Our Visit to Mysore

tiger at palace
Originally uploaded by qiubuo.

Luckily we did not go to the coast for the holidays, and so we did not see any of the devastation firsthand. In fact, things are surprisingly normal here in Bangalore, high up and far from the ocean. The death tolls are still mounting, however, and there are reports of entire islands and tribes in the Andamans having disappeared. It will probably take days to know the full extent of the tragedy.

We spent a blissfully calm weekend in Mysore, only 90 miles from here. Mysore was the royal city, and the Maharaja still lives somewhere in the back of the palace. We enjoyed visiting the palace, though it's a bit tacky. Gilles commented that it looked like the inside of La Samaritaine, the famous Parisian department store. He's right.
We hitched a ride to Mysore with Nishaant's family. Nishaant is the Fulbright scholar I met in Paris while we were both waiting for our visas. I am still waiting; he has a friend in the Supreme Court or something. We regretted driving to Mysore when we took the train back for only $1 - the train ride is much smoother and we didn't have the sense that we might crash at any moment. Indian drivers have the strange habit of accelerating until the last possible moment and then slamming down the brakes as violently as possible to avoid hitting the car/cow/child in front of them.

Mysore was very touristy and we were accosted by dozens of salesman, guides and begging children. At the palace Gilles was wearing sunglasses and leaning against a fence, looking very Parisian and Hollywood at the same time. An Indian guy wearing sunglasses came over and stood next to him, and his friend took a picture; it seems Gilles was as much of a tourist attraction as the palace.

god and snake
Originally uploaded by qiubuo.

On Monday we visited a friend of Doctor Desai's, who took us around Mysore in a schoolbus, showing us the various institutes and schools for speech and hearing. We met a very nice Nepalese speech therapist who is leaving India soon to take a job in New York City. Apparently there is a big demand for speech-language pathologists, and India is training them but having difficulty retaining them. The highlight of the tour was a visit to the Mother and Deaf Child Institute in Mysore, a school where mothers are the teachers. One mother teaches another mother's child, and they pass on their skills from mother to mother. The school is orally focused and teaches in English, Telegu and Kannada depending on the child's native language. The head of the school proudly told us that her deaf son had gone on to study engineering and was recently recruited by IBM. I was impressed with their success and the sacrifices the mothers made, often leaving other children behind to spend 3 years teaching their children one-on-one, 7 days a week, 6 hours a day.

We had just a few hours left before the train, so we took a rickshaw up to the Chamundi Temple, built up on the hill above Mysore. My favorite thing about the temple was seeing the monkeys who had taken it over, throwing coconuts down at us and fighting with each other up on the roof.

monkey questions
Originally uploaded by qiubuo.

We arrived home Monday night to find what we thought was a homeless man sleeping in front of our door. In fact it was the day watchman, who seems to be the "night watchman" as well. Our neighbors went to Chennai for the weekend and are possibly stranded there, as the tsunamis seem to have damaged a portion of the railway there. At any rate the watchman was housesitting - not under the best conditions, but he just grunted as we stepped over him.