Get up. Get up. Watch that fountain dance.

Brindavan Gardens. Set some 17 km from Mysore, Brindavan Gardens is a garden complex nestling beneath the walls of some great big dam. Frequently used as the backdrop for Bollywood set piece dance manoeuvres, it is network of concrete paths, interspersed with concrete steps, and occasionally playgrounds for children (concrete animals), and a lot of grass. The star attraction is the range of fountains on offer, including, wait for it, a fountain that allegedly dances to music. Oh yes, everyone loves a dancing fountain.

The dancing fountain is not scheduled to strut its funky stuff until 7pm, so we arrive early to savour the wonders of the gardens themselves whilst it is still light. The usual rounds of cheek pinching and hair stroking commence with alarming speed.  Beth and Hannah stand, unexpectedly, on an ants’ nest and learn that, although they may be small, they can hurt quite a lot if they put their mind to it.

The kids are getting ratty by the time 7pm rolls around, and Hannah, sacrilegiously, suggests we leave without seeing the magical fountain. It is over a long bridge, currently hoarded by millions of Indians desperately ambling towards the magical dancing. And there are beasties in the air. In case you are wondering what this image is, it is a photo of winged beasties attacking a floodlight. Looks a bit like one of those diagrams from CERN. 

 

Anyway, I persuade Hannah that we cannot leave without seeing the dancing fountain. There are brief negotiations about who will carry which children, and then we cross the water and head up towards the fountain in a modern day haj. It glows in the darkness a bit like the final scene in the original ‘Star Trek – The Motion Picture’ when Kirk and his buddies go to meet VGER. I realise this is a fairly niche reference.

When we get there the fountain is clamoured, swamped, dripping if you will, with people. They have set up auditorium seating on three sides of it. I shouldn’t understate the disproportionality here. The fountain, at peak, is probably 10 meters high, and 4 metres wide -  not a huge fountain. There are approximately 2000 people watching the fountain. As the music swells, so does the fountain, pumping and dancing, lights glowing to the overloud Indian pop music crashing out.

I’m not saying it wasn’t a great fountain. Perhaps it could have been a momentary diversion at Disneyland, or a novelty in Milton Keynes. But these people love the fountain. There are oohs and aahs as the fountain alters state. There is something approaching religious mania as the fountain reaches its fervent, tallest, most magnificent state.

We stay for 2 minutes but get irritated by a guard incessantly blowing his whistle at people (and, more unusually, occasionally hitting them with a stick) and leave. Isla sleeps like a rock as we attempt to find our taxi man.

Gokulam. I spy another white person.

We  have now taken up residence in an apartment in Gokulam, a suburb of Mysore. It is becomingly increasingly famous for offering yoga studies, which means on average I now see one other white person a day (whereas previously it was none). It does mean some of the shops cater towards more children friendly foodstuffs.

A quick recap on the last week. We found this flat through an idle conversation with a rickshaw driver. Everyone knows someone here, so needless to say he ended up taking us on a ride of apartments he happened to know. Given these are all cash deals, I am not embarrassed to admit that it is fairly scary giving wodges of cash to people you barely know. Felt remarkably like a huge drug deal (or how I imagine huge drug deals feel). But we are installed now and all seems good.  We don’t have aircon, but we do have fans all over the place, and the heat doesn’t seem to be quite as horrendous these last few days. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have also employed the services of a cleaning lady. She washes our clothes (by hand, up on the roof), cleans the flat, does the washing up and takes the rubbish out. Every day. For 1500 rupees a month (about £22). I feel like a slave driver, but everyone seems quite happy with the arrangement.

The other day we went to Mysore zoo. We had certain fears about the state some of these animals might be in, or the enclosures they might be living in, but these proved to be unfounded. Occasional mobbing of the children once again. Isla and Beth have developed different defensive strategies: Beth goes all shy and tries to hide behind our legs. Isla says “No, man” irrespective of gender, and tries to hit them. I am trying to train Isla to say “1 rupee” to photo requests but so far it is not working.

