Tag: Mysore

Our wishing well….

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we do wish you well but it’s actually a wishing WALL…

It’s a great example of what fun we have at Mysore BnB and how it sometimes feels like a big international family.

This latest project started from a photograph

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Andrew Murren, one of our wonderful previous guests, posted this photo on facebook. It’s from Japan and called Ema. Found in Shinto Temples, visitors buy a plaque, write a wish and hang it on the wall. Well, we thought it was pretty cool.

So we discussed it with various guests who also liked it.

We all thought it would be good to create our very own. I recruited Suresh from Sri Muruli Fine Arts to make some wooden shapes as a bit of an experiment. They are the guys who I reckon are amongst the best wood inlay and marquetry artists in Mysore. Here’s two of the team at work.

So check it out, below.

Ok, there isn’t very much so far… but that’s the point, it will build up over-time and become its own work of art…. you are invited to make a wish or statement or just design a plaque and hang it on our wall.  It’s launched by a lovely family of artists from New Zealand. Admittedly they have set a rather  high standard with beautiful plaques and other recent guests with a similar artistic bent have risen to the challenge. But it’s not about great art, it’s about making a wish or a statement, if you want to make it art, then that’s fantastic, an added extra. But what’s really important is that we invite all those taking part to buy the plaque and all the money goes to the Asha Kirana Charitable Trust and their wonderful work with people in Mysore who are HIV+ and with AIDS.

what’s in a name? part 2

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So what to do next?

remembering that our eventual aim is to get Manjula a passport, but let’s build up to the big tasks and start with something more straightforward

a simple first challenge was to get a PAN card for Manjula. You get a PAN card when you register to pay taxes. Country needs people to pay taxes so you’d expect it to be relatively easy. Well it, sort of, is and I’ve got one (as has the company), so it can’t be that difficult, can it?

pics of ID cards have been removed

This would be important as would be to learn from the process of obtaining it, we’d need to get Manjula’s various ID’s in line (rather like ducks) and the card itself would be a valuable addition to helping create a formal identity suited to the modern age 😉 yeh, right! what are we waiting for?

So the man to manage the process would be Ganesh, my very able accountant. He copes with my idiosyncratic accounting practices, so is nothing, if not flexible and adaptable.

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But of course, the balloon (ie me, do check our business card) is ‘the fixer’ or is it gopher?

 

First stage is to get her three forms of ID that show her photo, name, Date of Birth and address… now let me just find them out…….

Projects

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we’ve had a few. The latest might be a bit of a challenge.

Vasanth has been a great help in so many of them: whether large or small. He fondly remembers the horse riding period, the riding boots fiasco, finding new ways to experiences India but, I must say, our projects do seem to have got a wee bit bigger: moving to India in itself, is of course, no small P1030419challenge. This, in turn has led to renting a house, furnishing it partly from the lovely things at Ritz Hotel, creating the cycle tours, registering the business, finding the drivers, herding the cats (aka drivers), spending money on lovely art and working out how to haggle so as not to always pay too much foreigner tax,  getting a visa every few years… to mention just a few of the different examples of being tossed out of our comfort zones, into the wild unknown. But I wonder if the latest one is a stretch too far….

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Do I really have to declare that I’m not an idiot? and if I do and she subsequently finds that I am, is that grounds for divorce?

the morning after….

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or elections part three.

The BJP has won a landslide victory. The press and media in general is full of analysis of how, why and what it means to us in India and the wider world. Who knows what it means?

Modi has already initiated many changes. Amongst them, he’s introduced a presidential style in the election, utilised the social media and shown great leadership, all to great effect.

One thing I’ve noticed something new, on a morning shortly after the election.

In one of the parks near my house, members of the RSS (wikipedia labels it a ‘para-military volunteer Nationalist Hindu group based on selfless service to the nation’ although the neutrality of the article is disputed) who have close links with the BJP, will meet once or twice a month, in their uniform of shirt and khaki shorts, to parade and drill. At the most there are 2-3 usually elderly people.

Shortly after the election, there was a parade of maybe a dozen young men from pre to mid teens parading in the park. The elders looked on. So, Id say that the election and the impact of BJP is influencing younger people and their interest in the nationalism of the RSS.

and who knows where it leads….

 

 

We await the other changes…

Sand – The Great Escape

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Sand Karma, from cradle to grave to be born again. The long tentacles of the mafia imprisons the sand by dredging the lakes and rivers, looting the embankments, stealing sand wherever it can, and bribing where it needs to… Dotted around our countryside we see in our rivers, small round boats like metal coracles or Bella (Jaggery) cauldrons or gangs attacking the river banks. These are the starting point for the convoys of bullock carts filled with the precious cargo.
After a sometimes long and arduous journey from river bed or bank, to cart, to truck, to city distribution point (to become official) and then on again (its a wonder there’s no sand travel sickness or maybe there is) to be dumped, unceremoniously outside the mushrooming building sites, found throughout the city. Only then to be reincarnated, as a grey mix, for the greater good of the ‘development’ (some might say ruin) of our great heritage city.

