Back in Bangalore again

The baby elephant at Sai Baba's ashram.


It's been nearly a week since the last post. One day Cathy and I went for a stroll into the countryside, through a road I once knew but had trouble finding. She felt that we were acclimatising when we read in the paper the following day that it was 38 degrees while we were out and about. It did feel pretty warm. Then came more clouds and some showers - apparently there has been heavy rain across the country further south, and from Kerala across to Pondicherry there has been flooding. The following afternoon Cathy took the camera and went own to see the new baby elephant, which is taken out at 5pm every day for some exercise. Most temples in India have an elephant, and Sai Baba had an elephant for decades until she died unexpectedly recently. I have a couple of vivid memories of that elephant, but another time...anyway, the little elephant had been taken out and returned just as Cathy was about to leave, and it gave out a big trumpet of delight at being home again. Cute little thing from the photo.
We reserved a seat on the a/c bus after enjoying its comfort on the way up, and travelled on Holi - the full moon day on easter Saturday. Particularly in north India people go mad and throw as much coloured dye over others as possible in the name of "fun" - with foreigners being particular targets. I have never found having good clothes ruined all that enjoyable I must say, so we managed to avoid the carnage. We did see one drunk reveller covered in dye asleep on a busy footpath in Bangalore. Yesterday we took a taxi to a far corner of Banagalore to see an old work colleague and friend of Glenda's, when she worked in India 20 or so years ago. It was a pleasant visit with numerous cups of rich strong sweet milky tea; and this morning we headed to a regular Monday morning puja with the saint Sri Gopala Krishna. He does a puja ceremony to a Siva lingam (egg shaped object of worship which is said to be the earliest symbol humans ever used to symbolise the Formless). The unusual aspect of this lingam is that it was physically materialised by Sai Baba - which he has done a number of times, except that he was also in front of a crowd miles away at his ashram at the same time. I remember Ram Dass telling a scientist about the "miracles" of Neem Karoli Baba, which the fellow could accept until he told of the times he was physically having conversations with people in 2 different places at once The scientist said that that is just simply against the laws of physics; to which Ram Dass replied, "Yes that's true, but he did it anyway."
Weather here in Bangalore is quite cool and cloudy amd we head off tomorrow morning for the much warmer Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu, about a 5 hour journey.