 Transport everywhere is by autorickshaw (or tuk tuk if you are of a Thailand persuasion). These career through traffic, fighting against bicycles and pedestrians and cars and trucks. Rules of the road are definitely in size order. Haggling for the fares has become a lot easier now that we know roughly what we are talking about. To go in from Gokulam (where we live) into Mysore City (approx 12 mins), to go to the supermarket (poddle around for 30 mins), got to the bookshop (poddle around for 20 minutes) and then back again costs 100-120 rupees (about £1.70). 

The girls await outside the Airtel mobile phone shop whilst I sort out the SIMs. The ladies have given them these Disney balloons (to shut them up). Snow White bears a remarkable resemblance to Laura … Now we know what she was doing all that time in Calcutta.

MYKAPS. Charity begins abroad.

The charity I am volunteering with out here is called MYKAPS. My neighbour back in Cambridge (Mr Gavin Shelton, recently married, please step forward) used to be the country director for Raleigh International in India, and recommended a number of charities in the general area. As a result I have had a number of discussions with William D’Souza (the MD of MYKAPS) about how I might be able to help.

On Monday I went out to the village/town of Handpost (just before HD Kote) to go and see them. I am not planning to start until the beginning of May, but thought it would be good to get out there to see how it all works. How long can it take, I thought.

Sometimes you underestimate how difficult things will be here. Not because they are inherently difficult, but because a number of small obstacles add up into a progress gridlock.

Bus stations in India are swirling masses. After queuing ineffectively for 10 minutes at a window called ‘Counter 2’, I then ask an old dude who directs me to stand 6. Stand 6 does indeed have a sign saying HD Kote on it, which is promising, but buses rush past it, with conductors leaning out the doors, shouting their destinations. There are usually destinations on the fronts of the buses, but they are all in Kannada and therefore currently utterly incomprehensible. After asking several people (this takes the form of me holding my hand on my heart and saying “H.D. Kote” whilst looking earnest), everyone assures me that I am in the right place. Buses drive past. People get on and off. There is a almost constant honking of horns and shouting. Lots of people practice that ‘sit very low to the ground with flat feet’ that is almost impossible for us to achieve with years of physical therapy. I ask official looking men in army-esque uniforms if this is the right place. They all nod. Nodding, however, is a dangerous thing to read. People nod for a variety of reasons out her: ‘Yes’, ‘No’, ‘I do not understand any English and have no idea what you are talking about’, ‘I know you are incorrect but I feel it would be rude to point it out’ all can be met with a nod, or, conversely, the ubiquitous head wobble.

But eventually (after 45 mins) a bus does pull in and the swarming begins. I have always been quite pleased with my ability to worm my way to the front of queues but I am a pathetic amateur here. In England queue jumping is rude and therefore if done, you try no to make it look as though you are doing it. This usually involves minimal eye contact. But here there is just no concept of a queue.  So it isn’t rude to swarm. Although I have notice that man are far more likely to queue jump than women. Which confuses me. (I know this all sounds frightfully British).

So now I am on the bus and trying to work out what the rules are. Is it rude if I sit next to a woman? Should I sit on the left or the right of the bus to maximise my chances of getting off at Handpost? Should I try and sit next to someone who speaks English well (and what exactly would they look like)?

I end up plonked at the back as the bus honks and poddles its way out of Mysore. My ticket (22 rupees, 42 km) once again bears witness to India’s love of administration, replete with terms and conditions of travel. I decide to recruit the man next to me as my Handpost arrival adviser. To do this I place my hand earnestly on my heart (always important) and look at him whilst saying ‘Handpost’ in an interrogative fashion. The man nods. I am pleased.

We soon escape the bustle of Mysore and are out in the countryside. The red brick soil is occasionally used to make red bricks and the road is shared with harnessed cows, bicycles, and wandering or possibly wondering old men on foot. The road condition is good and I start doing mental calculations as to how quickly we are travelling and when we might stumble across Handpost, Occasionally I practise my earnest charm on my neighbour again. “Handpost?” I say making gestures to the future, and he nods. We seem to have been travelling for ages when my new found mate just gets up and gets off the bus. No “good luck noble citizen in your quest for Handpost”. No “do not fear, pale man, Handpost lies just over yonder hill”. Nothing. I become concerned he has never understood my Handpost requests. A couple more km drift by and I approach another of my neighbours (you know the drill). He nods wisely and then gets up and sits in a different seat on the bus.

