We chartered a driver with a minibus to take us from Bangalore to Mysore (Mysuru) on the morning of December 22. It takes about two and a half hours to get there, and the departure time was a small point of contention. We couldn't check in to the hotel until 3pm, but S's mom still wanted to go early. She said that if we arrived in the afternoon, everybody would say they were tired and nobody would leave the hotel, and we would, in effect, lose a day in Mysore. She was probably right, but the rub was that some of us (e.g., me) didn't mind losing a day in Mysore. We had three other days there, and we had three preteen children with us. I wasn't worried about losing days; I was worried about keeping them occupied for the time we did have there. But when it comes to S's parents I try very hard to be deferential to their wishes. They ask for so little and give so much. It was a small concession to leave in the morning.
There were nine of us total in Mysore -- S and me and the boys, S's cousin and her son, and S's parents and her aunt. S's cousin's husband and their daughter couldn't make the trip because she had to take an important college-entrance exam, so they stayed behind for that. The exam was no joke, either. I saw the sample math problems, and it was stuff I certainly did not know as a 16-year-old high school student. I barely know it now, to be honest. Everybody was joking that I could help her with her studies, and I was like Give me a week to review the material first, and then we'll see. It's a bit disheartening to look at stuff that used to be cake for me and not know immediately how to do it, but it's been nearly 20 years since I've done any higher-level pure math. You use it or lose it. I've definitely lost it -- for now. I'm confident that if I actually sat down and looked at it again, it would all come back to me very quickly. In fact, I'm hoping one of my boys gets really into math, so I have a reason to do it again. Left to my own devices, I don't know that I will ever get back into math again in any sort of in-depth manner. I have too many other interests and distractions.
The big attraction in Mysore is Mysore Palace, so we went there first. It was cool, but too damn crowded, and they herd you through the palace so quickly, it's difficult to really see anything. The big topic of discussion among our group is that S's grandfather -- or maybe great-grandfather -- has his picture in the palace somewhere. Nobody actually knows where though, and finding it on the fly was like trying to find a needle in a haystack, if you have men in kepis blowing whistles at you, telling you to move away from the haystack. We did not find it. We did get to take a ride in a horse-drawn carriage around the palace, however, which the kids got a kick out of.
With a trip to the palace under our belts, S's mom was content to go back to the hotel for the evening. It's a five-star hotel, meaning everything is super nice and convenient, until you actually need something, and then it's going to require multiple calls to the front desk and a 45-minute wait. That's kinda how it goes in India. Superficially, service is amazing -- there's somebody to greet you and bow to you and compliment you -- but underneath that veneer it can be difficult or slow to actually get what you want. For example, at breakfast at the hotel, getting a simple cup of coffee, a cappuccino, would take like 20 minutes. I got in the habit of ordering two at once, because I usually I wanted a second one and didn't have an hour to spare.
I think this is part of a broader cultural thing. My in-laws were telling me why they prefer to live in the US over India, and the main reason, surprisingly to me, had nothing to do with pollution or noise or crowd. It was that getting anything done in India -- passports, visas, property sales, etc. -- takes forever and is frustrating and expensive. There's level of corruption or incompetence or apathy in Indian bureaucracy that isn't present to the same extent in the US. The main reason S's parents were, and still are, in India is because they are trying to sell a condo and a plot of land they own there. Supposedly, they had a deal while we were there for the condo, but everyday there was a new snag and a new reason the closing date had to be pushed back. It was really frustrating for my father-in-law.
And this is one reason (of many) why Donald Trump is such a menace to society. He rallies his minions against American institutions, and American institutions, though obviously imperfect, work pretty well compared to a lot of other places in the world. But a big part of why they work is because people have faith and trust in them. Once that trust gets eroded, things turn to shit, and everybody gets cynical and in it for themselves, with no attention to the greater good, which causes things to erode further and go to shit even more. It's an institutional death-spiral.
Anyway...
Our first night in Mysore we ate at a traditional South Indian restaurant near the hotel. I wasn't super hungry (big lunch), so I just ordered some Masala puri, a very traditional snack (chaat) of the state of Karnataka. It was so effing hot. I mentioned some spicy chicken wings in my last entry, but this puri was like those wings rolled in chili powder and doused with hot sauce. S's cousin got the same thing, and even she -- somebody who grew up on this type of food -- said it was hot. (Her son had a few bites and started profusely sweating.) To my "credit," however, I ate the entire plate. My lips felt like they had been dipped in lava, but at least it gave me a good excuse to order a milkshake -- I had to cool my mouth off. What else was I to do?
The next few days in Mysore were spent shuttling from family member to family member. This is where S's mother grew up and most her family is still located. It was a challenge to keep the kids engaged (especially Lil' S2), but we distracted them with screens, and they also thought it was fun to ride the rickshaws. Sometimes the driver would let a kid sit up front with him and steer. It seemed wildly unsafe to me, but I just went with it. When in Rome...
S's family members all seem to be doing very well for themselves. One of her cousins is a doctor who practiced in the US for several years. Now he lives in Mysore with his sister and their aging parents. He took us out to eat at a really good (and renowned) dosa joint. I got a Masala dosa, and it was quite tasty, but I think my mother-in-law's are better. S's cousin has a picture on his phone of the fabled palace photo of S's grandfather (or great-grandfather), so I can verify its existence, even though I didn't see it first-hand.
