee in Malnad. The little shops that make it use instant-coffee powder; but if you are desperate for good coffee, knock on the door of the coffee-planter. His woman will serve it with a fluff of froth with a wee bit of powder on top, [...]

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the Hoysalas: brigand chiefs who became kings

December 27, 2009
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In my last post I told you that all the public walls of Bangalore are painted over with scenes of ruins of our historical monuments, and larger-than-hoarding depictions of our beasts and birds and beaches. I am sitting in the Cafe Coffee Day by the highway at Hirisave, a hundred and ten kilometers west of [...]

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this foggy clear December

December 21, 2009
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This December, as in every December, I approach Electronics City seeing the sun through the fog, and mistake it for a morning moon—I see it so absently. I wonder that the moon is so large, and after a while I realize there is no rabbit on it, and so it is the sun in its [...]

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a divine smile called Hassan

December 17, 2009
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The ride into town
Turn right to the north on NH-48 and then at the square which comes up turn left to the west. The road (Bangalore-Mangalore Road) goes straight and curves fine to the right after a while, and then it is straight again for the few furlongs into the town center. On either side [...]

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the Bhagawan’s eyes

November 29, 2009
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Every introduction to Bangalore speaks of the four towers of Kempegowda that marked the corners of the capital he founded four-hundred years ago. But these small things are not towers—not in the way the Jin Mao or the Sears or the Qutb Minar are towers. Kempegowda’s Towers are small gopuras, tiny things built on dome-shaped [...]

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being mentally challenged in Bangalore

November 15, 2009
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Image by Little_Ricky via Flickr

“Saleem’s sister’s son,” Raja said of the young man in outside room that the gate led to, which served as the office. “He’s a potential drug addict.” The nephew took no offense, his eyes and face remained blank and emotionless. He was sitting in Saleem’s chair when we entered, and rose [...]

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the floods: near Raichur last week

October 23, 2009
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Women and children milled about the back of the truck. There were men on top handing down stuff: rice, stoves, packets of biscuits of which a child got two instead of the ration of one and she giggled to her mother. Women went in twos and threes for short conversations with the policeman by the [...]

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in his own image made He him

August 26, 2009
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It was so perfect it seemed man-made. Its slender length was a flawless green, translucent, and its head a neat geometric achievement, a fine wedge. The green-snake is a tree snake and this one had slithered in the grass and I had howled because Sujaya was going to step on it. She and the snake [...]

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hello Independence

August 11, 2009
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Bon Jovi is singing in my ears a Welcome to Wherever You Are. From the treadmill, I watch the red tiles on the edges of the house across mine, laid merely as decoration skirting yellow walls.
It was a single-story building until last year when they rebuilt it as a two-storey structure with a single long [...]

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Kadamane: kal, aaj, aur kal

August 2, 2009
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Their meal is a mess on the plate and a mess round the mouth—the kids seem to like what they are eating. For the smallest children the ayahs squeeze the morsels dry in their hands and push them into the mouths, a child at a time, patiently drawing them back from constant distraction. This creche [...]

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K.V. Subbanna

July 31, 2009
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Ramachandra Guha took his stance (he loves cricket) two paces away from the mike, and bent this way and that to animate every point he wished to make. He held Subbanna’s book and waved it about and searched the pages often, and confidently, and once searched longer than other times and I grew nervous he’d [...]

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A Giant Theater

July 26, 2009
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In such a vast panorama only a fifth—maybe tenth—of the land is filled with trees. The rest is taken by thigh-high, chest-high cones of the shrub. The shrubs in a given patch are all trimmed to the same height and, seen level, seeing the height they have climbed and the depths they’ve plunged, they are [...]

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