Memories of an American Life – First Two Years in Houston

This is Part 2 of a 3-part series on my life in America spanning Houston, Chicago and SF Bay Area. Part 1 was Memories of an American Life – 4 years in Chicago. I arrived in Houston, Texas on August 16, 1992 with one friend (my friend & classmate from BIT Ranchi – Namita Raghavan). I left the city in October 1994 (headed to Chicago) with a Masters degree, several dozen good friends, and plenty of good memories. Below are some of my fond recollections:

• Seeing Namita’s friendly face  at the airport.
• My first experience of American freeways in Soumya’s tiny 1992 Dodge Colt with cars whizzing by on both sides.
• Eating my first Pizza Hut pizza at Namita’s Cambridge Oaks apartment the evening I arrived. 
• Experiencing campus life at University of Houston during the first semester.
• Starting my book collection via Houston Public Library’s annual book sale at the Astrodome. In Shiv’s words that day, I bought books like people buy potatoes.
• Teaching Fortran Programming to a class of 45+ sophomores. Enuf said – I survived!
• Interviewing at Compaq for an internship and learning that they had so many employee groups moving offices, they needed to build a system to optimize it.
• Getting a summer internship at Grumman Technical Services and a brief exposure to a quaint 4GL called Peregrine Systems.
• Buying my first car – a maroon 1984 manual transmission Volkswagen Jetta.
• Tequila shots with Naveen, Shiv, Asmi, and a Mexican couple (pursuing Ph.D in Economics). Btw, no self-respecting Mexican does ’shots’ – they drink their Tequila straight up.
• Singlehandedly demolishing a large Pizza Hut pizza in under 30 minutes. My witness and co-glutton was my dear friend Naveen who, as I was his witness, also demolished a large pizza.
• 36-hour Greyhound trip from Houston to Charlottesville, Virginia. Developed a fresh appreciation for vegetarian choices available in large cities (read “Houston”).
• Exciting day at Astroworld – my first trip to a Six Flags theme park.
• Continuing Soumya’s fine tradition of driving the 41 mile 610 Interstate loop in the wee hours of the morning as a ‘reward’ for completing assignments.
• Driving Soumya’s Dodge Colt on 610E in the left lane and discovering that the brakes had stopped working. Thanks to my non-panicky copilot (was it Gorty?), managed to execute a sequence of nervy lane changes which eventually brought us safely to the shoulder.
• Renting a Toyota Camry and driving nearly continuously (for 36 hours) to Minneapolis. My cousin Swarna (who was doing her MBA at Baylor University, Waco) was the fearless copilot. Getting my first ever speeding ticket at Huntsville (just 60 miles north of Houston) was the rite of passage. And to think that if Soumya hadn’t loaned me a fuzz-buster, I might have been clocked at 100mph!
• Road trip to Tampa, Florida over a Labor Day Weekend with Soumya. Rental car: Pontiac Grand Prix with a moon-roof and fancy steering controls. We perfected the art of “zero stop” driving.
• Awesome trip to the Big Bend National Park with Soumya & Naveen. We fell asleep in the car in front of the Visitor Center and woke up to see the majestic mountains up close. We dined in Alice’s Restaurant (a vegetarian restaurant to boot) in Terlingua – aka “Ghost Town”.

100 Days in Bangalore (Part 2)

Continued from 100 Days in Bangalore (Part 1)…

If you’ve read Why we are moving back to India or Brother or Best Friend, you know that one of the big reasons for moving to India was to spend more time with the family. My parents’ two-week visit in October provided the first treat on that front. Li’l A was meeting his grandparents for the first time but it only took him a few hours to ‘bond’ – for the next two weeks the grandparents were twirling to his tune. An unexpected bonus during my parents’ visit was that my brother also made a business trip to Bangalore and spent a few evenings with us. He also made another business trip in November when we spent some quality time together. I’m completing this post from my parents’ flat in Vijayawada where we’re spending our Christmas + New Years holidays. I can’t recall the last time we’ve had such an enjoyable, relaxing and satisfying family vacation. 

