Bamboozled at Terminal Two

Terminal 2 at the Bangalore Airport is a novel – and interesting – experience.  For now, it is hardly crowded and you make your way in surprisingly quickly, taking in the heady cladding of bamboo everywhere.  Everywhere and on everything. 

It’s nice at first, but then sort of gets to you. You walk past one book-cum-toys-cum-chocolates shop that doesn’t want you to buy anything because it disturbs their slumber.  And there’s Liberte-Qualite-Adore – whatever that is, it sounds hideously French, though the inside looks pretty cool - and those shops selling stuff that appears forbidding and for good reason (at Forest Essentials, you need to pay for a soap with a housing loan on EMI, trust me.  Buy a shampoo there and you are in bonded labour for two generations).

You then head for breakfast upstairs, passing by a tribute to that genius, Paul Fernandes, whose sketches of life in Bangalore-as-we-knew-it are without parallel – what a treat those images are! 

At the food lounge, most folks are, as you’d expect, busy with their phones or their breakfast or are talking to each other (often while stuffed with food, as is the case with the two chaps next to you, both of whom need to see a dietician pronto) and they all miss the lamps that have splendid hues of tasteful opulence. 

And then you stand and stare at the work of an unknown artist who has painted Karnataka’s coffee country – Coorg & Chikmagalur - across a long wall.  It is excellent work, and done with a careful brush. Something, in particular, catches the eye.....

It is hard to not be delighted at the careful, fastidious attention to the painting of the Coppersmith Barbet.

Now, who would have thought of that?

...and a tale of two cars.....

What's a nice guy like me doing in a painting of Paul's?

What's a nice guy like me not doing in this painting?