Another one of S's cousins owns (or owned) some land containing a quarry with valuable minerals, so he's quite rich. He lives in an absolutely beautiful house with his wife and their recently betrothed son and daughter-in-law. The house is in a more rural part of the country, and the way I can describe it is on the show Succession, if the Roys go to a rural getaway, it looks like this house. Everything is new and nice, and it has a gorgeous backyard with a koi pond and a remote control waterfall. There's a rooftop garden with a big table for dining or playing board games (a favorite pastime of the family, apparently). The house even has an elevator in case you just don't feel like walking. Actually, it came in really handy for S's mom as she has a lot of trouble traversing stairs.
The family now owns an egg farm, so we went out to see it. I could have done without that trip -- the smell of farm gives me a headache -- but it did afford me the opportunity to drop my "Do the chickens have large talons?" joke on Lil' S1, so that was fun.
The weirdest part of our Mysore leg came when we went to look at S's old house. For four years in the late '80s and early '90s, S's family moved to India and settled in Mysore. The plan was to stay there, but, as my father-in-law tells it, S and her sister (both middle-school-age) were relentless in badgering him and my mother-in-law to return to the States. Eventually, they relented and did just that.* I think of this every time I see S get frustrated with our kids for not wanting to do Indian things. Like mother, like son. Actually, that's the story of every child. No kid is into their roots. It's something you learn to appreciate later in life.
*The plan was for the family to start a farm, but that fell through for some reason, which I'm sure also contributed to their decision to move back to the US. It's pretty hilarious now to think of S and her sister as farmers.
We just wanted to look at their old house from the outside, but when we got there, there was this old woman sitting on the walkway out front. S's parents started talking to her, and she turned out to be the 96-year-old grandmother of the woman who lived in the house, so she went inside and got the owner, and the owner not only invited us in, she gave us a tour of the house. She was unbelievably nice, letting a bunch of randos infiltrate her home for a half-hour. (Her college-age son was also there and very kind, himself.) She tried to make us lunch, but we said we had to go, so she blessed all the women, rubbing kumkuma, on their foreheads, and sent us on our way. It was kinda surreal.
On the night of Christmas Eve, we went to see the lights on the palace, which is a thing they do there. It was so crowded, however, we couldn't get into the palace grounds, or even particularly close, so we just took rickshaws around the perimeter. I thought it was still really cool, but S's mom was disappointed. "Oh, this is nothing," she would reply every time I said something good about it. I think she really wanted to show-off the city's major attraction to us and didn't feel like our view from the rickshaw was doing the job. But it's one of those things, where if she just would've relaxed and let us all enjoy the show, we would have very much enjoyed it -- or at least I would have, anyway.
The next morning it seemed like it was going to be a lovely, if atypical Christmas day. The sun was shining; I was able to get in a decent jog at the hotel gym; and I arrived at the breakfast buffet just as they were replenishing the pancake bin with a new batch of hot, fresh cakes. Everything was coming up roses. But then, S's aunt came down and told us that S's cousin was skipping breakfast and staying in bed because she was sick with a really bad sore throat. Immediately, I started thinking of the little irritation in the back of my throat. It was small, nearly imperceptible, the type of thing I'd feel if I slept with my mouth open and the fan on. Normally I wouldn't give it a second thought, but now that I knew somebody I had been in close proximity with was sick, it had me worried.
Alas, my worry was well-founded. Throughout the day, my condition progressively worsened, until I was forced to admit that I was indeed sick. It was some sort of brutal respiratory thing. It might even have been Covid -- I didn't take a test -- but I don't think so. I've had Covid twice, and I've had colds dozens of times, and it felt much more like a cold (albeit a really bad one) than it did Covid. Whatever it was, it laid me up but good. I was oozing snot and hacking up phlegm like some sort of disgusting snot-and-phlegm-producing machine. The quality of facial tissue is subpar in India, too. They don't have the nice, soft, lotion-infused Kleenex we have here in the States (at least not that I could find), so I was going through boxes of the stuff, rubbing my nose raw. I had few tissue travel packs from the US in my backpack, and I was rationing them out like they were sticks of butter in WWII.
Whenever I get sick like this, I know there is nothing that can really help me but time. I just have to wait it out. My t-cells will win in the end, but it's going to take a few days. There's no other way about it. I will take medicine, but it's for other people, not for me. S, for example, will give me stuff, Zyrtec or what not, and I know it's all bunk. If we actually had something that could cure the common cold, then we would have something that actually cured the common cold -- you know what I mean? But I take it anyway, just so that S can't hold it against me. She responds to me getting sick more with annoyance than sympathy, and so if I take her meds, then she can't say that I'm not trying to get better. Also, S's cousin offered to share her cough medicine with me, so I took it just to show I was grateful for the thought. It reminded me of being sick as a child, very Robitussin-y.
We left the day after Christmas to go back to Bangalore, with me in full-in "life is miserable" mode. S's dad was lamenting on my behalf that my ailment couldn't have delayed itself a few days, so that I could have been sick at home instead. But I'm not so sure I agree with that sentiment. One of my travel hot takes is that the best part of any vacation, no matter how good, is coming home. I think I would actually rather be sick the last few days of vacation than be sick the first few days after returning home. It's a tough call, though. It's a Political Gabfest-style conundrum.
Anyway, I'll wrap up this entire thing later with a Part III about our final leg in Bangalore.
Until next time...
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