Health Check: Ever since our decision to move to India (and specifically to Bangalore), asthma has been like the proverbial Sword of Damocles.  I had struck an optimistic note in Asthma, Bangalore and me…  but deep in my heart I feared it was more a case of when rather than if I would be afflicted with asthma again. I’m relieved to report that four months after moving to Bangalore, I’ve managed to remain asthma-free. Sure – I’ve been running a few miles twice weekly (on most weeks) and avoiding the traffic pollution diligently but I still consider myself fortunate so far. All else pales into insignificance — a few episodes of cold, cough & throat infection and a particularly nasty case of mouth ulcers (which lasted a whole month). The rest of the family has also had a relatively decent health report in the past four months. Li’l A had a minor ear infection, one throat infection and several bouts of cold & cough. S also had a few bouts of cold and cough but nothing serious. 

Friends in Bangalore:  What’s life without friends, eh? We landed in Bangalore comforted with the knowledge that many of our friends were already Bangalore residents. Our friends spanned the whole gamut of our different location circles – friends from Bokaro Xaviers, Vizag Timpany School, BIT Ranchi classmates, Jamshedpur TISCO colleagues, Houston, Chicago, SF Bay Area, ex-Yahoos. I even discovered an old squash partner from Decathlon Club, Santa Clara who relocated to Bangalore 6 years ago. I threw a surprise birthday party for P on the second weekend and managed to get our group of friends from Vizag/Bokaro/Bay Area for the surprise. We met with Rajnish and Meena (friends from Vizag) during Diwali. Our most regular interactions have been with Raheja Residency neighbours Gayatri and Srinath – since they moved from Bay Area same time as us, we are always comparing notes. We also met up with Mekin (fellow ex-Yahoo) and his wife (Raheja residents), Jagan (another Yahoo-Bay Area colleague who transferred to the Bangalore office), and Anirban (BIT classmate who moved to Bangalore in 2002). It’s not an exaggeration to say that every month I’m discovering yet another friend in Bangalore.

Friends from America: During our Farewell USA Road Trip, our midwest and east coast friends predicted that they’d see us more often in Bangalore than if we had remained in Bay Area. If the last 4 months are any indication, their prediction is right-on. Our friend from Dallas (Nanda) was in Hyderabad for a month to teach a course at ISB – he visited our place for a weekend and we had a mini-Bokaro reunion. Then there was Sanjeev (our friend from Palo Alto, California) who was in Bangalore for a business trip – he spent an evening with us. Amit (my BIT classmate & Yahoo colleague) came to spend time with his parents in Indiranagar and we met for lunch. Met with Venky (another Bay Area friend & Yahoo-colleague) at his parents’ house in Basavanagudi in Nov. Murali (our friend from Chicago) was in Bangalore for a business+personal trip and we spent an evening together. In early December, we spent several evenings together with our New Jersey friends (Subrata & Sujata) during their Bangalore visit. Since Subrata’s parents live in the same Raheja Residency apartment block as us, it was extra convenient too.

Eating Places: We certainly expected a superior culinary experience in Bangalore and so far we’ve not been disappointed. Here are some of the places that made an impression:

• MTR: Our first family trip to this venerable Bangalore eatery was not an earth-shattering experience but the Diwali special MTR lunch at Adobe blew me away!
• Sukh Sagar: A non-frills 100% vegetarian place with good idlis, dosas & sandwiches monopolized our dining during the initial Raheja weeks as our kitchen was still being established. We still visit this place occasionally. 
• More Than Parathas: If you like rich & yummy Punjabi food and snacks, you’ll love this place. First visit was with my work group. Resolved to return with the family in tow.
• Mast Kalandar: 100% vegetarian restaurant chain started by a Wipro alumni couple. Food for P’s surprise party was catered from here. Lot of great parathas and paneer delicacies. Their shikhanji is awesome! 
• Bon South: A high-end South Indian fusion restaurant which we finally visited in early December. My mouth ulcers handicapped taste buds couldn’t fully appreciate it but P and the kids loved it. We are definitely returning – probably for a buffet this time.
• Wisdom Lounge: Recommended by Mekin, this place has shot to the top of our ‘most favored dining destination’ list. A very quaint home-style restaurant with a lounge decor and excellent food (deserves a separate review).
• Cafe Terra: Cute Italian/Thai/Indian cafe & restaurant owned and started by Ranjeet Ranade – another Bay Area Indian American who returned to Bangalore 3 years ago (more in a separate review).