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But this isn’t a sad tail of the demise of sand, the loss of its identity or of its sacrifice to the greater good…..no way.

One or two of our sand grain friends, reunited with water (their very own vehicle) from the previous nights torrential rainfall, seize the opportunity and escape form the constructors piles and become part of a great escape.

This morning the roads are covered with a layer of sand, in time, some might be scraped into little piles and recaptured but some will have managed to reach the storm drains, and on to a new life..

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So next when you notice sand on the road and maybe you feel a bit irritated by the sand on your shoe. Spare a thought for the hard life of sand. Remember the triumphs and tribulations of the grain of sand and its great escape in its long march to the sea.

More on elections

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a follow up and part two of half life finished

This is a pretty impressive election. Just look at some of the facts, complements of the Diplomat:

India’s upcoming general election will be the largest democratic event in history, with more than 814 million people entitled to vote to decide the country’s 16th government. This, however, is not the only record that will be broken when the world’s largest democracy goes to the polls. According to the Centre for Media Studies, Indian politicians will spend as much as $4.9 billion during the electoral contest, which will end in May. The estimate makes this year’s general election the second most expensive of all time, behind only the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign in which, according to the U.S. presidential commission, $7 billion was spent.

The sheer scale of the electoral exercise is unprecedented. Almost two thirds of India’s 1.3 billion people are eligible to vote – 100 million more than in 2009 – and 96% of these have already been equipped with electoral ID cards. In nine polling days spread across five weeks, the world’s largest electorate will visit 930,000 polling booths to cast their votes using 1.7 million electronic voting machines. 11 million personnel, including members of the army, will be deployed to assist with the elections, whilst a further 5.5 million civilians will be employed to manage the voting process.

http://thediplomat.com/2014/03/indias-record-breaking-2014-elections/

Back to the extraordinary ordinary in Mysore.

As you may now be beginning to notice….Manjula is very much my touchstone and helps keeps my ‘ear to the ground’.

As these election for lok Sabah (parliament) are upon us, I’m reminded of last years Karnataka state elections. Manjula was on holiday. I was astonished to hear that her mother came back to Mysore a journey of some hours on an uncomfortable bus in order to place her vote. I was impressed. I thought back to my own studies in politics and the importance we gave to those who’d struggled to give us the vote. It was the sort of commitment that those who’d fought for the vote would have been proud. But you know, in India, nothing is as you’d expect.

Cary, a good friend of some six years, burst my reality bubble.

He explained that political parties pay people to vote for them. Manjula’s mum had travelled back to Mysore as she had been paid to vote for a particular party.

It also why we’ve found, over the last few weeks, checkpoints manned by police and election officials, popping up on many of the roads outside the city. Cars are stopped, searched and when found, large amounts of money or gifts that can’t be properly accounted for are confiscated as it’s assumed they are to be to be used as bribes.

It seems that it is a common practice, at least in state elections, to bribe the electorate to vote for a particular party and in manj’s mum’s case it was 500 Rs. A significant sum for this poor lady who might be lucky, when she found work, to get 200 Rs for a days work. I’m reliably informed there is no bribe money around for this national election.

Another more subtle technique, for state elections, is to promise gifts to the poorer sections of the community , sewing machines, cycles for school children etc and give them once elected, so it influences the vote and it’s paid from the coffers of the state government. Normal politics I suppose, we’re all part of that particular system.

Over dinner this evening, it’s a last supper as Manj goes on holiday (again!) tomorrow. Manj happened to mention that the pressing lady (she operates out of a hut down the road and presses our clothes with an enormous, heavy charcoal driven iron) had ‘earned’ 2,000 Rs by promising to vote for four different political parties in last year’s state elections. Hilarious.

So who has the last laugh?

The poor accept the money, conscientiously vote and press the buttons (they vote at electronic voting machines) for the party they’d wanted to vote for anyway.

People have to survive as best they can.

Half life finished

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Manjula voted today for the first time in her life. A momentous occasion. Well done Manj!

Check the photo of Manj. Here’s the mark of the indelible ink on her thumb to prove she’s voted and can’t therefore vote a second time.

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Of course, I’m not allowed to tell you her voting preference or her age but she received her very first voting ID just this week and declared that she’d got one at this late stage i.e. with ‘half life finished‘ so better late than never, eh?

We arrived by scooter 30 mins before the voting station was due to open, at the school close to where Manjula used to live. [Trumpets Blaring] We were waiting for her mother and father to join us. This was a serious family outing.

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There were a few people hanging around, a lady selling milk at the corner and a foreigner (me). The first sign of official life was the arrival of the army. Punjabis who were down from Delhi. They and the Police begin by insisting that there was no selling or loitering (aka innocently hanging around), cars or two wheelers parked within 200 metres of the school. The lady selling bags of milk at the corner was clearly not happy but she had to go. I was obviously not loitering. I was however sitting on a bench on the corner well within the exclusion zone but as a foreigner I’d got my ‘get out of jail free/community chest card from Monopoly’ and as I’d bonded with the sergeant, so there was no issue. I was allowed to stay.

