I was late for a wedding.
My friends Samba and Reena were due to be married this morning. I had ordered a taxi for seven thirty but the guy at the hotel reception warned me it may be half an hour late. Fine-I had time for breakfast. I had built an hour's redundancy into the plan anyway, knowing that Bangalore's snarling traffic would be an obstacle.
At eight I returned to reception. Still no car. I asked how long it would be.
"Just five minutes sir," he reassured me. He knew I was going to a wedding, I had told him the importance of this cab the moment I had entered the hotel the previous evening and he had told me earnestly that he would arrange everything.
Fifteen minutes came and went.
I asked him again when the car would be here.
"It's on the way. Should be five minutes sir."
"That's what you said fifteen minutes ago," I replied.
"No-it will be five minutes sir. Please sit and I'll call them."
Fifteen minutes passed. My extra hour was all used up.
I was officially annoyed.
"Where's the car?"
"Just another f..."
"Don't tell me another five minutes. Your five minutes last an hour." This kind of time keeping is jokingly referred to by Indians themselves as Indian Standard Time.
"I'm sorry sir, but the taxi was ordered from the centre of town and was caught in the traffic. We've ordered a local taxi who will be here in five minutes."
"But we're five miles from town-why didn't you order a local taxi in the first place?"
"It's not the usual company we use. Please sit and wait for five minutes."
Fifteen minutes came and went.
I was officially angry.
"Listen, I'm going outside to get an auto-rickshaw. At least I'll be on my way and not sat here waiting on a dream."
"No, you can't do that sir, the taxi is ordered."
"I don't care about that, I've got a wedding to get to."
"But sir, the rickshaw will cost more and the taxi will be here in five minutes."
Two lies in one sentence. I was officially fucking livid!
"Bullshit - I'm leaving."
"Please sir, it's arriving shortly. I'll phone the driver. You can talk to him."
I felt like I was in a daytime soap opera; all logic seemed to have vanished in a puff of weasels. I knew what was happening as I had encountered it before. The receptionist was enjoying a very common past time in India known as The Art of Saving Face. People will go to great lengths to avoid embarrassing situations that may tarnish their good name – any kind of shame or dishonour being severely frowned upon in Indian society. It's just that this ancient warrior code that used to apply to bloody, medieval battlefields has been displaced in the modern world. Now it apparently applies to such trivial issues as ordering taxis.
You see, the receptionist had told me the previous evening that he would take care of my trip to the wedding. His honour was now under question as his promises were falling flat. In order that his honour be maintained, he had to provide me with the taxi-whether it arrived now or in three weeks time. Of course I wasn’t even questioning his honour, I just didn’t want to be late, but his dilemma was doubly complicated: he had also arranged a deal with the taxi driver and could not lose face to him either. Never mind the fact that I could miss the wedding; I would lose face for that, not him.
Saving face in modern Indian society can be extremely frustrating for the average foreign traveller, especially when the result often means that the person practising this fine art makes themselves look even more foolish than they originally did. In this case, the receptionist appeared to be wilfully ignorant of my dilemma in order to look competent when in fact he was looking more and more incompetent with the passing of every "five" minutes. It seemingly makes no sense until you realise that a hang over from the caste system is regulating his behaviour - but more of that in a later blog.
Eventually the car arrived two hours late. Thankfully, by now the traffic had eased and we were able to cut through the cross town traffic.
We had some trouble finding the place, but when I caught sight of a white horse bedecked in mogul finery with a strangely familiar mogul warrior atop it, I knew I had made it in time. I should have realised that the wedding would be on Indian Standard Time too.
Samba knew I had raced back from Tamil Nadu to get here and greeted me warmly when he caught sight of me. Then he made sure I was nearby throughout the ceremony so I could get a good look at the different blessings. Samba was marrying Rena who I had also worked with in Jersey, and they both made a fine couple. Like Vivek's wedding nearly two weeks before, it was a spectacular occasion, but significantly different in places as Hindu weddings have different customs in different regions. One notable point about both weddings is that neither was an arranged marriage - a sign of the times in modern Bangalore.
Samba's friends kept dragging me round by the hand which is customary in India as a sign of friendship, and treated me like I was part of their gang.
At the end of the ceremony, I filled my guts with all sorts of delicious curries spread on the customary banana leaf, and waddled back to the group to chat and take photos.
I was becoming a veteran of Indian weddings. They're great!

