Okay, it's just another little piece about Mangalore, not the city of Mangoes at all but, Bangalore meaning `the city of the boiled bean` (legend has it that an ancient king once stopped here in dire need of food, sustenance, and some people to boss about but was served only a humble meal of boiled beans. Being graciously grateful and, not stooping so low as to have the impudent peasant chopped into little pieces on the spot, he had a moment of good humour, founded his capital there, and called it Bangalore, the city of the boiled bean).

After hearing this story I always imagined that Mangalore was the city of the Mashed Mango, or MangoStewiStan or something like that, but in fact it is named after the Keralan princess Mangaladevi, who unfortunately snuffed it pretty soon after the naming ceremony was finished, leaving an awkward little quandary about what to do with all the canapes and dessert, I imagine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangalore#Origin_of_the_name

I found this city worth expounding upon a little more becaue I rather liked it. The first thing that really inpressed me was that the taxi drivers all, without fail, used their meters and the fares were minimal and fare (ha ha), not to mention so laughably cheap that I found myself cackling like an escaped nutcase as I traversed the city for an hour and a half in one of their black yellow contraptions for no other reason than that it was costing me less than half that of a ten minute ride anywhere around Goa. I got some funny looks, but was too busy bent double in gleeful joy to give a shit.

I took a few tours around the city: one day I visited all the churches, cathedrals and other testaments to Christ's questionable influence and all of them were daubed in some ecclesiastically institutional shade of grey. No doubt some homage to the level of interest of most of the memmbers of the catholic church and their enfeebled imaginations, my parents notwithstanding, of course :) Quite why they were ALL grey is beyond me: Rosario cathedral, a lovely building of decent enormity with some quite lovely interior stained glasswork and statuary (photography forbidden, naturally, but I have found that there is little one cannot photograph with a few distraction techniques, the cancellation of your camera's flash facility, a steady pillar or baptism font to lean upon and a decently increased shutter speed).

Rosario cathedral is, in itself, just one part of the impressive institutionalisation of India's youth. The large and mostly grey complex includes the Rosario infant and pre-school (the only building not actually grey in itself, but not far from it with all the peeling paintwork), Rosario High School where victims, I'm sorry, students from the ages of 8 to 18 are schooled further in the ideas of mathematics, religion, science, religion, arts, crafts, geography and religion, and, of course, extra religion, at least if they behave really well.

There is something called the Rosario Composite Pre-University college, also amazingly in shades of grey within the extensive grounds, and just adjacent to this praiseworthy compound is the Rosario Catholic University itself. Needless to say all these facilities have paths leading directly into the grounds of the cathedral, although, if one were being cynical, none actually leading out ;) Give me a child until he is 9, and he is mine for life, or so they say. At Rosario they take you from about the age of 4 to 22, and then there is probably very little hope :P

There is also a Rosario gymnasium where the muscles can be numbed to make the mind a little less able to resist the imprecations of King/Queen/Saint Rosario (I gotta stop this I'm sorry, this is a bit one-sided isn't it?), then also The Rosario Hostel Hall where the recently graduated young professionals can be assured of not straying too far from the Motherland, and there is even the Rosario Cultural Hall to make quite sure no-one ever develops the independence of thought to leave the place after the age of 35.

Tucked somewhere around the back there is quite probably also the Rosario Elderly Care Home, the Rosario Graveyard and possibly even the Rosario Fertiliser and Compost Recycling Centre.

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The rest of the post is less anti-Rosario, whoever the hell he/she was anyway, I promise.

Another place of worship I visited was the Aloyitious(sp?) College Chapel (surprise surprise, it's a chapel in an educational establishment, and this time the whole bloody place was painted grey, all 20-odd buildings of it). And my, what buildings they were, each one larger than the entire college I went to, and at least I had the good grace to get my arse kicked out of that before it got it's claws into me too deep.
The paintings inside the chapel are magnificent - hardly a rival to the Cistene chapel but apparently the closest India has to it, and, having seen both now with my own eyes then I am quite impressed by the comparison.

Needless to say I threw some small change down the central aisle to distract the nuns and the stick-reliant and worryingly wobbly bursar while I sneaked some photos of the ceiling, windows and stonework, and just about remembered about the flash settings in time to get some okay photos, albeit a little too far away to capture the best of the detail.
I almost got caught that time but I gave them a hasty `shukrya, Sisters, Father` and legged it before they could fetch the thumbscrews or the collections box.

There was another (grey) church somewhere along the way but I can't remember much about it. Not much worth saying, I guess, but the day before that I found a real marvel of Indian culture.

