Bangalore

I arrived in Bangalore's fancy new airport and asked:

is this really India, or did I mistakenly take a plane to Singapore?

In typical Bangalore geekiness, a sign announced:

It takes the sun's rays 8 1/3 minutes to get to the earth; it takes your baggage 7 minutes to get to the carousel.

My plane landed at 11:15. I was through customs and out the door at 11:24 (with baggage).

While waiting for the baggage, I noticed that every piece of luggage was labeled with a doctor's name:

Dr. A. P. Chinnaswamy
Dr. P. T. Ismail
Dr. L. H. Mathews

etc.

And the people filling in the visa forms and the swine flu questionnaires (Have you been to an infected country?), filled up the rectangular boxes thus:

SURNAME: D R _ C H I N N A S WA

even if they needed to truncate their names, writing DR was more important.

Next time, I will label my luggage: Dr. Mick Purcell, PhD, MSc, BSEE, OBE . . .

Our conference is at a Mental Hospital! It's every kind of hospital but it is chiefly known as a mental hospital: NIMHANS.

The autorickshaw driver asked me:

"for what purpose have you come for India, sir?"

"for Conference."

"Doctor, sir?"

I shook my head, which in Western culture means no, but he took it to mean: Of course! (who would fly to Bangalore without a doctorate????)

"Medical, sir?"

"No, computers."

"Hardware, sir?"

"No, software."

And he frowned.

Apparently, half of Bangalore has doctorates; the other half of Bangalore drives rickshaws or motobikes, and passes judgment on the types of doctorates!