Having seen a few cities in this country, and being both enchanted and infuriated in turn by the habits of Indians and the particulars of Indian culture, I have picked up yet more titbits of trivia, morsels of intrigue, and notes on this ancient, modern society.
Which makes me sound a good deal more professional than I probably am, but in any case there are ome things around here that are a lot like that themselves, and, once again I turn first to the taxi men of India for inspiration on this page.
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There is an endearing yet also unimpressive habit here among those commissioned to drive you places for money, in that they don't seem to think it too important to know where those places are, exactly.
If a car turns up at your hotel to drive you on, let's just say for example, a 16-hour journey of about 600km across a quarter of the width of India then, although it is a mighty task to know such a vast country in any meaningful detail, you might like to hope that since you were paying the equivalent of a week's wages for a much more highly skilled worker for the privilege, (the equivalent would be taking a taxi to somewhere in Eastern France) it would be quite nice if the driver knew some of the area more than 20 kilometres outside his home town. On a list of things not boding well, a driver driving a 600km journey who needs to ask where he's going while only less than a tenth of the way there bodes pretty big, heavy an dark, if you ask me.
Fortunately, my cynicism isn't an accurate measure of Indian society because, perhaps unsurprisingly, everyone else in the country knows more about geography than your driver.
Asking directions (or rather, watching folk who speak the proper languages ask for directions) is an almost ulifting experience: at first it seems tremendously rude; there is no pre-amble, no `sorry to bother you, but...` no `excuse me` - the destination is simply barked out at whoever happenes to be around, and creditably to everyone so far barked-at they all upstaged our driver in knowledge and wisdom of the highways.
This practice is most often used by autorickshaw drivers, and on autorickshaw drivers. Presumably there is some A.R.D. zen master who goes around schooling young neophytes in these subtle arts - "Dont use meter, use words of Johnny Ball-san; Think of a number, and triple it; Learn roads but always pretend no learn roads for tourists, long trip mean big tip; ask every foreigner they want taxi even if they in one already" etc.
Another thing worth noting is that the rickshaw guys, and taxis in general, will give a lift to any of there friends who happen to be around and want to go somewhere, probably detouring you ever-so-slightly and unnerving you ever-so-much if late at night. The prospect of two people driving you down some weird-arse little muddy track in the dead of night gives you cause to reflect ominously on phrases like `the dead of night`, although physical violence is one thing I really dont think they go in for here.
Strangley enough, the best person for directions and orientation was a guy I got a lift from today who wasn't even a taxi driver; down by the Managlore coast it is pretty quiet and rurl, and very disorientating. i rickshaw'ed down there and thought I had the lie of the land, got deposited on a bit of beach a few kilometres from where I wanted to be (a posh resort whose restaurant I intended to try out for lunch; nevr did see the place) and thought a nice walk on the beach would set me up for the mea nicely.
Turns out the road behaved like a crazed contortionist and passed through itself at least sixteen-hundred times so that North was South, and South contrived somehow to be upside down. I found an abandoned rickshaw and a bunch of youths saw me and asked where I wanted to go. Ended up commissioning one of them to ride me back to Mangalore city for slightly less than the rickshaw fare would have been, we only had one helmet between us but his directional sense was examplary.
And I had the helmet for almost the whole journey, only swapping it for one section in town as we passed the police station - in India, pillion passengers recieve the cotempt they probably deserve and I suppose it's considered more or less okay if they die!
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The television here is a revelation to me, mostly in that it is occasionally good and there are at least 8 English language channels hidden amongst the 90-odd native tongue choices, most of which are either bad dramas from the Ramayana, televangelist preachshows or dodgy music-routine displays of staggering tackiness.
The English channels invariably include national Geographic, Animal Planet and The Discovery Channel though, so despite the latter's dreadfully low-brow presentation (do I hear you cry `kill the snob!` ?) if you leave me with a TV set I am a happy man.
actually it's worth mentioning tat I have been spoilt rotten lately; arriving in Mangalore 3 days I checked into the Hotel Poonja International, and you can rightly bet that any joint with the word `international` in its name knows how to bloody charge. Happily enough it was splendid beyond measure, with a proper marble lobby, doormen in suitably ridiculous formal costume who saluted you each time they held the door open for your arrival or departure (I tipped this poor mug all the change from my total bill in compensation for his ridiculous hat alone), and proper room service who understood at least a third of what I was saying at least a quarter of the time. For my plummy, middle-class conversational tones through an Indian internal telephone line, that is extremely good.