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I took an early morning taxi to a museum recommended in the Lonely Planet. They said very little of importance about it but I found it fascinating - the statues, sculptures and weaponry dating fom 1100AD onwards was incredible, and the art - the Art!! I have never appreciated art in museums before but this one small room on enterting the museum contained at least 10 of the finest 15 pieces of work I have ever seen. There must be something about Indian artistry; the colours, the contrast, the capturing of movement and feeling in just a few simple brushstrokes, lines of penwork, or daubs of watercolour taht seemd to jump of the canvas' at me and make me appreciate, for the first time ever, what Art should truly be: something that moves you inside, without you even knowing how or why.

There was a portrait of an old man in indian headdress, glasses and suit and Indian-style tie that I swore was a photograph, even up close. The shading behind the glasses was immaculate and I half expected him to begin speaking to me. It was unbelievable, and even having seen a few pictures by world famous artists here and there I was still very, very impressed.

I wandered upstairs and found case after case of weaponry used in the First War of Indian Independance - the Sepoy Mutiny. I snuck a few pictures and was caught halfway through by the curator; I bluffed through pretending that I was only about to take a photo, explained my interest as a weapon collector and proved my point with knowledge of the works enough for him not to confiscate my camera. I tried to baksheesh him into letting me take a few pictures - without flash of course - but I learned another important thing about Mangaloreans; almost universally, they are honest through and through.

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Another morning before anything was open - I wake early in India because of the heat - and wandered down to onme of the citiies many small shopping centres or malls. Everything was shuttered closed of course but still I could get in and get around, and did my usual trick of sneaking past the early morning cleaning staff onto the upper floors and got some photos of the city from the rooftops. This is the best place to spot the Eagles, and they are eagles I am sure of it now. Once ono the roof of Hotel Poonja International one mistook me for an early morning snack and I got a head-on shot of him swooping straight for me - pretty terrifying (these things can achieve wingspans of over 6 feet and are armed and ready to kill small dogs and lambs) but an amazing photo, even if I did duck in terror and only get him from over 30 feet away.
Still, it shouod be a good photo.

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My main note of praise for the people of Mangalore though is that they are not tourist hunters, the panhandlers only rarely are even noticeable (but the few kids that are aound are vastly more persistent than those anywhere else, I have noticed, so I tended to slip them 5-rupee notes when no-one else could see me doing so) and the taxi men NEVER, I mean Never ask you if you want a taxi. This, in itself, makes the city worth a visit.

There was a time on my final day when I realised that, aside from needing some change for the buses the next morning, I would rather like some decent drawing paper and a notebook. I have been reading a book called The Monk Who Sold His Farrari, and when I get off my arse and onto a form of public transport not designed to crush the human spine (i.e. not a public bus) then I will read it all again. The book urges one to keep a notebook, which I now do, and seeing a stationers across the way I stumbled in, tripped over a small dog or possbly just a very ugly child, and before the girls at the counter could stop laughing I bade them Namaste, which means hello, goodbye, how are you and all that sort of thing.

My pronunciation is not good, I will admit freely, but the looks they all gave me led me to think I had just asked to sodomise their mothers, and furthermore to do so live on the internet for personal profit and in a public place. They looked as appalled as you might if some had asked you if you'd like another cup of coffee, but had instead apparently said "fuck off, aye?" in a thick Scottish accent right to your face.

Thankfully the proprietor kenw more about foolish Englishmen than the appalled young girls she employed, explained to them what I had said and they giggled uncontrollably for half an hour saying `namaste` amid hushed giggles in much the way I imagined I had said it myself. The importance of correct annunciation has rarely been more apparent to me; the next 20 minutes asking for paper, drawing paper, plain paper, plain paper please, A3 paper, pens, biros, gel pens, ball-point pens, unlined paper, yes unlined paper, please, and other assorted disasters caused me to turn to a shade of red that any beetroot farmer would have been famously proud of, and caused the girls behind the counter to actually require assistance with their breathing such was the hilarity of my failure to speak properly.
They may have just escaped from the Rosario home for the mentally irritating for all that I know (it was just across the stree) but in any case the fault was all mine, I'm sure.
I tripped over the dog-child again as I left and even at knife-point I shall never enter that shop again.

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One final thing I saw which was beautiful and somewhat poetic: two tiny rust-red butterflies dancing together in some primal dance that no doubt would have lead to lots of little caterpillers sometime in the future; jutting and weaving around the base of an ancient tree - and I hear a screech above and just 30 or 40 feet from me two rust-red eagles are matching their dance, wheeling about each other and stalling in mid-air, catchign themselves in perfct syncrony and swooping off together into the distance.

A perfect end to another perfect day in Managlore.