My week days generally ran like this:
7:30-8:00: get to the Royal Orchid (a very nice hotel behind the Diamond District) around 7:30 for breakfast, class setup and the trainers’s morning huddle.
9:00: start class.
4:00-5:00: End class.
5:30-6:00: Get to TW offices in time for after-class student presentations or student one-on-one coaching, or grading homework, or trainer meetings or preparing for the next day’s classes.
9:00 approx.: Eat dinner.
10:00-11:00: finish dinner and go back to work. Or sleep. Or maybe blog.
Even Saturdays and Sundays would have TWU things going on.
I’ve included a little chart of my hours before, during, and after TWU to illustrate. That big dip is a a week of vacation and traveling home before starting my next assignment in Chicago.
Given such a schedule, there was little opportunity for getting out beyond the neighborhood. The only birding was along the drainage canal on the way to the Royal Orchid and I was seeing the same birds over and over. If I needed a little more greenery, there was a pretty good public garden down the road across from New Santhi Sagar. A big sign made me think the park’s name was Puravankara but after seeing that name in several places in Bangalore I figured out it was just the name of a real estate developer. The formal name of that park is Domlur SAARC Park.
SAARC stands for South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, a body that promotes socio-economic development. The second summit of the SAARC was held in 1986 in Bangalore and was the incentive for building out the golf course that is adjacent to the Diamond District and the Royal Orchid.
You can probably figure out what I'm thinking; Puravankara probably developed and donated that little park down the road as public space in conjunction with various deals going on to showcase the area for the benefit of the golfing elite and visiting dignitaries.
Besides that park, taking a walk now meant “going to get the basics” like shopping for groceries on 100 Foot Road or at Total Mall (where we had gone for McDonald’s). Or hunting down a book at Axis Books on the Inner Ring Road in Domlur. None of these destinations were much more than a mile from my apartment, so “taking a walk” also just meant doing the “same-old, same-old”.
One Sunday I decided to get out and really do something different. We had gone to some very nice restaurants on 80 Foot Road that Rixt, another trainer, knew about. We always went there at night in rickshaws but it seemed fairly close, just a few turns down twisty streets and voila! ... dining and shopping sophistication appeared. I had a small paper map from a hotel tourist magazine and it looked like I could walk there in about 20 minutes.
That little map suggested that 80 Foot Road branched directly off a street that joined Airport Road beside the Leela Palace Hotel. Easy! Let's do it!
My walk started with an ordinary stroll along Airport Road, across the pedestrian bridge, and past the front gate of Leela Palace. I turned the corner onto Kodihalli Main Road, a broad shady street that borders the hotel. This section has some impressive homes across from the hotel and although narrower, reminded me of spots along 100 Foot Road. But after a few blocks, the street shrank and I fell victim to the mapmaker’s imagination, or was that misinformation?
A pretty white mosque with green trim lay ahead near a fork in the road. According to my little map, the right-hand branch was the connection to 80 Ft. Road but to my eyes, it just looked like a crooked dirt alley running between houses. There were no obvious street signs to help me out. So I stayed to my left, on the side of the fork that went past the mosque. As I passed, it blasted my ears with a loud broadcast call to prayer.
It was like a foghorn marking a ship’s passage into unknown waters. I had been sure I was headed for the trendy part of 80 Foot Road but soon it would seem I was on course, quickly, for some other place.... (to be continued)
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