Jethro Tull at Palace Grounds, Bangalore

I did the following short li’l summary of my Tull concert experience in the 100 Days in Bangalore post. What I’m adding to this post is the concert discography (which I had tweeted) and a few Qik videos which you should check out only if you are a Tull die-hard (there are no audiophile or videophile gems here).

Thanks to my dear biwi, I was alerted about Tull’s Dec 2 concert in Bangalore at the Palace Grounds. I couldn’t believe it! If I needed a musical ‘welcome home’, this was it. I’ve been to 4 prior Tull concerts (three in Chicago, Illinois and one in San Jose, California) and I don’t miss an opportunity when Tull comes a touring. My dear biwi (bless her heart again!) was going to hold the home fort on Dec 2 (a weekday evening) while I indulged myself. Found several colleagues who were Tull enthusiasts so eventually we had a gang of five. A dear friend from SF Bay Area had to cancel his business trip due to illness so spot#5 got filled in the eleventh hour by another dear friend (from my Xaviers Bokaro days). Considering that this concert took place 5 days after the Mumbai attacks, we headed to the concert with some mixed feelings but ended up having a rollicking time. Ian Anderson was at his entertaining best. It was not a classic Tull concert – Part 1 was Anoushka Shankar and her troupe, Part 2 was classic Tull, and Part 3 was a fusion with Tull and Anoushka. The encore closer was a very unique and incredible live variation of Locomotive Breath with sitar and bansoori blending in exquisitely.

Discography (Part 2 onwards):

• Living in the past
• Serenade to a cuckoo
• Nursie
• Too old to rock and roll, too young to die. (Ian dedicated this to 65 yr old Sir Mick Jagger)
• New day yesterday
• Heavy Horses
• Thick as a Brick (abridged version)
• Aqualung
• (Part 3) Tea with Anoushka
• (Part 3) Celtic Cradle? A fusion of celtic, irish & indian music. Tull with Anoushka (on sitar) & Tanmoy Bose (on tabla).
• (Part 3) Mother Goose with Anoushka and 2 block flutes. 
• (Part 3) Little Glass folk – very orchestral fusion piece which eventually turned out to be real good.
• Bouree
• Locomotive Breath. Adding the bansuri, sitar & tabla was a GREAT touch to this seminal live performance! 

Great fusion piece from Part 3: 

Another great fusion piece from Part 3: 

Locomotive Breath Live Fusion with Bansoori and Sitar: 

A li’l bit of Heavy Horses:

A New Day Yesterday:

And… taking the bow at the closer:

Masti ki paathshala (for the First Grader Wannabe)

(Note: This started off as a school-centric post for both our 5.5 year old and the almost 3-year old but is now focused entirely on the former.) 

We had seen Rang De Basanti earlier this year so the song Masti ki Paathshala was still fresh in my mind. Masti ki Paathshala (in Hindi) translates to School of Fun. Our goal was to find a school with the right balance between academic rigor and masti. When I made the 2-week trip to India in June, I was fortunate to meet a VC in Bangalore. This VC had moved back to India 3 years earlier and had done a thorough research of the Bangalore schools. He shared his perspective in a most useful way. He categorized the four major school boards (ICSE, CBSE, Karnataka State Board, and IGCSC) across two dimensions:

• Emphasis on theory vs. practical education
• Strictness of the teaching staff (e.g. “Very Strict” = rule by fear, “Mild” = American-style)

This is how he drew the table:

School Board	% Theory	Teaching Strictness
State Board	95%	Very Strict
CBSE	70%	Strict
ICSE	50%	Mild-Strict
IGCSE	20%	Mild

Most Indians are aware of the first three types of school boards. The last one was unfamiliar to me until we started planning our move to India in full earnest. IGCSE (International General Certificate of Secondary Education), started in 1988, is a two-year programme, spread over Class 9 and 10, and leads to the final examinations offered every year in May and November. It is conducted by two UK assessment bodies: Edexcel (also known as London Examinations) and Cambridge International Examinations (CIE). IGCSE is described as a balanced curriculum and a flexible course of study with an emphasis on practical approach to teaching and learning. This Rediff article provides a good primer on IGCSE.