I assure the happy newlyweds that my shirt is both ultra-fashionable and highlights my admirable physique.

I took an auto-rickshaw back to the hotel which took more than an hour, but amazingly, the driver had the meter on and actually took me the right way. I tipped him handsomely and when he looked at me oddly for such a big tip, I told him it was for being fair and honest with me. He shook his head like I was some crazy fool, but smiled as he did so.
My room in the hotel was large and plush, so I kicked back for the next couple of days and recuperated from the mad dash across Tamil Nadu. Sometimes you need a break from all the sightseeing, especially when you've plunged headlong into a new culture. You need to step back and consider what you've been through, otherwise it all just builds into a mess of images and sensations.

Although most of the time during this period I managed to relax a good deal, one thing really annoyed me. I was in the room underneath the restaurant and the constant sound of scraping chairs and tables reverberated through the roof at all hours of the day-but especially when the restaurant was closed, or in the early hours of the morning. I couldn't explain it. It was either a mischievous ghost or some obsolete employee trying to justify his pay cheque because the furniture wasn't being moved a few inches, it was being dragged several feet across the floor.
One night, Vivek-who had just returned from his honeymoon in Singapore-popped around and we went to a couple of bars in the Whitefield district.
The first, rather fancifully called "Ivy-The Unwind Island" was a rather pleasant after-work hang out for Bangalore professionals. Here I was to have my first alcoholic beverage since arriving in India nearly four weeks previously. It was Kingfisher. It was good.
Vivek told me this bar had once been very busy, but like all new bars had fallen out of fashion after the initial enthusiasm. Still, it was doing reasonable trade for a Thursday night, and India were playing a test match against Australia on the big screen. Like most sports, I really enjoyed playing cricket as a boy, but as a spectator sport I find it as boring as watching a snail slithering across drying paint in the reflection of a kettle that has yet to boil. Or watching the sad bits in Comic Relief. However, this match was - dare I say it - actually quite exciting. India needed thirty runs from two overs, and were smacking the ball left right and centre. People were on their feet in the bar, cheering on their national team. It was a valiant effort, but they lost by three runs. It's funny to think that Britain gave India cricket and bureaucracy and now India is better at both.

Bangalore nights...

We went to another bar called Purple Haze where rock music was played loud. It was pretty cool, apart from the fact that I failed to drink a jug of beer to myself. I was seriously out of practice! Meanwhile Vivek and I chatted about my time in India and his travels for his Honeymoon and his Bachelor Party in Vegas. Obviously I can't divulge any of those stories as I swore not to, but needless to say, the incident with the cocktail waitress and the salamander will never be made public.

The next day I returned to Avenue Road which had so fascinated and enthralled me the first time I had visited Bangalore. It was raining, but it didn't dampen anybody's mood to shop. They say England is a nation of shopkeepers, but that title really belongs to India. Here, young men walk with their arms over each other’s shoulders, girls collect outside stationary shops looking almost lasciviously at pens and notepads, boys and old men haul carts full of goods about with gritted teeth and the traffic continuously attempts to mow them all down. The audience for this human theatre, the shopkeepers, stand watching stoically as they wait for the next inevitable purchase.

For my final night in Bangalore, I met Vivek and his friend Thaswin in town. We went to another bar also called Purple Haze which was bigger and the music even louder than its little brother in Whitefield. I thoroughly enjoyed it there. It's now my favourite bar in India.

Myself, Vivek and Thaswin.

Outside the next bar, “Le Rock,” we came across a drunk Indian guy trying to start a fight with the bouncers. It was quite amusing and quite unlike any fight I've seen outside a pub: lots of pushing and shouting followed by the guy charging the bouncers and literally bouncing off them. He then wandered off in a daze. Had it been Stevenage, there would at least have been blood and teeth on the ground afterwards.

Inside, we asked for shots and the waiter said they didn't have what we wanted but he could do us a special shooter. When the drinks came back, the "shooter" involved three tall glasses with multiple drinks in each. It was a scam and Vivek and Thaswin were having none of it. I was impressed with the way they went to town on the guy, calling over his manager and making him return the drinks to the bar.