They had cable tv there, and the new place at a third of the cost a few streets away also has, amazingly, cable TV with an even better choce of channels.
It's a wonder I've even left the buildings here, as it is I've been surprisingly busy 
Watching TV for over an hour, channel surfing as one does, it becomes obvios that your first susicions were true.
The guy who advertises satellite TV, cricket shows, Tag Heur watches and Suzuki cars also advertises Coca Cola, Ralph Lauren Polo clothing, Air Tel moile phones and government Television programming.
He is a cricketer, or rather, was one before he was rendered incapable of movement from all the labels, decals, endorsements and brand logos stapled onto every inch of his carcass. In reality he probably drives a Nissan Micra, drinks only tap water and prefers shabby sackcloth shifts to all that stuff.
Who amd I kidding the? The bugger is probably wiping his arse with a Coke-brand 1000 Rupee note as I speak - I shall keep you updated on all and any other things I see his face associated with
Also his name would be kind of useful...
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Television again; many adverts (and there are many indeed) try to coax you into buying tapes and CDs. Tapes. Weren't they made illegal under anti-lameness laws years back?
Only joking of course; they were actually just rounded up and leant against a brick wall with a nice cigarette.
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You will see, or rather you would if any of tem were aesthetically pleasing enough, swastikas absolutely everywhere. No, it isn't a neo-fascist movement of Indians, I can hardly even imagine such a thing, but the symbol was of course stolen by old Adolf from the Eastern world, flipped around so the arms point anti-clockwise, and whacked on a snazzy red & white banner under which he bastardised this symbol of spiritualism as he bastardised the politics of Germany and the spirit of the German people.
Rudyard Kipling of Jost So Stories and The Jungle Book fame had a swastika printed - the correct way round - on the first editions of that latterly mentioned title.
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If you go into a shop with an awkward collection of money then you wont always get all of your change - never fear, though, because if there is a shortage of the right notes or coins then the balance will always be made up with sweets, chewing gum, pens or anthing else that the shop sells of equivalent value to the defecit. Isn't that just delightful?
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Last thing for now; the pavements. I mentioned this to Maria and she all bt burst out laughing; I mentioned that I was going to mention that they almost entirely absent from this country, with only the larger cities having them and then they were on at least 4 different levels, with some huge distance between tem and kerbs more than 18" high in some places. Not a country to drunkenly wander at night even in the most developed places, then, but Maria opened my eyes to the fact that this is a developing country.
Yes, you'd think i might have guessed that, but credit where it's dude, it hardly ever really seemed to be one to me - the media and politics are so up-to-date (in infrastructure if not in content or style - but then again, neither is America 
). I should have suspected something from all those palm leaf & bamboo huts and overloaded bicycles really (I saw a rickshaw with easily a thousand coconuts on it last week, damn thing was bigger than a 3-tonne transit van and covered in brown fur. I'm tempted to make jokes about Ann Widdecombe here but I shall resist).
The shocking thing is how many people are living in those huts made from bamboo stakes and woven palm leaf panels: nothing more than tents, in reality, only far less waterproof. People, by and large, are poor and struggling and in a country of over a billin people - one 6th of all poeple onm Earth, this is pretty terrible at times.
The affluence of city life often fails to hide this, too, although the beggars are not to be believed
What is msot noticeable, in a way, is that the clothing of most villagers from goa and all across Karnataka, and across all of India I would suspect, has faded with wear and filth to a uniform brown, the patterns of every garment dulled by the all-pervadng mud and the quite brutal method of washing which necessarily involves a large rock, a dirty river, and a lot of hard thrashing.
But I will leave on a more cheerful note because quite obviously that is more likely to bring some of you back
The next Entry, unless I cram in another photo post or two, will revolve around the marvelous city of mnagalore, where i have been my msot delighted so far on this trip. It is lovely, it really is, and you will find out exactly why soon