Day 9 in India: We had a special guest speaker this morning Prof. V Jagannata, who also worked on the Mars orbiter mission for NASA. He spoke to us on empowering communities.
Here’s a couple of things we learned and some stats I wanted to share: If a member in your family owns land, the rest of the family cannot apply to buy land (in order to ensure that land distribution is equitable, or that newcomers can have access to land). Some stats: 75% of Indians live in the lowest two brackets is income levels and 22% are below the poverty line. The city we are going to tomorrow (Bangalore) had 160,000 people in 1901 and now has 8.5 million (the population of the entire state of Virginia) all in one small land area. And it’s only the 8th biggest city in India! But more on Bangalore tomorrow.
Our leader gave us a little extra time after our morning session so we took an Uber to St. Philomena Cathedral. They still had both their nativity scene and a couple of Santas up. Their windows were painted where traditionally there would be stained glass. We got to go inside and even went down into the crypt. Again no photos were allowed inside. Sorry.
We rushed back to have a little lunch before our afternoon session which was on “sustainable cities and architecture of every day in the context of cultural landscape of power” by another impassioned speaker.
Then we took the bus to a special theatre festival that was just opening. There were numerous artists and musicians. There was fantastic local art, which was so cool to see. There were drums and street performers. The big puppet-like figures reminded me of what we’d see at the May Day parade in Minnesota. We didn’t stay long but I’m glad we got to at least get an idea of what it entailed.
Before heading back to the hotel for supper we did some shopping, always a necessity, including perusing a supermarket which is something I try to do if I can when I travel. You really get a good idea of the flavor of a culture (literally).
After dinner we wanted to see how the United States, specifically Texas was glocalized here in India. We went to a new restaurant/brewery called Double Barrel Brew Pub. We had two birthdays we needed to celebrate American style so thought this would be a fun/funny way to do so. We weren’t disappointed. It was over the top in many weird ways—it’s playing club music, but there’s kids running around at 11:45 pm. There’s a backlit Calvin Kline cowboy and cowgirl guarding the saloon swing doors, there’s a wagon bar inside complete with a horse sandwiched between saddle chairs. But there’s a skylight fish tank, traditional Indian food on the menu, several misogynistic signs on the walls, and female-shaped glasses. On the positive, when they found out we were celebrating birthdays they brought out a drink surrounded in dry ice and complete with candles.
This is our last night in Mysore. It’s been a nice contrast to New Delhi and Jaipur: cleaner, more focus on arts and culture, development that is colorful and seemingly more modern. In many ways it seems a lot less chaotic. We’ll see how it compares to Bangalore tomorrow. 
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