When I got back to the hotel, I found a night club in full swing - in the restaurant above my room. The noise was deafening and there were people camping in the corridors. There was no way I was going to sleep, and I couldn't be bothered to move rooms so I decided to join the party. When I got upstairs, there must have been about twenty men all showing off their dancing skills to a single foxy lady. The men danced in a jittery fashion, half Michael Jackson and half Michael J. Fox. It was pretty funny. I chatted to a few of the people there about their jobs and what kind of music they liked. It was all very friendly and enjoyable.

The music finished at around two, and I had to get up early the next day to catch a train. I headed to my room, climbed into bed and started to fall to sleep.

Scraaaaaaape. Scraaaaaaaape. Scrrrraaaaaaape!

The fucking restaurant loon was at it again rearranging all the furniture upstairs. I phoned reception and he promised it would stop.

I closed my eyes again. I almost fell asleep.

Scraaaaaaaaape!

I was straight on the phone. "Stop that fucking noise-the club's already kept me up half the fucking night!" I was shouting. I'm very grumpy when I'm jarred awake. I fell asleep wondering why the loon above couldn't just lift the chairs instead of scraping them across the room, thinking in my tired, semi-drunken state that perhaps he didn’t have any arms, in which case he was probably in the wrong job.

The next day I jumped on a train to Mysore. The Shatabdi Express is fast and the train is very clean, bright and new. It was a stress free journey. I had booked a Ginger Hotel again, and unknown to me, they charged me both for the booking and at the check in. This still hasn't been resolved-their customer service is appalling and I haven't used them since.

On Sundays and public holidays, the Mysore Palace grounds are spectacularly illuminated so I took a stroll down there. I thought it may look a bit like a Santa's Grotto at Asda, but it actually looked very pretty. The lights were everywhere, on the palace itself, on the temples in the grounds, all along the watchtower and around the gates. There were lots of people here and, rather bizarrely, a full brass band playing Abba hits and other 80s pop cheese.

The Palace by night.

The Palace by day.

The following day, I took the full tour.

The first grand hall for wedding receptions is truly grand. Huge chandeliers hang from the ceiling, oil paintings of Royalty look down at you imperiously and solid cast iron pillars from Glasgow hold up the domed roof consisting of stained glass windows with peacock designs. Upstairs another huge hall with one side open to the world holds delicate portraitures, gilded colonnades and superb religious ceiling paintings. A final room full of mirrors looks best, a technical marvel of gold and silver columns with a stained glass ceiling and lavish furnishings. However for all this finery I found the palace to be coldly magnificent.

Although its opulence was apparent and it was technically superb, there was no passion or soul about the place. It did not feel lived in. There was no idiosyncrasy or whimsy. It was all for show and lacked any atmosphere. There was no left brain / right brain symmetry; pleasing geometric lines and exceptional craftwork were all around, but there was no passion or warmth here.

In my opinion, truly great works of art require both good craftwork and imagination. The greatest of guitarists can knock out a riff that uses all the strings across fifteen frets, but if there is no imagination behind it, it is dull and lifeless. Most practiced artists are technically capable of producing The Scream by Edvard Munch, but that painting required a piece of his soul to be smeared across the canvass in order for it to be so profound. All the logic in the world can make something technically brilliant, but without passion there is no fire, no life.

Mysore Palace was a trinket, a bauble; cared for but unloved. It was like eating a gourmet meal that has no flavour, or screwing a supermodel after you've given her rohypnol.

I left Mysore Palace satisfied by its grandiosity but unimpressed by its pompousness. It was time to move on. Next stop, Wayanad, one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.

Warning: Rude words ahoy.

"No girlfriend. No job. No problem." - Indian T-shirt.

The sun burns hot.

Under a blistering sky, plumes of cloying diesel fumes drape the air. A yellow sea of auto-rickshaws bobs, weaves and undulates like a living entity amongst swathes of people, mopeds and the occasional cow. Everywhere, the sound of horns beeping, tooting in a dissonant language with rhythms as phrases. Buildings heave under the strain of coagulated engine exhaust and dirt. A million shop façades scream in vibrant colours: BUY ME! Books, pharmaceuticals, fruit juice, textiles, stationary, anything you damn well want! A crippled man with a terrible skin disease lies prostrate on the ground, begging for a few coins. Down a side street, a well dressed man pisses torrents into the gutter.