Both P and I had attended ICSE schools and neither of us had any complaints about the ICSE board. What I recall is that there was always a healthy debate on whether CBSE or ICSE schools were better. I vaguely recall reading that CBSE school students did better in engineering college entrance examinations. I’ll confess that the State Board schools didn’t figure high in our calculations due to the following reasons: majority of our peer group are either ICSE or CBSE school alums, mandatory local language, and a high pedagogy coefficient.

In this post, I’m not attempting a comprehensive analysis of Bangalore schools. Bangalore Schools and Chitra Aiyer’s blog post (A list of good schools in Bangalore) are noteworthy sites on this front. Our perspective was biased by a small number of recommendations from our social graph. While some parents finalize the schools first (which automatically impose a certain residential zone), we picked Koramangala for the following reasons: its community, location convenience, and comfortable commuting distance. The clincher was that our top school picks were all within fighting distance from Koramangala: 

• National Public School (Koramangala & HSR Layout Branches)
• Greenwood High School
• Delhi Public School (DPS)
• Bethany High School

The odds were stacked against us since we arrived in Bangalore a few months after the school year had started. You are already aware of our initial tryst with NPS (described in The curious case of the traveling chairman). They didn’t have any open slots for midyear admission but we applied for the next academic year. At the time of writing this post, we are awaiting news from both NPS Koramangala and NPS HSR Layout on whether they’d invite S for an admission test (in Jan and March respectively). Bethany also didn’t have any open slots for midyear admission but we had heard enough good things to keep on our list for next year. DPS, by virtue of being a solid national brand, was a strong contender but we didn’t try for midyear admission since we didn’t want S to have a long commute in the first year. Which brings us to the reasons why we ended up picking Greenwood High for S:

• Several friends (including that VC friend) recommended it as a very good ’soft landing’ for returning-from-America kids
• While it’s a new school, the school administrators have a shared pedigree with the venerable Bethany
• Curriculum, teaching style and facilities suggest an International bent with an emphasis on extra-curricular activities

The main criticism we heard about Greenwood was its high teacher turnover. We figured we’d keep an eye on that trend for the first year and take our chances. Our current thinking is to continue S at Greenwood High unless he gets admission into one of the NPS branches.

Ode to Humpty Dumpty

My 13-year old niece in Cupertino, California wrote this ode for an English assignment. As you can see, it is heavily influenced by King Arthur era English (which I absolutely love). She sadly doesn’t have a Facebook account yet (despite lobbying from her uncle) so I promised to post this on my blog (after getting permission from her mom). Read on and imagine medieval times….

 

 

O proud egghead who stays

Sitting on thy beautiful granite stone

In a wilde release of gravity fall

Pulls thee over thy granite wall

Never to be return’d to thy position again

The king is brought before thee

Along with his gallant steeds and his men

Cannot aide you onto thy proud boulder

For thou shalt not be put back together again.

But egghead, do not wallow in sorrow.

 

Banish now thy doubt of being forgotten

Places of learning sing hymns of thy greatness

Miniature persons worship thee

Thou art the famous egg forever

Thou shalt not be forgotten by the world.

Steeds and their men still remember thee

And recall how thee was aided

Great men hangst their heads in never ending shame

Because thou could not be put back on thy stone

No, thou could never be put back again.

 

Thy greatness is cherished nationwide

O great egghead do not fear

Tales told of thee spread far and wide

Across the lands of present time

And now I praise thee, Humpty Dumpty.

Thou art the greatest egghead who

Ever strideth across the white sands of time

And thou art famous for falling that fateful day

Falling off your granite wall, but alas!

Never to be put back again.

