Bangalore Local Customs

If you are visiting any of the temples, please leave your footwear well outside the temple(most temples have designated places for the same), wash your feet and only then enter the temple.
We pay our obeisance by bowing to the deity, and we believe it is disrespectful to show one's back to the deity.
We walk around the deity thrice as we pray for proposerity but always circle the god from left to right and not the other way round.
Some edible food/sweet is given away as 'prashadham' which is food offered to the god and later distributed to the worshippers in the belief that god has tasted that food. So if you do not wish to eat the same, please do not collect it at all. Do not throw away the same as it is quite shocking for us to see something like that!
Always ask for permission before getting to closwe to the deity, it is allowed in some temples, but others, mostly in the south do not permit us touching the deity
Do not carry water bottles into Jain temples. They do not allow the same in.

On a recent 24 hour stay in India, i came across this website recommended in one of the magazines: www.kamat.com done by a family from Bangalore who have painstakingly put together old and new pictures and informaton otherwise unavailable to the foreign readers.
i thoroughly enjoyed reading about the various tribal peoples of india

Growing all over the city of Bangalore are Jack Fruit trees. The Jackfruit is a tree and its fruit are native to south India.

You can buy them by the section off the street carts or get a whole fruit. You have to oil the knife because they are so sticky to cut. Eat Jack Fruit with honey. Be aware that overeating Jack Fruit can cause a stomach ache.

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Whilst in the last ten years, life has gotten much better for a subclass or subcaste of educated people, it takes more than ten years to change mentalities and cultural contexts.
While the girls are more educated and are holding down jobs in gender free industries such as call centres and Software jobs, their arranged marriage patterns are too strong to be affected. The so called Love Marriages are few and far between. In India it is not the religion that is important but the caste, they tend not to marry outside the caste system. Unfortunately the new found boom finds the girls working and mixing with all sorts of people but have to abide by the cultural constraints of finding a husband. In private they cherish the idea of meeting a foreigner or marrying one, but in reality they understand the difficulties associated with it. Many Indian girls who had gone abroad to study, work have married foreigners but it is not the done thing while residing in India, with its rigid moral codes.
I had the chance to spend some time conversing with this bright girl of Kerala who works in Bangalore, educated in Australia, has travelled to Singapore and Malaysia but finds finding a suitable partner beyond her belief, superimposed on her parents values of who she can or she cannot marry. Women coming into the workforce always suffer regardless of the country but in India the cultural contrasts are so stark and the suffering so immense.
It is still not uncommon to hear, bridegrooms relatives murdering a young bride for not bringing in enough dowry. one thing i was happy to hear that the dowry problems are down but the parents of the groom still insist on the bride coming in with lots of gold jewelry!

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If you are willing to splurge a little, very good value for money with silver jewelry with inlaid semi precious stones could be had.
also it is such a pleasure to look at all these, hundreds of them and then try to bargain a few rupees, a pleasure in itself, for those of us arising out of mercantile traditions.

If you do go to Commercial Street area and along the second cross there is a moslem boy who sells or assists in selling custom jewelry by the road side. i bought some things for cuba from him and on my second visit to the tailors SS Tailors next door, he called me over.. you are my customer now and i will give you discount! he turned out to be a very sweet boy and i told him, i will pay you as much as you want for these items, ask me. still he asked me for very modest sums which i was happy to give him. Of course, Fidel's face rose inside me, that made me say: be a good student, study hard and get out of the road but run a nice business perhaps with some IT nerds in an air conditioned office. his smile was precious.

Diabetes is so common that I found this magazine in Malayalam completely devoted to Diabetes. India will have the dubious honour of having the largest number of diabetics in the world.
What a pity a preventable disease such as Diabetes are killing IT nerds, Call Girls at Call Centres, young entrepreuners. The effect of this would be felt in about twenty years.

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This is a three day long ( it looked like a week long ) celebration, each of the days dedicated to various gods or godesses. The entire city and I am told, the entire nation celebrates this holiday, decorating their homes, their vehicles and their shops. This is a good time to be in Bangalore to witness the religious ritualistic energy all around you.
This lady is decorating the motorcycle so that a puja (a kind of prayer ritual ) could be done and blessings offered to the motor vehicle for its safety and the safety of its riders.