itinerant — a Bangalorean's blog on people and places, here and everywhere

being mentally challenged in Bangalore

November 15, 2009

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

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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Chasing the Race

October 1, 2009

He was pleasant and made good conversation, and for a Singaporean manager, seemed quite easy, there was not that brusqueness about him. He is determined to source a range of aerospace components from India; for which he will open his office in Hyderabad by January. “You will be our first source,” he said, showing more [...]

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the taxi from Farmington to Hartford

September 12, 2009

Image via Wikipedia

Omar’s “executive” taxi was long and clean and smelt sweet inside. It was Friday, and he wore a crisp Moroccan kaftan for the mosque. He is Egyptian. I would have called him for the return trip from Farmington, but my customer wanted to help and she organized the return. I watched this other [...]

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in his own image made He him

August 26, 2009

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

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

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

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

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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seeking a turn…

July 12, 2009

They were at the gate, by its post, taking shelter under umbrellas; how did they get there, and why? They had that disconnected look that has now grown permanent on them; and they were cold and shivering when I peered at them through the thin columns of rain in the dull misty morning. My Jeep [...]

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up and down the bosphorus

July 4, 2009

At the pier everyone held back, knowing to be polite, but in the tension and the poise you could see that each wished everyone out of the way, and all suppressed (or didn’t have the strength for) the urge to push the rest to the edge and out. The woman behind me sneezed, and my [...]

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the week that went

July 4, 2009

Right of us, across the street, an ambulance bobbed about like a dead beetle borne on a mass of ants undecided on the right route. Its wail was wimpish and, eventually, when things cleared, it came to life and made toward the Forum Mall and the bikes and the cars went lurching with it, squeezing [...]