Show me the way..

It’s been more a week since I got back from Bangalore and sorry for not posting any updates. Things just get busy here and finding solo time is nearly impossible as I am always surrounded by family and they just don’t understand what all this fuss is all about checking email everyday or updating info. They are starting to understand why I had spent many hours in the internet cafés on my previous visits. I am not missing TV here since most people (men and women) are hooked on many Serials (soaps) that start at 7pm and goes until midnight. They are stopping their serials to entertain me.. and I am also rotating house to house each day/night giving each family enough time to catch up with their soap and a break from me hee hee.

Bangalore was a great visit.. A very rich city, in the state of Karnataka where the language Kanada is spoken. The script and the language are completely different from Tamil. So we depend on speaking English.. No one speaks Hindi which is the national language (language wars in the south – similar to Quebec and now no one speaks Hindi).

Bangalore is well above sea level hence cooler climate. At nights in the winter it drops down to 13c… the early morning I had arrived it was 17c, felt lovely compared to Hot Nagai. My cousin Sundar and I got a lovely 4 star hotel for the price of 2 star since the owner knows my uncle that runs the NGO. I was very happy to get cereal with milk, yogurt and fresh fruits for breakfast. First day (Sunday 21) we just chilled and shopped until we dropped.

Monday we rented a car with a driver from the hotel (In India you can’t drive, you wouldn’t want to drive – that’s another blog). Very cheap, 8 hours 800 rupees, 100 rupees = $2.30, and visited 6 agencies. 3 out of 6 were Christian run agencies and had excellent sites and facilities for the children. It’s weird I am getting the run around from Hindu agencies. All the children looked very healthy and happy. They all said hello but they were all committed to parents in India and abroad already and staying the agencies with foster parents until their parents arrive and take them with them.

One agency was very kind and registered me on their book, my first! Most just take the application and say “thank you, we will call you when we have a child” but one particular agency registered me and gave me a receipt for registering. They offered me siblings - 2 boys, one is 5 and another 3. Not sure I could look after two boys at once.. So I declined. They offered me another boy who is 4 but his mental capacity is of a 3 year old and has problem using his left hand that was fractured a year ago and needs his hand reset and can’t speak. Fractered hand is fixable but not sure about the mental capacity of a 3 year old when he is 4 and he can’t speak - so I declined as well. They will call me if they find a healthier child.

Other organizations accepted my application but didn’t have a child to offer. Some of the waiting list could take over 2 years since many Indian couples (from India) are waiting and they get first priority. They really encouraged me push forward in Tamil Nadu (my home state). I was really excited about Bangalore and I was quite blue going empty handed or without an offer.

It took us two days to cover the all six agencies and total of 10 hours, just driving since Bangalore’s traffic is horrendous. We spent most of the hours in the car.. Thank god the weather was cool so we didn’t mind being the car otherwise we would have been cooked in the heat.

Later part of Tuesday we visited Tipu Sultan’s palace, Sultan was a Muslim king who tolerated Hindus and worked together to abolish the British Empire. Lovely palace, will post pictures later. Later we visited the “bull temple” – a temple dedicated to the Bull – vehicle for lord Shiva, large bull carved on a single boulder, quite lovely. We also visited lord Ganasha temple - another behemoth boulder carved for the Elephant God and a behemoth lord Shiva statue temple. I guess Bangalore = big, all the temples are huge or the carved deity are huge. Same night we returned back to Nagai on another all night shaky bus for 12 hours.