The sun burns harder.

The stench of urea mixed with exotic spices punches through the exhaust fumes. Dust is thrown into the air by a rush of bicycles dodging the traffic. People chatter in clumps as they slowly meander the cracked and pit-filled pavement, their conversations idly mixing in the air. Dogs lie panting in the shade, contemplating dusk.

This isn't a collection of different incidents experienced in this mad, roaring beast of a city; it is Avenue Road, old Bangalore - a thousand experiences crushed into a few moments, assaulting the senses in a chaotic rush of awe, excitement and hilarity.

Eight days earlier I had arrived in India for the first time, rushing out of Bangalore airport excitedly and jumping into a cab. Though it was 4:00am and the streets were almost deserted, the cabbie still found ways to "nearly crash" whilst careening down the road at breakneck speeds. I put "nearly crash" in inverted commas because that is the way the traffic works here - everybody is nearly crashing all of the time. I emerged from the cab with the kind of fear and exhilaration you normally feel after a rollercoaster has fooled you Into thinking you're about to die. On the Bangalore streets however, the fear is very real.

I was staying at the Hotel Bangalore Gate on the KG Road - a very busy thoroughfare - and as soon as I checked in, I was so pumped up I wanted to go for a walk and soak up the atmosphere. However, I hadn't slept on the plane and after breakfast I collapsed into a fitful sleep.

Several hours later, barely refreshed, I met up with my old chum Anil Nadig. Anil and I had worked closely together in Jersey, and it was good to see him in his native Bangalore. Anil has a wide range of general knowledge and is a natural teacher, so he was in his element showing me around the city.

We drove into the city centre via the backstreets - Anil expertly dodging and weaving between people, dogs and rickshaws. I began to laugh at the madness surrounding us. The traffic was absolutely insane as vehicles ploughed down narrow streets two or three abreast, each millimetres from the other. We ended up at the MG Road (it stands for Mahatma Ghandi) which is famous in Bangalore for being at the heart of the shopping district. My first impression was that some of the street lighting was missing and the pavements were in a terrible state of repair. I was anticipating falling into a sewer and ending up neck deep in shit at any moment.

After a tour around some very western shopping malls (the Garuda Mall in particular is a jagged wedge of America set in the heart of Bangalore) we went for some food at a vegetarian restaurant. South Indian cooking is delightful, and as a vegetarian myself and a lover of spices, I was in fat bastard heaven. The meal we had was joyfully ladled onto a banana leaf - rice, sambar, various curries, roties, pickles and even a sweet - all eaten with the right hand (you don't use your left hand as it is unclean - you wash your bottom with it). We waddled away from the restaurant both gorged and content.

It was amusing to watch Anil, normally a calm, measured man drive like a loon through the streets of Bangalore. He described the art of driving in India as if you are tapping into a couple of extra senses to detect what is around you at all times. I believe, however, that it is actually the dulling of a particular sense that allows people to drive around in such a manner: the sense of absolute sheer fucking panic. He explained that although things look chaotic, the traffic system does work.

I've yet to be convinced - statistics prove that the world’s most dangerous roads belong to India.

The next day I set out on a tour with a guide who was hanging around outside the Hotel. He was to take me in his auto-rickshaw (a two stroke trike covered by a thin metal shell with a long seat at the back) to the tourist areas of Bangalore.

First we went to the Bangalore Palace. This faded old ruin of a place was quite charming in the sense that you could imagine what it looked like in its heyday, whilst also witnessing its ongoing decline. Its façade had been designed to replicate Windsor Castle – completely unsuccessfully I might add. We were guided around by an old Indian gentleman who loved the fact I was British and went to great pains to extol the virtues of every British piece of machinery or bric-a-brac in the building. I think he was just being kind.

Next my driver said he would take me to some shops. He explained in broken English that he would get stamps for this to pay for his uniform. It didn't make any sense to me, but I wandered in and out of the first shop without seeing anything remarkable. The second shop however would kick off a cascading chain of thoughts that is reverberating about my head even now.

I entered and took a swift look around, nonplussed by the merchandise.

It was a standard craft shop with admittedly some nice items but nothing you couldn't get down the Market for a third of the price.

