India -- Day 3 -- Return to Bangalore

The following day, we took some pictures with uncle Ramasubbu and coincidentally, they were the last pictures of his long and active life. I was really fortunate to have made that trip, for never again was I going to see the "patriarch" of the family. As I recall, that day was sunny, he could sit up for his feeding. After many years of delightful conversations with the man, it was sad to see him a mere shell of his former self.

After breakfast and lunch at uncle Ramasubbu's place, it was time to return to Bangalore. It was also October 2nd or Mahatma Gandhi's birthday. It was a dry day, i.e., no alcohol sales, so it was probably a bad day for some of the alcohol-dependent folks. Me, Venkatesh, my brothers and Prakash squeezed ourselves into Prakash's Daewoo Matiz, a 800 cc car @ 50 bhp for the 350 km journey to Bangalore. I was thinking of what people in the US might have done with a car like this.

Traffic in Chennai was needless to say horrendous, but once we departed the city, it was nice to see a newly improved National Highway 7. Unlike in the past, the roads were much broader and smoother, although you have to pay a toll to use the roads. After a 7 hour journey, we arrived in Bangalore to encounter even more traffic. I wonder how Bangalore is going to cope with increasing traffic in the future. How do multinational companies function in Bangalore, given the horrible infrastructure? In my opinion, Chennai would have been a better choice. We had dinner and called it a day. My back was sore from the car travel, and I welcomed the chance to just rest a while.

India -- Day 2 -- A Flying Visit to Chennai

After a restful day meeting my parents and the family yesterday, I went to breakfast with my nephews, Siddarth, Arun and Vijay at Shanti Sagar, close to my house. I received word from Chennai that an uncle of mine, Ramasubbu was very, very ill and probably in his last days. So I consulted with a cousin, Venky and made arrangements to fly to Chennai despite the extremely short sojourn in India. With some difficulty, we managed to get flight tickets via SpiceJet airlines (4,600 INR for two tickets). See the boarding pass on the top!

Bangalore Airport had changed since my last visit in December 2005. It had become even more crowded. As comparison, we used to have 8-10 flights a day in 1987, while today there are 12 flights in an hour. According to some reports, it's the third busiest airport in India after New Delhi and Mumbai. Imagine that!

At any rate, after a one-hour flight we landed in Chennai and paid our respects to uncle Ramasubbu. He was looking really haggard and we could tell that he was in a pretty bad shape. After much deliberation, we decided to have a boys' night out at Gandhinagar Club. There were a whole bunch of guys, me, Venkatesh from Bangalore, Ramamurthy, Ram and Lakshman (my brothers), Krishnamurthy, Prakash (a friend of my brothers'), Ramasamy and Venky (from San Jose, CA). It was a real blast and the food was adequate. Strangely, some guys were drinking single malt Scotch Whiskey with water. Blech! As the saying goes, a good time was had by all, and we went back to Ramasamy's house for the night. I was very tired.