We pull into some largish village thing so I turn to the only man left anywhere near me. He confirms this is indeed the oft sought(and rarely found) Handpost and I disembark. A cow takes an interest in me.

I call Mr D’Souza and he directs me to their ‘campus’. “Just ask anyone. Everyone knows where we are”, he says. I do ask anyone and a man directs me straight on. “Yes, yes”, with head wobble. As I am heading out of town, pondering whether the absence of buildings and people should be taken as a good sign, a small boy runs up behind and tugs my shirt “MYKAPS?”, he says (although how he knows who I am, or where I am going, is a mystery).

“Oh yes”, I reply, confidently pointing out of town. He points back to where I have just come from. On the way back we meet up again with my original misdirector and everyone smiles and nods.

William D’Souza is a west coast Indian has worked for developmental charities all his working life. A sprightly 60 year old, he has committed himself to helping others, but he does so with a grace and humility that I find instantly attractive. MYKAPS as a charity spun off from the larger charity MYRADA in 2008, but with still the same broad aims: agricultural support, organic  certification, water cleanliness and sanitation.

We talk about this and that and try and work out how my skills might be used in MYKAPS. I tell him that I am interested in how development works on the ground. And this is perhaps the crux of what I am trying to achieve here: people have quite rightly told me that if I want to do the most good for the most people, it makes far more sense to stay at home in the UK and either earn lots of money and give it to charity, or work in a more ‘business’ like way for a charity, supporting remote operations which are far better handled by local people who understand the terrain. But, and I am sure I am being selfish in some ways here, I need to know how these things work for real. What works and what doesn’t. It’s all very well having bright ideas in some well lit, highly sanitised office in Covent Garden, but what actually is achievable on the ground. And then maybe later I will work back in the UK. But first I need to see this. To work in a small, focussed way.

So I try and explain this to William. I want to see what you do, and how do you do it. He has concerns that my presence and requirements will interfere with their everyday work. Which is a fair concern. So we come up with the following tasks:

1. Write role descriptions for each of the people who work in the Handpost campus (approx 38). This will require interviewing them and seeing their projects in the flesh, and trying to piece it all together.

2. Redesign their website to show more clearly what they are involved in.

3. Write proposals for funding to apply for grants etc.

I am pleased with this. Whilst it is quite administrative, it allows me to burrow into each person’s projects and really get to understand what they do. No doubt it will be difficult at first, but this is what I am here to understand. MYKAPS has, in general, moved from internationally sourced funding to locally (ie nationally) sourced funding. For the website stuff, and the funding requests, I am not sure how to appeal to an Indian market, but we shall see.

Raleigh International do work with MYKAPS and William mentions he is going to check up on one of their projects. Do I want to come along?

So we leap into the Mahindra and away we drive. And so there I am, nattering away in the back of a truck with William about happiness vs income, water sanitation issues (55% of people in the local environment do not use a toilet of any description leading to cross contamination issues), and it strikes that I am really happy right now, here in this deserted landscape, bumping through potholes. And that this really is what this trip is about.

When the Portuguese missionaries came to India, along the south west coast stretching down from Goa, the Indians they ‘converted’ didn’t have surnames. So they gave them all the name ‘da Souza’. I think it means ‘priest’

We arrive at the Raleigh project. Raleigh International is a youth development charity that takes groups of 18-25 year old people from the UK and places them in projects for 3 months, usually in rural and remote areas. They usually do 3 projects in their 3 months. They work them hard: the projects are dry (by which I mean alcohol free rather than arid), they sleep on hard floors and  they get one day off a week. But it’s a fantastic opportunity to work in extremely remote areas, but with good levels of support and safety. And to meet other people of their own age, but often of extremely different backgrounds.

Hannah built a school and other notable charitable items with Raleigh in Namibia in 2000, whilst I was drinking my way through Zimbabwe and turning down prostitutes in Mozambique. It appears I am late to the charitable party.

I realise this is quite long, so I will break up proceedings with a picture.

“Your blog bores me” it almost seems as if she is saying. “Get on with it”.