I had no intention of buying anything, but thought I'd do my driver a favour. Immediately a smooth talking salesman sidled up to me and started laying on the bullshit. I know exactly how these guys work - I have a long history with smarmy high pressure salesmen and although I despise their practices, I do enjoy sparring with them. I let him "put things on the side" for me whether I expressed an interest or not, "merely for your consideration later sir," he reassured me.

The game was on.

After being dragged from one piece of craftwork to the next for twenty minutes – all accompanied by a syrupy monologue - I was becoming bored, so I said I was leaving.

"No! No! We have fine silks upstairs, furniture downstairs. Many more beautiful items for you to see."

"Not interested," I said, "Time is money and you're wasting both of mine."

He started to argue, but I made a motion to go. He immediately totted up the amount of all the items and asked for 80,000 rupees (around £100).

I said I didn't want all of the items and he started dropping the price. Meanwhile his lackeys were circling me like I was prey.

The game escalated.

He bargained, he cajoled, he pressurised. We sparred on price, quality and value; disputing, arguing, even heckling. His voice rose in tone, mine lowered. We both became verbally aggressive and by doing so, he knew he was beginning to lose the game.

The smarmy salesman gave it one last shot.

"I'm giving you a brilliant price-what's wrong with you?" he shouted.

He then repeated something he had said earlier, "Come on, you are my first customer of the day. The first customer is a blessing. I'm losing money on these prices."

I'd had enough. "If I'm the first customer and it's after midday then no wonder I'm a blessing! Anyway, I’m just using you as a reference. If your price is the lowest in town, I’ll be back." His face crumpled. The game was over.

With one last half-hearted effort he tried to get me to name my price while one of his drones waffled on about how beautiful their objects were. I turned and walked out leaving their voices hanging in the air.

I was becoming increasingly angry that the little shit outside was carting people around to places with such high pressured sales techniques. I hate seeing people being ripped off - especially if they're not used to these kind of salesmen or are vulnerable to aggressive persuasion. I enjoy a good haggle, but that had nearly turned violent.

I let rip at him.

"Why are you taking people round to places like that?" I explained my grievances.

"I get stamps to take you around."

"I don't give a fuck about your stupid stamps. I'm your customer. I'm paying you to take me where I want to go, not where you want me to go. Now take me back to the hotel."

The little guy was annoyed at losing my custom for the rest of the day and he shouted angrily at a few motorists on the way back. He even tried to persuade me a couple of times to go to another shop but was met with an icy stare. I paid him half of what we agreed for the whole day and went back to the hotel fuming. After a while I cooled off. All of these people are just trying to make a living after all, but I just don't appreciate slippery arseholes (unlike many aficionados of popular porn sites).

The next day I went for a walk. I meandered slowly down the cracked and broken pavement and learned quickly how to cross the road even as the traffic streamed past. The first step is to look at the approaching driver in the eye. They beep at you. You hold up your hand to slow them and they continue hurtling towards you, beeping all the way. You dodge each other. If you are religious you silently thank your god. Then you look the next driver in the eye and so on until you make it to the other side or end up as a gore ridden streak on the road.

I made it to Cubbon Park in the city centre - a large formally laid out garden in the middle of town that is both a relief from the traffic noise and fumes and quite pretty in a rough sort of way. I loved the patches of orange soil poking through the scrubland, and the gently swaying trees dappling light on the grass. It made me feel at home.

After a relaxing stroll, I saw to my disbelief an ownerless horse grazing - in a public park no less! For some reason this put a smile on my face that lasted at least half an hour.

I headed into town and was accosted by my first beggar - a little girl who looked perfectly healthy and well dressed. I gave her nothing but a withering stare.

Now this may sound controversial, but I consider begging to be a profession. People will always find a way to make a living unless in the poorest of circumstances or afflicted by some debilitating condition. You therefore choose a path based on the options open to you. Begging usually isn't the last option and is therefore often a choice of career (click here for clarification). But because it provides no service to anyone and only encourages more begging, I choose not to contribute to it. Most people would only resort to begging if they were in dire need, or living in abject poverty. And there lies the problem. Although India is progressing phenomenally in terms of industry and commerce, it is still a nation in transition and poverty is a fact of life. There aren't the same kind of welfare organisations here to keep poverty in check like we have in Europe. So I have started doling out the rupees to those I feel really need it. It makes little difference to me, but can make a big difference to a few individuals here and there. However I don't give money to children - I'm not going to encourage them or their friends into a life of begging.

