Back from Bangalore

We did a 10 day visit of Blore. Even a short 1 hour flight is no fun when you're lugging 3 kids along. But as always spending time in my mom's house is great - I can really relax, and kids have a great time. We had our nanny Leela join us (she traveled by train). She seemed to like it there too, plus she earned extra and got a lot of festival goodies (it was Gowri-Ganesha time during our visit).

We're sort of getting settled now, although you would not think it if you saw our house. We've managed to get the boxes down to 1 room in the ground floor now, but the room in the 1st floor is still a big warehouse. I even have a couple of friends, courtesy Anirudh - they are moms of Anirudh's friends at school. One of them has proposed shopping expeditions, trips to the zoo with the kids etc., have to see how that pans out. I think in the phase of life that we are now, making new friends is sort of dicey - they have to be exactly the same phase of life as us, otherwise our obsession with our kids will drive them crazy (or bore them to tears). Fortunately one of the moms has a 3 year old and a 10 month old, *and* they recently returned from the US - eerily similar to our circumstances!!

I'm pestering Deepak to take me out to see a movie. The twins (plus Leela, our nanny) can easily be dropped off at the in-laws' for a few hours. Anirudh is not so easy to "dispose" of - he is used to going with us everywhere, but hopefully we'll give him the slip one of these days. I want to see "Salaam Namaste" - apparently it is quite good.

In other news, someone from my previous employer has sent email enquiring if I'm interested in working for them again. I've responded in the positive, but I doubt if they know that I don't live in Bangalore. This person is not India-based, so they don't know of all the logistical issues with working remotely in India - easily surmountable according to me, but not according to top management in Bangalore.

We finally got broadband today (yeah!). Speed is not great (100 kbps or less), but at least our phone line is not tied up anymore.

I'm quite mobile in the streets of Marredpally nowadays, have to test my driving skills in "real" traffic one of these days. I truly believe that automatic transmission is the way to go in this stop and go chaos on Indian roads.

One sad thing is that kids no longer seem to come out and play here anymore. Anirudh is quite starved for playmates around our house, and nowadays spends a lot of time telling stories to himself. The stories are quite intricate and he can literally talk for hours. I don't know what this trait indicates - that whether he has a vivid imagination, or that he is becoming more of an introvert. Anyways, once the twins are a little older, he won't lack for playmates anymore.

Hurricane Katrina got a lot of coverage in media here. While most people are sympathetic to the people who suffered due to it, there is definitely a mild feeling of ... I don't know what the exact word is... that the US is as chaotic, or ill-organised or ill-prepared as any other country to face these type of disasters. There were emails being forwarded endlessly about how Bombay coped better with the rains here than New Orleans.. I'm not sure if the comparison is valid, given how vastly different the topographies of the two cities are..

NY Times now requires subscription to access Maureen Dowd's column. She is one of my favorite columnists. I can read other columnists like Tom Friedman and Paul Krugman in syndication here, but somehow Mo Dowd has not caught the Indian public's imagination here.

As I type this, Deepak and I are talking about how we miss two things still - the Wall Street Journal and Don Imus. We are right now getting 4 papers daily and 6 papers on Sunday as we're trying to figure out which ones we like. But one thing is clear - none of them have the kind of in-depth reporting that WSJ does. The Hindu comes the closest, but its opinion pages are very left-wing. Its fortnightly magazine, Frontline, covered the Katrina hurricane in depth this time - the cover story was titled "America's shame". That about says it all.