Bangalore Calling

(Someday this post shall be completed. Until then, here’s a relevant comment thread between me and a New Jersey Indian American woman contemplating the move)

—-

Hi Vishy,
Great and interesting blog!! I am a 26 yr old married woman staying in NJ from last 2 years. My hubby works with an investment bank. We two are also seriously thinking of moving back to India and we definitely belong to “should-we” group..:)I read all your posts, sequentially, right from the first one and really felt surprised how simila we ppl think in terms of living in US and when talked about going back to India. We also are in the process of deciding upon the city to which we want to move. And we hav also selected Delhi/NCR, Bangalore, Mumbai as our options. Both of us belong to UP.
I have seen New York city and absolutely love its diverse and cosmopolitan crowd, the freedom in the air. And thats why I am more inclined to settle in Mumbai. When I was reading your post “The Bombay Seduction”, I felt its something special about Mumbai city that everybody who goes there falls in love with that..:)but later in your post found out that you are settled in Bangalore. Would you please tell me why you and Poonam made this decision? I understand its all the individual’s choice and the preferences but in the end of the post you showed your intent of living in Mumbai. Actually I am collecting all possible informations from my friends and different sources which can help us in making a right decision about the city, job etc while moving back to India. Your valuable experience might help us.
Once again would like to say I really liked your blog. You have put your thoughts and experiences in a very interesting manner. Would love to hear from you,
With Best Wishes,
PS

——

—–

Hi PS,
So glad you are finding the blog interesting & useful. There are 3 posts that I never completed:
Gurgaon Growling
Bangalore Calling
Why we chose Bangalore

I have a fond hope that during the Christmas holidays I’ll complete them (your comment is inspiration enough). Meanwhile here’s the short version of our decision:
1. Since we have 2 young kids, having sufficient “playing spaces” was a top criterion. This translated to “gated apartment communities” which were present in greater profusion (& affordability) in Bangalore than Mumbai.
2. Had we been contemplating this move 10 (or even 6) yrs ago – an era sans kids, Bombay might have trumped Bangalore.
3. New York is to Mumbai as Silcon Valley is to Bangalore. During our years in US, both Poonam & I longed to live in New York for a few years. The window of opportunity (we felt) was again in the pre-kids era so it passed.
4. I’m not saying a family with kids cannot live in Mumbai – it’s just that for a family with kids returning from US, Bangalore is a softer landing than Mumbai. In your case (assuming you don’t have kids yet), Mumbai sounds like a great fit, especially if you consider the fact that your hubby is an investment banker (for financial folks, Mumbai trumps Bangalore big time).
5. Finally, after spending 10 excellent yrs in Silicon Valley, the fact that Bangalore ethos was the closest to it clinched it for us. Will elaborate on this in the ‘Bangalore Calling’ post

Wish you the best in your moving plans. Hey – maybe you should start your blog? And keep the questions/comments coming..

Vishy

—–

Hi Vishy,

Thanks for your reply!! Many of the NRI people whom I have interacted with have chosen Bangalore to settle down while moving back to India. I wish to know the positive aspects about B’lore city- is it
1. plenty of job options
2. similar-to-US lifestyle
3. Pleasant Weather

However, I have heard from my age-group people that Bangalore has extremely high cost of living(high rents and real estate prices). And the road traffic is sickening and horrible over there.

If possible, pls share your views and experience (till date) about Bangalore and Mumbai city. I will be looking for a job in an IT co., so would like to explore whether Mumbai would have enough IT job opportunities. Also as you have moved very recently there, is the IT job market bad in India too? Is hiring taking place?

Looking forward to your next posts..:)
Happy Christmas and a great new year 2009!!
PS

——

PS,
Yes to all three – plenty (read PLENTY) of job options – especially for techies, closest to SF Bay Area (& by corollary US) and best weather among all the leading metros. One cannot over-emphasize that aspect. There’s a reason Californians are happier than East-coasters (ok – I only have anecdotes as proof). I believe every Indian metro has one redeeming quality – in the case of Bangalore, #1 is the weather. For a techie, there’s also a strong #2 – abundance of job choices.

Yes – traffic sucks big time. Then again, with the exception of Delhi/NCR, other metros are no great shakes either. Mumbai traffic is quite lousy, Hyderabad’s traffic might get better faster than Bangalore’s.

Regarding IT jobs in Mumbai – sure there are a fair number of them but it doesn’t come close to Bangalore. If you are looking for a career in technology product development, Bangalore is a clear #1 (followed by Hyderabad, Chennai, and Gurgaon/Delhi – order depends on who you’d ask). If it’s IT in finance, Mumbai would be a really good bet.

The IT job market in India is not yet bad. However the operative word may be ‘yet’. Technology product & service companies are still hiring in 2009 but everyone’s really cautious. In this global meltdown state, it’s hard not to get affected.