I was also followed through the streets by a hawker - a street trader - who was trying to sell me an elaborate pipe (it was a bong). I got rid of him quickly just by holding my palm up to his face and saying, "Bye!".

Next an auto driver pounced on me at a junction.

"Jump in. I'll take you where you want to go."

"No you won't," I replied and darted across the road.

By now the diesel fumes were so thick that I managed to cut out a slice of the air as a keepsake. I dived into a mall and bought some clothes for a wedding I had been invited to later in the week.

Outside, the predatory auto-rickshaw drivers were gathered like excited hyenas baying at passers-by. I jumped in one and told him where I was going. I asked a price and he ignored me so I told him to put the meter on. Again, he ignored me. Then he asked me, "Do you want to go shopping? I will take you to a very nice shop."

My fingers started wriggling towards his throat, but I held them back.

"Are you going to put the meter on?" I asked a third time.

"Sure, but I take you to a shop first."

"Stop!"

I got out and shot the auto driver a dirty look. He tried to apologise but I just walked off. I'm glad I did, because I walked down a road less travelled, through a poor district where buildings were shabby but habitable, where children played happily in the leafy lanes and dusty roads and families gathered outside their abodes, chatting about daily events.

I wandered into Langford Town which had once been a colonial enclave lived in by those Brits who couldn’t bring themselves to leave India after Independence. Now, many of the old buildings were in decay or had been replaced by shining new condominiums. It was an eerie sight, seeing the old and the new standing side by side, even in the light of day.

I found my way back onto a main road, with heaped rubble lining the pavement as if some strange kind of building were about to be erected – or had just been disassembled. I also stood in some shit which was nice. It looked human.

Before long, I was back on the roaring city streets near my hotel. The sun had turned to amber and painted all of the streets and buildings. I felt like I was in a sepia toned picture from the 1920s, with people crowding the crumbling pavements while old cars and carts drawn by oxen kicked up dust from the road. It was glorious and I returned to my hotel tired but thrilled by being in this strange new world.

The next day I went to a few of the tourist areas. Yes - Bangalore has tourist areas, though if I have to be honest, they’re a little bit shit. I went down to see my little friend the auto driver who seemed to live in his rickshaw outside the hotel. I felt bad about giving him such a hard time the other day, so I booked him for a couple of hours to finish the tour I had ended so abruptly. First we rocketed through a slum area with decaying buildings and detritus everywhere.

We ended up at Tipu's Summer Palace. Don't ask, just look at the picture below, smile, and pretend I've told you all you need to know about it (actually, there's no need to pretend).

Next was the Bull Temple - an unremarkable 16th century temple dedicated to Siva and Parvati.

Finally we went to the Botanical Gardens at Lalbagh. My driver gave me some advice: don't get a guide as they're too expensive and take a cart to guide you round the park as it takes six hours to walk it. So I did as suggested, ignoring the guide/security guard that offered his services and swore at me vehemently when I refused his many offers. Then I sat in the tour cart which was waiting for another 11 passengers. I grew bored of waiting within a minute and decided to walk. It took me less than an hour. I saw everything I needed to and more than I wanted to, and proved once and for all that my driver was a lying little fucktard. He was just trying to funnel people to the cart for commission. He even had the balls to turn around (while driving) and ask me if I wanted to go to another of his bullshit shops and nearly smacked into another rickshaw that shot across our bows as his head was turned.

The Botanical Gardens. Geneva has a flower clock, but fuck you Geneva, because Bangalore has got one that’s virtually untended and is bizarrely populated by Snow White’s dwarves!

That night I had the pleasure of seeing my friend Sairama Koteswara with his family – they had dropped in to see me at my hotel. However, I was still trying desperately to get over my jet lag and wasn’t much company.

When I had first arrived at the hotel a few days before, I had tipped a boss-eyed head porter far too generously without knowing what the standard rate was. He was to stick to my side like a limpet whenever I was in the hotel, even waking me at six every morning with a newspaper, eager for another show of generosity on my part. I was terrified that one morning I would wake up with him lying on the bed next to me saying, "Breakfast sir?"

