A euphemism and some other funny stuff

I always carry my camera with me to capture the weird and wonderful. These are some examples.

This is how (living) chickens get transported: tied together by their feet, hanging upside down on the back of a bike.

And this is where they end up:

I guess transit is a nice euphemism for being butchered....

This is the shop next to the Trazit Chicken Centre. By the end of the day the fresh pork has turned into smoked ham, thanks to the traffic.

Another thing that is unique to India: water with a special ingredient...

Nandi Aqua actually sells water with H2O!!!!!

The next was has puzzled me for a long time. Bangalore is not known for being clean. There are piles of garbage everywhere and a lot of people throw their litter in the streets. I think someone got fed up with this, but why????

The Fresh Beauty Parlour must be using some toxic herbs by the looks of it. At least it is still ok to dump plastic bottles and other rubbish.

The red line on the wall marks how wide the road will be sometime in the near future. Talk about downsizing your business in the times of crises.

Finally a sign that has to keep our neighbourhood safe. Adarsh Vista must hold a record for the highest amount of speed bumps and still we all break the speed limit, but that is not hard.

How many miles/hr is that?

Sorry?

With the exception of Libya, we have always had postings in English speaking countries, but in every one of them we have had to adjust our school-learned English to the local English.

Being Dutch means you have to learn different languages to be able to communicate outside The Netherlands, a part of Belgium en South Africa (Afrikaans is based on 'old Dutch'). It also helps while living in The Netherlands, since most of the songs on the radio are in English and most television programmes too (Dutch subtitles).

Our first posting in Australia taught us some Aussie slang, but we still can't pronounce it the right way. When we left we spoke about bathers instead of swim suits and an eski instead of a cool box, but other than that we were fine ;-).

In Nigeria the English is so different from what we had learned that it took us a long time to get a feel for the local slang. We managed to make ourselves understood and got most of what they tried to tell/ask us, after some time. The hardest thing was to not fall back to a sort of 'child speak', with short sentences and simple words.

Now that we have been in India for a year, we have learned some basic Indian-English and Ruben has a proper Indian accent, complete with head wobble, but phone calls are still a struggle. Indian people tend to speak really fast and I usually manage to understand a few key words, but mostly my response to them is: "Sorry?" I have even asked people if they can please speak English, because to me it sounded like they were speaking one of the many local languages, just to find out they were speaking English already....

Sometimes I see signs along the roads here in Bangalore and I wonder what went wrong. Even in Indian-English the spelling is wrong. It surprises me that shops have signs made to advertise and then pay good money for weird texts. Surely there should be some sort of spelling check before things get printed?

These are some of the signs that caught my eye. Most of the photos are taken from the (moving) car, hence the less than sharp photo sometimes, but you will still get the picture.

 Besides the mes instead of men's and kidus instead of kids, if you spell wear correctly once why don't you continue spelling it the right way?????

I always thought it was spelled puncture, but all the repair shops have puncher on their signs. This is not even the best example, I saw a shop once with a sign that said: "All your punchers done here". So that's where you go and ask them to put a hole in your tyer (tyre) and then get the repaires (repairs) done?

What can I say, they are selling Fancy Items indeed!



Disclaimer: I am not trying to make fun of Indian people and I realise my English is far from perfect, but I just want to share my observations. Please don't take offence!

But did they tie the knot?

Last Thursday I went to an Indian wedding for the first time. A friend and I were invited by our hairdresser. Her daughter was the bride.

I had heard stories about the bride and groom having to walk around a fire and about the groom literally tying the knot in a string around his bride's neck. But none of that at this wedding (at least not on the day we were there). This was a 'Coorg wedding' Babu told us when we arrived. He could tell by the fact that the gate was decorated with banana leaves... (Coorg lies in the south west part of Karnataka, the same state as Bangalore).

The wedding hall was beautifully decorated with flowers on the outside and a band was playing what sounded to me like traditional Indian music, very loudly.

We were told to get breakfast and within an hour after that we were told to have coffee or tea with several cakes and cookies.

Then the ceremony started outside. The groom stood at one side, under an umbrella. He was dressed in a traditional costume, on bare feet and with some uber-cool sun glasses on. According to the father of the bride, the groom's family descends directly from Alexander the Great, hence the fact that they were dressed like warriors.

In front of the groom were several banana tree trunks, decorated with flowers on top. The eldest men from his family did the pooja and then took turns to chop down the trees with an impressive sword (it is probably called differently, you can see it in the photos).

After that the party moved inside. In front the music, then the eldest female of the groom's family with a basket on her head (filled with things for pooja at the couple's house) then the men and the groom. Before they entered the hall the groom's feet were washed and the group was blessed.