Vishy

—–

100 Days in Bangalore (Part 1)

I had planned to write this post sometime back – a retrospective kinda post providing a snapshot of the family’s settling down process – my job, kids schools, car, meeting friends, setting up the house, etc. On November 25, we completed 100 days in Bangalore but the next day all hell broke loose in Mumbai. Over the next 10 days, I read countless news articles, opinions, blog posts and spent an inordinate time on Twitter (#mumbai) hungrily and anxiously consuming every scrap of real-time news (& noise). Below is a sampling of some of the articles that made an impression on me:

• Will the messiah of the hour please stand up?
• Strategic motivations for the Mumbai Attack
• Pakistan will have to pay a heavy price
• Wednesdays will be our day of national shame
• I know its difficult to change our media – but here is an effort & I am with it: http://smallchange.in/
• http://www.yehhumnaheen.org/ Apparently 62 mil Pakistanis have signed this. Did the namesake song come first or the petition? Sign of hope? 
• It’s easy to point fingers on others but takes courage to accept our mistakes..
• MJ Akbar’s blog – The 26th of November
• Prem Panicker’s Twitter feed
• Muslim’s peace rally against 26/11 attacks
• Mumbai attacks politicize long-isolated elite
  • Title of this article should have read “long-aloof”, not “long-isolated”
• To South Mumbai

Within the first 24 hours, I even wrote the post Nahin Chalta Hai with my reactions and 2 cents on the changes India needs to undertake. After a week I realized that it’s impossible for me (in my capacity of a part-time blogger) to remotely do justice to the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks. So I decided to return to the blog’s original theme — which is to provide a flavor of an Indian family’s return to accustomed earth after spending 40% of our lives in America.

100 days completed in Bangalore — so what’s the mood at in the Kuruganti household? Pretty good, it turns out. Here’s a glimpse at the different facets of our settling down which encourage us that we may be on the right track…

Home  for ‘Hum do Hamare Do’: (Note to non-Indian readers, Hum do Hamare Do is an old 1970’s era family slogan that advocated an ideal family with 2 kids). After two weeks of frenetic apartment hunting in high-rise communities, we nearly came back to square one. We always knew our kids were a living testament to mankind’s close genetic proximity to Macaca fascicularis but seeing them scale balconies (granted they were just ‘attempts’) scared the bejeebies out of us. In the eleventh hour, we found a first floor apartment in Raheja Residency (note: Indian first floor = American second floor) that met all our needs. Great floor plan, redesigned and open kitchen, great landlords, and great Koramangala 3rd Block neighbourhood. Bangalore residents will know that Raheja is a venerable 10+ year old apartment community (turns out one of our close friends who lives in Fremont, California lived in this community on an expat assignment for  a year in ‘97). We moved into the apartment on Sep 6 and thanks to P’s herculean efforts, the house’s livability was exponentially with each passing day. By mid-October, all the heavy furniture and related accouterments had been purchased and ‘interior decorated’ – we were ready to receive guests. 

Cars, Driving & Traffic: In the first 4 weeks, we made our way around through a mixture of auto-rickshaws and taxis. The hunt for the family car was pretty easy. Our criteria were simple – avoid SUVs, minivans, and imported cars and a car just big enough to seat a family of 4 with a driver and squeeze in two adults (for my parents’ visits). Converging to the Maruti Suzuki SX4 was a simple matter after that. In parallel, I started the search for a reliable driver. Since we were not looking for a Man Friday, we found and hired Sunil pretty quickly. Timing was perfect since he started the day after we got our SX4. Someday I’ll write a post on Sunil but here is the short version on why I hired him: recommended by another driver, 3 years of driving experience, he ‘looked’ honest and hardworking, he’s only 22 years but his body language seemed to confirm the years of working experience he claimed. Two months after we hired him, Sunil has proved himself to be all that we hoped and some more – always prompt, reliable and has a ton of pride too (he doesn’t take largesse easily) – which is a rare trait for service professionals in India). Sure he’s not perfect – every once in a while he thinks he’s in a Formula 1 race (isn’t he a 22-year old after all?) but after we remind him firmly, he returns to his reliable moorings.