At around this time when he knew I would be leaving soon, he asked if I had any of my own currency as he collected it for his three year old son - a story designed to tug at my heartstrings. Foreign money in India goes a long, long way and I knew this because my little shit of an auto driver had asked me if I had any for his "collection" the day before. I didn't have any foreign currency, but as I was leaving the hotel (a rather grubby and overpriced place in hindsight), I gave him another big tip.  He was a decent guy after all. He smiled so much that his wonky eye nearly popped out.

Finally, before I left Bangalore I went to a wedding. Vivek Sreedharan and I had been through a few "high pressure" moments together working in Jersey, so when he heard I was coming to India, he kindly invited me to his wedding. The reception consisted of an amazing buffet with a huge range of vegetarian dishes that left me with stretch marks. I later gave birth to a curry baby, but you don't want to know about that.

The wedding itself was an elaborate affair lasting over four hours. Indian wedding ceremonies differ depending on which region you come from, and to be honest, so much happened that I can barely recall all of the intricate blessings and ceremonial acts. Even Vivek said afterwards that he found it difficult to stay focussed at times. What I do remember are the highlights spurred on by a dramatic peak in the music which was called for by the friends and relatives at the appropriate moments. Also, there was lots of throwing of various grains (symbolising fertility), light from a flame played a very important part (symbolising spirituality), and lots of coconuts were involved (symbolising coconuts). I really enjoyed the wedding - it was a joyous social event and it was well celebrated.

I hailed an auto for the journey back and made the driver put on the meter. We nearly made it to the hotel, then at the last minute he turned off the road and started driving in the opposite direction. He claimed he was lost even though I gave him a map showing the hotel, and he pretended not to speak English after having easily spoken it when I hailed him. In other words, he was bumping up his fare by carting me around the streets for as long as possible. Do you see where I’m going with this rickshaw driver theme? Anyway, this little event couldn’t tarnish my happy reflections on Vivek’s wedding, and this got me thinking hard about the city I was now living in.

Here was a young aspirational couple in the thick of the IT boom in India. Their dreams for the future mirror the purpose of the city - to provide a safe haven for children and to make a comfortable and fulfilling living. But the sudden influx of all this new wealth has created problems. Millions of migrants have flooded into the city from rural areas with dreams of their own. The city's population has more than doubled in twenty years. There aren't enough jobs for everyone, so people like my auto-driver have to scheme and plot to make a living.

The city's infrastructure cannot cope. The city expands with too little thought and not enough planning. There are many unfinished buildings scattered across the city's landscape, hulking ghosts that sag forlornly in the twilight. Some are victims of the banking crisis in 2008, but many are follies born of over-optimism or collapsed deals. The pavements are cracked and broken under the weight of five million people. The roads are crowded with vehicles, pollution hangs thick in the air. Constant power cuts knock out large areas of the city on a daily basis. India is not a third world nation, but although Western elements are a heavy influence (especially in the media), the aspirations of the people cannot yet meet fiscal realities.

And yet...

Huge glass towers bloom on the edge of the city; high tech modern dwellings are being sold daily; concept hotels, fashionable malls and conference centres predominate. There is an unbridled optimism here, a sense of hope and aspiration that is tangible and real. You can see it in the faces of people on their way to work, or dining in restaurants, or drinking in bars. Everybody dresses smartly. There is a little slice of the west tossed in with all the Indian spice. Bangalore is a city of extremes; from poor to rich, ancient to modern, filthy to immaculate, cheap to expensive, chaotic to peaceful.

This is a fascinating time to visit India. The country is caught between the old world centred around manual labour and village life, and the new world centred around commerce, education and technology. Bangalore epitomises this new India; perhaps even leads it.

As I roll out of the city on the train traversing across the wide, sweeping plain that surrounds it, I'm reminded that the great English novelist E. M. Forster based part of his famous novel, "A Passage to India" in this region. Like myself, E. M. Forster grew up in Stevenage and as I gaze upon the rock strewn hills on the edge of the plain that look like some huge child has carelessly tossed mounds of giant blocks across the landscape, I somehow feel comforted to know that this great novelist made the same journey some eighty years before me, and I sombrely wonder if he shared my view that all rickshaw drivers are cunts.