 

We rock up at the project . A field in the middle of nowhere. The track just stops and we leap out to see a group of about 6 young, tanned British people digging holes in the terracotta earth with picks, swinging dwarfen shovels through the air and churning up the ground. I feel pale and white and gawky and like the kid at school who never did any sport. William beams at them in his Indian way and says “I am William, the director of MYKAPS”. They smile and nod politely. “And this”, he says, gesturing at me “is Nick. From England”. They nod politely at me. I attempt to stand more casually, as if I am not assessing their hole digging progress. They have that look in their eyes that says “Who the hell are you?”. I decline to elaborate at this point.

William’s agricultural project manager explains what they are doing. The farmer is trying to grow mangoes and they are helping him out. The field slopes down to a huge lake at the bottom, and when the rains come, the water just rushes down, taking the topsoil with it. Raleigh are digging ditches perpendicular to the hill slope, that act as drains, catching the water and topsoil at regular intervals. It is hard, hot work.

Mangoes take five years to produce fruit. Clearly this is a long time and therefore farmers require a mixed portfolio to produce output in different seasons. We are in year two. But there is a problem. The elephants who live in the woods surrounding the lake (of which I am reliably informed there are 5200), have found the mango plantation and come at night to eat it. The word is out. Anti elephant measures have, so far, been ineffective. They are considering growing chillies around the borders to irritate the elephants’ trunks.

And after suitable pleasantries, and smiles and nods, we leave the project and return to the MYKAPS campus for hot, sweet tea. William introduces me to some of his staff “Nick will be working with us for 4 months” and I am made to feel very welcome.

I hop back to town on a private bus, with three of us jammed in on the front seat. The sun drops away behind the hills, but the honking and beeping and swerving continues long into the night.

Mysore. Home from home.

We leave in a taxi at 10am and head out of Bangalore. There is a lot of traffic, but other people’s traffic is so much more interesting than your own. We have rigged up the children’s car seats in the back of taxi man’s car, and soon the kids are entertaining everyone with rousing renditions of ‘Here we go round the Mulberry Bush’ and the oft mentioned ‘Wheels on the Bus’.

The journey takes about 3 hours, and we break in the middle to sample the delights of Coffee Day. Coffee Day is a chain of, unsurprisingly, coffee dispensing outlets. Air conditioning, toilets, everything. Beth picks a chocolate donut and, mysteriously, it appears minutes later heated.  But it is surprisingly good, and everyone is happy until a lump of it hurtles down Beth’s dress. There are tears.

Coming into Mysore I am quite apprehensive. We have chosen to live for 4 months in a city that I have never seen. Everything before this (Dubai, Bangalore) has been a transit destination. Dispensable. But this is our ultimate destination and I start to worry about whether it will be suitable for Hannah and the kids. Whether there will be enough to do here.

The Maurya Residency hotel awaits and also seems to be expecting us. Clever old email. The room is quite nice and has aircon and many switches and dials by the bed. Indian TV bemoans the lack of awareness of how lethal packaged ice-creams can be.

We walk out into Mysore proper and it seems quite hectic and busy and unforgiving – like all Indian cities. But there is a good vibe and it is cleaner than most Indian cities I have been too. Rickshaws bobble about and the incessant beep-beep of their horns mixes in with the usual noises of wandering cows and people haggling and, less expectedly, a distant mosque.

We walk to the main Mysore market and walk through narrow alleys of dyes. People try and sell us various things, and we seek refuge amongst the banana sellers who seem altogether  less insistent and have had the foresight to cover their alley from the sun. One of the dye salesman paints a flower on the back of Beth’s hand (pink of course) and there is a very real sense of otherness which is very welcome. When we hit the flower stalls, we buy a jasmine necklace for Beth and steal a few flowers for Isla.

 

In the evening we take a rickshaw to the South gate of Mysore Palace. At the weekends they light up the palace for an hour in the evening, and if you can get past the slightly Disney aspect of it all, it’s really beautiful.

 

 

There are millions of families wandering around, and we start to get mobbed again. This can take several forms: discrete pictures being taken secretly on camera phones, “please sir may I have a photo of your daughter”, “baby, baby what is your name baby?”, occasional grabbing of Isla without so much as a word and hoisting her up in the air towards an expectant cameraman.  The kids start off happy enough but Beth soon develops understandable shyness and latterly Isla starts to dole out “No, man” and “No, photo” sentiments directly.

 

 

Beth finds relief from the still incessant heat in the fountains.

