During
my recent trip to India, I found it rather surprising (in a bad way) that the
weather in Bangalore was very repulsive! Bangalore has been known to offer a
pleasant and nice weather, even during summers. If it tends to get hotter, an
evening shower cools it off. I had myself experienced it in 2008 when I had
stayed there for six months. This time however, the temperature touched 380C
(or about 104-1060F) and humidity was very high. Local people whined
about how this year was the first time since 1984 that such a severe weather
was hitting Bangalore even in early April. The reason wasn’t too difficult to
gauge. The number of tall apartment complexes has arisen exponentially. Almost
everywhere around the city, these super tall buildings have filled up all the
otherwise empty spaces, and are offering 2 bedroom apartments at ridiculous
prices [somewhere around Rs. 2 crore (~ $ 400000 USD) or so depending on the
location, to my knowledge]. This is an insanely high amount of money for a
middle class Indian, but strangely, people
are buying such high-priced apartments. [Black money, I was told and which
is most likely true, is massive in amount]. The entire air in Bangalore was
very dense and grey in color, and I found breathing very tiring and difficult. Anyone
who thinks global warming is a hoax is a real moron. Besides, number of cars
and bikes is mind-boggling. I literally saw a sedan/SUV bring driven on the
sidewalk (foot-path as called in India) so as to get ahead of the traffic
crowding near a signal. These densely packed arrays of tall apartment
complexes, poor traffic & huge emission of black smoke from the vehicles
have culminated in a really suffocating weather, and the day-to-day expenses
are so high that it would be really very difficult to lead a decently
satisfying life in the city of Bangalore, at least that’s what I felt. But
someone rightly said that it’s the people who make a place attractive and
memorable. I gelled so spontaneously and effortlessly with the circle of my undergrad
friends there that in just three days time, I felt as if I had been living in
Bangalore for the last few years! It was just magical. I realized once again
that undergrad friends (especially sharing the same hostel/wing) are buddies
for life! Nothing replaces them.
Good
old Assam! I am not championing my native place for it has changed (for worse)
too, especially Guwahati which seemed like a pile of ***t. It’s become so much
of a melting pot of people from so many different places and communities that
if I speak to a random person on the street in Guwahati in my mother tongue
Assamese, then there’s high probability that he/she won’t understand the
language! I was super pissed that I was finding it so difficult to find a
person on the streets of Guwahati who could speak in fluent Assamese! No,
Guwahati no longer represents Assam in any way, at least to my brief
experience. But then I said ‘Good old Assam’ because the rest of Assam – at
least to wherever I traveled – is still so rustic and not so touched by the
ultra modern things, which I enjoyed and relished thoroughly. In my hometown of
Golaghat, there’s no shopping complex or mall; we still need to buy different
things from different dedicated shops – books and stationery from specific
local stationery shops, vegetables from the town market where vendors would be
yelling (or shouting) out the price of various items to attract customers who
would inherently bargain the prices anyways (I bargained too ! Gosh, can’t
believe I could manage to buy three lemons for Rs. 20 which the vendor was
trying to sell for Rs. 30 !!). Electrical appliances, bicycles, cooking
utensils, medicines, bakery stuffs – everything needed to be purchased from
dedicated local outlets which was so fun! I mean, it requires lot more time to
hop from shop to shop instead of say driving to Walmart or Kroger in Columbus
and buying everything at one place, but then people aren’t in a hurry here in
Golaghat. They have all their time, lazily crawling from shop to shop. And
absolutely no credit cards anywhere – everything just in cash! No humdrum of
ultra-modern life, no requirement of fast-paced activities to outperform the
others or to compete with someone else. People
would still take out their cattle to graze in the open fields and teenagers
would still gossip by roadside tea shops – something which I had enjoyed doing
myself long back on the same streets here. And the weather! God ! I couldn’t
believe the weather could be so amazing and sexy in Assam. There’s this yearly
breeze locally called Posuwa blowing
during the day which gives a soothing feeling, besides the sun isn’t burning
too hot. I mean, it’s really pleasant to take a walk even at noon or at 2 pm in
the afternoon. Loved it! And then it was spring time when nature literally was
at her best (in Assam at least). Not only exotic orchids start blooming
everywhere with a plethora of gorgeous colors, but also exotic birds would sing
with super captivating melody which transported me to an altogether different
kind of world! No exaggeration but this bird called Keteki in local language, sings (or arrives in Assam) only for like
two weeks in the year around mid April, and believe it or not, it sings in the
most melodious yet pensive and touching manner you could ever imagine! I really
do not know of any bird which can sing in so ethereal and melancholic tone as
this bird. I wish I could record its voice better but it usually sang sitting
atop distant trees mostly at early mornings or late nights and my iPhone just
couldn’t capture the weak intensity of the sound from within the premises of my home. Still, in the clip below, its
voice can be heard if listened to in maximum volume after ~ 5-7 secs of initial disturbance [the video is junk] –
it sings in rhythms of four syllables as can be clearly discerned. There’s a
cuckoo’s voice rhyming in the background between the Keteki’s rhythmic four-syllable song.
Assam
has its own set of frustrating problems though which can be infinitely pissing off. The
foremost is the highly irritating mosquito bites, and there are tons of them
around everywhere! No matter how clean your home is, surroundings outside your
home will still have stagnant water where mosquitoes breed and their irritating
humming sound as they hover around your body is very pissing off. Then they
bite. Measures such as mosquito coil/mats etc aren’t so great for health. And
the second major issue is load shedding, or frequent power outages that are so
unavoidable. Laptops and cell phones need to be kept fully charged or else who
knows when there’d be a load shedding for hours! Let me stop here, or else if I start writing about the terrible things in Assam, I will get super angry and I will never stop !
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