Last week­end, I prob­a­bly went through the worst of it (I hope). Fell hor­ri­bly sick. And then got depressed, since I hate being sick. I think after the ini­tial excite­ment it sud­denly dawned on me that I was in a new place. It’s not a nice feel­ing to be sick and alone. I called up all my friends on Sun­day (from Kanyaku­mari to Delhi, I don’t have friends fur­ther up north!) and made Reliance a really happy phone com­pany. By Mon­day morn­ing, I was back to my cheery self again!

After a really busy week (and there­fore no posts, besides absence of home Inter­net con­nec­tion), I was really glad about my company’s five day work­ing week.

On Sat­ur­day, I finally got a bird’s eye view of Ban­ga­lore city.

After hear­ing lots about it, I made it to Ebony at the Bar­ton Cen­tre, 13 floors off the ground. The weather was lovely; it was driz­zling inter­mit­tently. After cajol­ing the wait­ers, my host for the after­noon, Arun, got us a seat in the shaded sec­tion. I have been a fan of Arun’s pho­tographs for a while so I got a chance to chew his brains about how to become a bet­ter pho­tog­ra­pher (in other words, how to take more pho­tographs of objects and life forms, other than my cat!). He let me muck around with his nice cam­era and I took some shots, which I am hop­ing will turn out well.

Arun informed me that usu­ally he gets 3–4 good shots in a roll. And he’s happy. Hah! I’m usu­ally thrilled with around 30 of my 36 pic­tures, thus prov­ing what am ama­teur I still am :-/.

At one point, I actu­ally got up on the ledge to get a good view of the Vid­han Soudha and the man­ager came run­ning up to me, sport­ing a rather dis­tressed look. I did man­age to get a shot. And con­vince him that I was not about to com­mit sui­cide. At least not yet!

Arun had warned me that the food was not usu­ally very good at these heights. But we were lucky. Maybe, they knew I was com­ing! After a nice buf­fet lunch, we went across to Cross­words, where I picked up a book (Mar­ried Woman, by Manju Kapoor) and a movie (Choco­lat). I was look­ing for Pico Iyer’s lat­est book, but they hadn’t got it yet.

In the evening, I had a din­ner invi­ta­tion where I met a really nice cou­ple and their adorable two year old daugh­ter. I was intro­duced to them via email by a school friend in New York, who orches­trated the whole thing. Actu­ally, a few con­cerned friends have given me con­tacts in Ban­ga­lore (feel­ing sorry for me!). And though I’ve chat­ted with a few peo­ple, it’s been mainly on the phone and remained in the ‘let’s catch up’ state but hasn’t pro­gressed any further.

Ganesh, how­ever, actu­ally orga­nized for me to come across to his place. He’d also invited another cou­ple. Some peo­ple have a knack of putting you com­plet­ing at ease and that was the case with Ganesh and his lovely wife. So it turned out to be a really chilled out evening. We went out for din­ner to a place called Herbs and Spices, some­where in White­field. The place is a dishy bun­ga­low con­verted into a restau­rant with open air seat­ing around the garden.

A per­fect place to knock back a nice daiquiri and enjoy the serene sur­round­ings. The only sad part was that they don’t serve liquor, so if you have a weak­ness for them, espe­cially after the long drive to get there, this place ain’t for you!

We ordered con­ti­nen­tal, which is obvi­ously not their forte. Because, all I got in my very exotic chicken dish was a lump of mashed pota­toes, a few slices of car­rot and two really small pieces of chicken. If I wasn’t already full with tor­tilla chips and tartare sauce I had ear­lier, I would have been really annoyed. There were absolutely no herbs in my dish, and I’m hop­ing they’re more gen­er­ous with their spices.

Got home at 2.00 am and slept through Sun­day morn­ing till 10 am, belat­edly real­iz­ing I had missed my morn­ing yoga class. Chilled out at home. Spent qual­ity time with the cat. Also real­ized I am begin­ning to sound like those old women who spend a lot of time talk­ing to their cats. Which I prob­a­bly am :-)

Con­tem­plated going to Jayana­gar to do some shop­ping but with the rains and all (and the prospect of encoun­ter­ing another unfriendly rick dri­ver), the plan was aban­doned. I decided to enjoy the nice breeze and Choco­lat instead. Not a bad choice after all.