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Manj went over to a scrum of people to check whether she was on the list and able to vote. She was, hooray! Her mum was less fortunate (and now I’ve hear that there were many other people like her) she had her card but was not on the official list. So unable to vote. Manj’s mum came round to the house later on. She had found her name on the list held by a man loitering 201 metres down the road so was able to vote. (Just don’t ask as I’ve no idea,, India is an enigma)

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But why had it taken so long for Manj to be able to vote?

Who knows?

The fact that she hasn’t had an ID card of any description until very recently reveals such a lot. The world’s biggest democracy has some difficulties reaching all the communities to enable them to use their vote. Understandable in many ways. There are two thirds of 1.3 billion people eligible to vote.  A poor woman initially from a rural background is likely to find it most difficult.

Its especially difficult the poorer you are and in particular for women.

She now has Aadhaar card (general ID), BPL Card, Election card, and also very importantly another means of ID which is her bank account. So what does it reveal? Has something changed?

Something has changed in her life and in general.

People are now much more conscious of the need to get an ID card. They may need them to get a bank account which in turn will allow them access to benefits ranging from subsidised gas, health services and foodstuffs for those Below Poverty Line (BPL). The introduction of the Aadhaar, a general ID card, supposedly being issued to all the population has had a significant impact. Prior to this Manjula just had her school leaving certificate. A critical document for especially poor people but still not a lot of use.

It’s pretty clear (and shocking) that a woman’s official identity is linked with a man: father, husband, step father, employer. Ask Manj for her name and she doesn’t know what to say beyond Manjula. Her father died, she’s divorced from her husband, and mum remarried so not to put to fine a point on it… I’m now probably the most significant man in her life!!!

Manjula as ever, the ‘together’ woman that she is, has with her mum and step dad, got out there and asserted her rights.

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I’ve tried to do my little bit. Hence she now has a bank account and regular payments of her monthly measly pay into her account. All of it contributes to helping her become more ‘official’ and who knows where that might lead? One day she might even get a passport and do some international travelling 😉

Sustainably Cycling

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I moved to Mysore over four years ago and was pleased to discover that there was already some interest in leisure cycling. One of my early cycle trips organised by Sham Sunder, an inspirational guy, who is Director of National Institute of Engineering’s CREST also highlighted that Mysore had a significant movement in the use of sustainable technologies and organic farming. This was proving to be a very interesting place.

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Why?

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So why?
India….
Cycling….and a BnB

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Think of it. Moving to a new country at age 54, launching a completely new venture in a field in which I had no previous experience and all this in India which at the best of times is mildly confusing and frequently incredibly frustrating.

If I’d thought about it for too long, it may have seemed daunting.

The fact is. Work was drying up in the UK. There was a financial crisis affecting everyone and a key market for our leadership and team training, the very banks who created the crisis (and clearly needed more effective teams and leaders with a smidgeon of sense and ethics) and other businesses suddenly didn’t require our services. It was time to find new cheese and that was to be in India in 2009.

Cycle tours and a BnB were in fact on the cards but not straightaway.

I have a track record of trying out and developing new things. My careers have ranged from social and community work, varied management roles and latterly as consultant and trainer with international companies. The only leads I had were a lifelong interest in cycling, a realisation that I thrive on meeting and engaging with people and maybe, just maybe a sign of real potential in the beautiful city of Mysore. A human scale city with great traditions, lovely people and a place where people go to retire ha ha.

Above all I’d fallen in love in India, in my 20’s and from a distance. A sort of blind date. But it wasn’t for another 25 years before I’d managed to meet her and realise the love was real. Like so many others before me, I wanted to get to India as much as possible.

I had indeed dipped my toe in the water by organising some events in India in 2006 (more of which later) so I knew a little of what to expect and I already had a small set of supportive friends here in Mysore, two in particular: Vasanth and Cary in Mysore.

To tell the truth….I hadn’t realised what an absolute joy it would be setting up and running this business in India.

Mycycle, Mysore Cycle Tours

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Mycycle is my business in South India that provides short guided cycle tours for visitors to the wonderful city of Mysore.

So the My refers to Mysore as well as my experience of over 40 years as a cyclist. But I fully intend that this blog will be much more than that…about our view of life in India that on the way will take in an eclectic range of interests and experiences.

We have now had the privilege of hosting, guiding and hopefully entertaining over 900 guests since we launched a little over two years ago. We’re often asked about the history of our business here, what drew me to Mysore and what adventures I and the team have had in living in India and developing Mycycle and Mysore Bed and Breakfast.

This is an attempt to share something of that experience.

please do join us on the journey

details of what we do can be found on http://www.manjulasmysore.in

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