I had to laugh about the most senior guy, who obviously had the lead in the whole ceremony. He was the only one that wore shorts under his long black coat. His socks were pulled up high and he was wearing sensible shoes. The other men all wore long trousers. When I later mentioned it to Babu, he told me the shorts are the traditional way...here I was thinking the man just dressed for the heat.

As we stood on the top of the stairs looking at the ceremony, one of our hairdresser's (5) sisters came to talk to us. She tried to explain some of the traditions, but said: "I am not that familiar with it all. My husband is from that region too, but when we got married, he had to marry a banana leave first, before he could marry me." It was hard to keep a straight face I can tell you.

Once inside, the groom was sat on a low stool on the stage and then finally the bride appeared. When they both sat, everyone was supposed to go up to them to give them their blessing. There were large bowls with (uncooked) rice to throw on the bride and groom's heads. After that we were requested to "Eat and go, please." (during the ceremony a lot of cooking went on the the basement, see last photo)
We had a good view of the stage, but once the bride and groom sat down, the official photographers and videographers blocked every ones view completely.

But we managed to get some photos despite them.

I know it is not the best picture of the bride, yawning, but it shows all her rings and other gold so well

It was a nice morning and a lovely experience. I hope to receive more invitations to weddings while we are here, so I can witness different traditions and ceremonies.

High end job

We heard a lot of noise outside, banging and thumping, so I decided to check it out and this is what I saw from our bedroom window:

The man is sitting at the very top of the large palm tree!

There was a man at the top of a palm tree, cutting the coconuts off with a machete. No safety equipment, no rope around his waist or anything remotely looking like it would brake his fall if he would loose his balance....

Back to school

Three VERY unhappy boys this morning, when I woke them up at 6:30 for breakfast... Back to school today after 9 weeks of holidays. Not fun.....

Not again.....

Mum sent me a text yesterday asking me if we were still safe in Bangalore. The story of the mass exodus out of Bangalore (and many other cities) of people from the North East of India, had reached the Dutch newspapers.

So far it looks like there is nothing more that rumours that are being spread that make the people move back to their region, but what if it is serious and the government only down plays it to keep everyone calm?

When Ruben heard about it he said: "Mum, it can't be true, we haven't been here for 3.5 years yet."

We were evacuated from Bonny Island, Nigeria, after 3.5 years and the same after 3.5 years in Tripoli, Libya. The fact that we now have most of our belongings back from Tripoli, does not mean we are ready to flee again!

The whole story is quite complicated and all is based on sms bombs warning people from the North East of India that the Muslim population in Bangalore (among other places) is planning to attack them after the Eid celebrations on the 20th of August. Nobody knows who started the rumours and sent the first sms bomb, but it scared a lot of people for sure.

These are some quotes I got from the Indian MSN News site:

As exodus continues, bulk SMSes banned; parliament unites in support

New Delhi: In an effort to stem the scaremongering that has led to thousands from the northeast fleeing southern states, the government Friday banned bulk SMSes in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka for 15 days as parliament united in support of people from the region and demanded that those fanning rumours be punished.

With wild rumours fuelling the exodus of northeast people from Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, and Chennai, the home ministry clamped down on bulk SMSes that have been the source of fears of attacks. SMSes have been spreading that people from the northeast region would be attacked after the Eid-ul-Fitr on Aug 20 to avenge the recent ethnic violence in Assam, in which more than 74 people were killed.

The rumours have led to over 6,000 students from northeast to flee to Guwahati from Bangalore by special trains till late Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the Assam government Friday sent its ministers to Bangalore and Hyderabad to discuss the exodus of northeast citizens following rumours that they would be attacked.

Not only students have fled, also a lot of security guards and chefs and waiters from restaurants.

The Indian Muslims are blamed, but the government is also looking into the possibility that this has been set up from outside India (Pakistan? AlQaida?).
Local people in Karnataka (the state Bangalore lies in) blame the people from the North East of taking their jobs, so they won't mind them all leaving either...

It is hard to find out what is really happening and who is behind it and that is what scares me most.

Photo copied from MSN News

To make matters even more fun, some lunatics have decided to copy cat a movie (based on a true story) and murder single women......
Again, I am not sure what to think of it and how true/serious this really is.

Not much we can do, but to keep vigilant and pray we will stay safe. Boy am I glad Adriaan will be home with us again tomorrow!!!

Scary!

Joshua has a tendency to exaggerate when it comes to distances and sizes (don't all men?), so when he came running out of his bathroom claiming there was a HUGE wasp in there, I didn't take it too seriously. Talking about boy cried wolf, because this is what was flying around:

Good thing Josh was already on the toilet, because this would scare the crap out of me too (pun intended).

Apparently there has been a nest of these at a friend's house here on Vista, that got build within half an hour... I will be outside now, checking very, very thoroughly!!!