All in all, a very happy, successful first day.

Mobbing in the children’s garden

Breakfast, somewhat embarrassingly, is at McDonald’s. Beth and Isla have a happy meal with Pizza McPuff. This is purportedly a pizza type item in the configuration of a spring roll. Both children reject it off the bat. Isla, however, continues her love affair with ketchup and some bread is consumed. The happy meal confers upon is the truly hideous gift of a black spiderman toy with moving part web emission. We leave it quietly on the tray when we leave. As we marshal shoes and sunhats on the steps of McDonalds, a staff member runs out, grateful to reunite us with our clearly forgotten spider thing. Beth is ecstatic.

Cubbon Park beckons and we spend some time wandering up and down a road being stared at. The kids are once again proving popular and passers by seem to want to try and grab their cheeks. Isla seems to get the main focus, but Beth can be targetted as a backup.

But, lo and behold, there is a children’s park and after being relieved of a few rupees, we are aboard a miniature train whizzing around the park. Beth and Isla love it and it is a relief for them to find something here they can easily recognise as fun.

Later flashmobbing occurs with groups of up to 15  people standing around Isla and grabbing at her. It is all well-meant but quite scary. Beth takes to hiding behind our legs. Isla just looks bemused.

We lollop back to the hotel room, and do very littel for the rest of the day. I make brief expeditions to try and ascertain how much it should cost by taxi to Mysore the next day, forcing 1 Rupee coins (about 2p – the highest denomination a payphone will take) into yellow boxes.

We eat at Ruby Tuesday’s. Also not at all Indian, but entirely edible. A Ukranian is scheduled to perform a set within the restaurant, but we escape before he has a chance to turn on his amp.

Isla rejects her tent. At least she is consistent.

Poppy seeds and codeine.

We arrive at Dubai airport at some ungodly hour of the morning. They pretend that it is breakfast time, but as we all know, airlines manipulate flight times and time zones partially to avoid having to give you extra meals, but mainly just to hurt your mind.

Given that our buggy is in some baggage handling system, we are locomotive-less, but Emirates have thought of this and provide buggies for use in the airport. Isla is very pleased. Dubai International Airport oozes gold stores and all the usual expensive tat that seems necessary these days. We have four hours to kill. It is dull.

There is a moment of mild controversy when I need to change Isla’s nappy. Dubai seems quite keen on segregation of the sexes, so I am unsure whether to wander into a ladies toilet (beheading, surely), or a male toilet? The answer is provided by the unexpected appearance of a female handicapped toilet with a helpful sign “Male assistance is allowed”.

Finally our transfer flight to Bangalore is ready for the off and we leave behind us the oil fuelled building collapsing soufflé that is UAE and head off for a curry.

Arrival at Bangalore is strangely muted. I am expecting searing heat, and hordes of touts tugging at our luggage and dragging us off to road knackered cars, but instead it is clean marble and air conditioning and name badged attendants being helpful and calm and measured. I am almost disappointed. After a slight tussle with an ATM, we are rupeed up and ready to rickshaw (as they do not say). The usual fears emerge:

• if it is 67 rupees to the pound how quickly will I lose track of the zeroes?
• have I just been ripped off for that taxi ride?
• will everyone steal my luggage as I get in, or get out of the taxi?
• how many bits of luggage am I supposed to have now?
• should I tip the taxi driver?
• if Einstein issued three papers in 1905 (special relativity, the existence of atoms as shown by Brownian motion, and something about the photoelectric effect) whilst working as a patent clerk, how come I cannot be organised enough to pack enough pants?

We find a vehicle to accommodate our seemingly increasingly sized luggage (I suspect our packing fraction has decreased), and off we plunge into the outskirts of Bangalore. With a population of 6m and growing alarmingly quickly, Bangalore, (or Bengaluru as she has now reverted), apparently means ‘Town of Boiled Beans’ (says the underinspired Lonely Planet), although these beans are not in evidence. What is in evidence, however, are the cars, and the swerving and diving, ducking and jiving that is Indian traffic. I had forgotten. The trick is to detach your retina (figuratively) and remember that you are not in control of the vehicle. There is nothing you can do about it. Be calm. Breathe. And brace occasionally.