Yes – Bangalore traffic really sucks and we are so glad we have Sunil to mitigate that pain. Since I had every intention to drive, I swallowed my pride and enrolled in Santro Driving School. My first 5 driving lessons confirmed that it was a judicious decision indeed. I drove on American roads for 16 years but the last time I had driven on Indian roads (for a few months) was in sleepy Ukkunagaram (a suburb of Vizag) back in 1986. I also got myself a learner’s license and my Indian driving expertise is growing by leaps & bounds. In the first few weeks after I got my learner’s license, I would drive to work (with Sunil riding pillion). Gradually I started driving the family on Sundays (Sunil’s off day) and weekday evenings. According to P, I don’t honk enough – she’s right! there’s no such thing as honking too much on Indian roads. The primary reason to honk is to inform the car/motorcycle/pedestrian/dog “hello – I’m headed your way so watch out and adjust your trajectory”.

Kids, Schools & Diwali: The 5.5 year old and 2.9 year old are going to Greenwood High School and Little Feat Montessori respectively. Both our kids were accustomed to full-day of school so the 1/2 day schedule seemed inadequate. After a month of research, P found the perfect foil to their morning school routine –  Vivaa International. Touted to be the first Bangalore Montessori with a full-time daycare and started by two business women mothers (one of whom cut her Montessori teeth in America), the school (two storeys in a 3-storey house) with an outdoor play structure, inside wooden floors and overall clean interior inspired confidence. This is also the first time the two brothers are in the same school so they are having a blast. Two other Vivaa kids (twin boys incidentally) also live in the same Raheja block so S &A spend several playground hours with their friends at home too. We bought 2 matching blue BSA bicycles so cycling has been the #1 desirable activity. A’s bike turned out to be big for his current height so he’s happily sitting behind S’s bike (on the ‘carrier’) and enjoying the ride. S is definitely ready for the training wheels to come off. S also had a very fun-filled Sports day at the main campus of Greenwood High. His team won the 30-meter relay race (for which he got a gold medal) as well as the overall team prize. Not sure if S or his dad is more tickled by this.

Bangalore Book Festival: I’ve always loved book festivals and book sales so when I learned about the famous Bangalore Book Festival, we had to go — it was a small detail that the venue (Palace Grounds) was an hour away and we had 2 little ones to manage in a sea of humanity. The night before, I read this rather colorful review by a Bangalore-based poet/blogger. In the end, we lucked out because Soumya (my University of Houston classmate) was visiting and he decided to come along too – the “3 adults, 2 kids” odds helped our case. Mostly behaved myself at the book festival – picked up an RK Narayan, Tharoor’s Midnight to Millenium, David Frawley’s book Ayurveda and a few PG Wodehouse paperbacks. I have to confess the tally would have been higher had the 2.9 year old decided to keep a tighter control on his bladder (carrying a toddler & running across 10 aisles and returning cost me 30 minutes easy but hey – no hard feelings, A!).

Jethro Tull at the Palace Grounds: Thanks to my dear biwi, I was alerted about Tull’s Dec 2 concert in Bangalore at the Palace Grounds. I couldn’t believe it! If I needed a musical ‘welcome home’, this was it. I’ve been to 4 prior Tull concerts (three in Chicago, Illinois and one in San Jose, California) and I don’t miss an opportunity when Tull comes a touring. My dear biwi (bless her heart again!) was going to hold the home fort on Dec 2 (a weekday evening) while I indulged myself. Found several colleagues who were Tull enthusiasts so eventually we had a gang of five. A dear friend from SF Bay Area had to cancel his business trip due to illness so spot#5 got filled in the eleventh hour by another dear friend (from my Xaviers Bokaro days). Considering that this concert took place 5 days after the Mumbai attacks, we headed to the concert with some mixed feelings but ended up having a rollicking time. Ian Anderson was at his entertaining best. It was not a classic Tull concert – Part 1 was Anoushka Shankar and her troupe, Part 2 was classic Tull, and Part 3 was a fusion with Tull and Anoushka. The encore closer was a very unique and incredible live variation of Locomotive Breath with sitar and bansoori blending in exquisitely. I managed to record a few Qik videos – will post soon.

Judging by the length of the post so far, realized that this is a two-part series so will end the post for now. Continued in 100 Days in Bangalore (Part 2).