Church Street Inn (just off the Mahatma Ghandi road) has received my various emails and has a room for us which is fine. It has aircon (a blessed release) and we set up the room with the kids’ travel tents hovering on blankets.

We eat at Koshy’s, and I have a chicken Biryani. The immediate problem with the kids and food comes out of the woodwork. They are not keen on spicy food. They eat bits of bread.

It’s hot. Really hot. And I wonder how we will cope with this heat for four months.

The kids are proving a big hit with the ladies on the table next to us, and there is lots of cooing and offering of hands and smiling. The kids look bemused. They do not get this level of attention in Pizza Express.

I clock my first wobbly head, and it is a good one.

And so to bed. Isla soundly rejects her tent. She sleeps on our bed. Not a good start.

Go

We get up early-ish to start on the end. I hesitantly check my tiles for efflorescence (of which, I am pleased to say, there is none - yet). Hannah’s parents arrive early to help out in any way they can. Alison takes the children out of harm’s way. Hannah and Robert pack all the stuff which drips off every surface in the formerly orange room into a series of armoured stuff sacks. So many questions: will we be able to buy (delete as applicable) tampons, nappies, books, pasta, any food the kids will actually eat?
Martin the builder comes round for the final hand over and we shuffle through mostly built rooms pointing out hairline cracks and doors that don’t quite meet in the middle.

There is that menace in the air. The menace of an immutable deadline hanging at the end of the day. Exciting but unyielding.  We get a look at the final luggage in total. It is quite scary. I make paltry attempts to weight it using our bathroom scales by holding each bag in turn, but this only goes to prove how I need to lose weight and not the luggage. For reference the luggage tally looks a little like this:

• Maclaren stroller buggy thing
• Two car seats
• Four mini ruck sacks (hand luggage)
• Two big travel rucksacks
• An appropriately named holdall (weighing a glorious 29kg)
• Scary blue bag (containing travel tent cot things)
• Five pack of Chewitts (my contribution to the packing effort)

Alison and Robert have also kindly agreed to drive us down to Gatwick. Somewhat later than our scheduled time, we pile into the combined might of a Renault Scenic and a Citroen Xsara Picasso which whisk us away from the academia of Cambridge and into the more gritty reality of Gatwick North Terminal. After the usual gut wrenching pain of Short Stay car park costs, we are at the Emirates check in desk. The lady eyes our assembled luggage with suspicion.

“Have you packed all this yourself” she asks in her usual how-to-catch-a-terrorist-with-alarmingly-simple-questions voice. I lie and say yes. She adds up all the luggage weights and writes them down on a bit of paper. She has that look on her that is reminiscent of the time you just popped into Kwik Fit for a new tire and ended up spending £500 on new brakes.

The sum total of our expeditionary force is 96kg. Under one of your normal poxy airlines, this would be problematic with a paltry 20kg for humans and a toothbrush for Isla. But no, Emirates, the sheiks of the air, come through with a cracking 30kg per person luggage allowance, and so we laugh mockingly at the check in lady and her tutting and oohing. Our luggage is deemed too squashy and unusual to be put on normal check in belts, and we force it down the outsize belt with other people’s guitars and golf clubs.
Robert and Alison, who have been worth their weight in gold, disappear off and it all starts to get a little more real.

Gatwick is eerily quiet and we feast on possibly the last piece of beef I will see for many months before drifting through X-ray machines and ladies assaulting you with perfume testers. I have developed a strange habit of always spraying Duty Free aftershave onto my wrists in departure lounges. Beth tells me I smell like a girl.

And then it’s that good bit where you jump all the queues and get to go on the plane first. At least you think it’s good until your children rebel and starting attacking the seats in front of them because they are bored, bored, bored and they have been on this plane ‘for ever’. But there are clever individual TVs that play children’s films and Beth settles down to watch Angelina Ballerina. Occasionally she leans forward to pause the movie (untrained) whilst adjusting her viewing angle. Isla quickly locates the stewardess button and presses it repeatedly.

And then we are off. Up in the air. Hannah looks knackered. We have made the foolish mistake, often made by people at their weddings, in assuming that the departure was the end of something, something to be achieved, when clearly it was only the beginning of something. Something much larger. I do not partake of inflight alcohol. This is a rare thing.