Tara, a Nepali friend, met us at the train station in Bangalore. He looked good, fresh and sweet. He stayed with us for two days, missing one day of his college classes in Dharmapuri two hours away. He had arranged permission from his professors, as Patti was helping to sponsor his schooling. She and Sara and I had met him at the first medical camp we did together in Bandipur. He had endeared himself to our group, taking a leadership role with his other classmates who were helping as translators and showing us around his home territory with perfect Catholic school learned English.

For two days we enjoyed his company for the gentle soul that he is, but also because it was nice to have a brown-skinned member in our group to speak Hindi. He helped us to arrange the hotel and auto-rickshaw rides. He had learned the language by watching television and by making his way around India for the past six months for his schooling.

For 260 rupees we went all around the city. We visited the Tipu Sultan's palace that was rebuilt in the 1700s after the original was destroyed in an earthquake. Next door was an old Hindu temple with a three story high tower intricately carved with images of their Gods on every available inch of the four stone faces. Around the front was an entryway into the compound and a place to leave our shoes for one rupee each. Inside were bare chested priests with knee length cloths wrapped around as skirts and shaved heads except for two thin strips of hair. They made us feel welcome, inviting us into their ceremonial process inside the small room with the smaller inner chambered alter. They brought out a pan of fire to which Tara held out his hands as if to warm them, the turned them over and seemed to offer that heat to the goddess before touching his heart and his forehead with his fingertips. Then they brought bright reddish pink powder for us to apply to our brow as religious tikkas.

No one asked for an offering or seemed to want anything else in return, so I found myself uncharacteristically wanting to give one. I wanted to help them maintain the beautiful temple and space inside the compound that felt so warm and pure. It had such peaceful energy. Maybe it was because I felt a little guilty, like a voyeur inside a sacred space meant for worship, not tourism. Catrina could not even bring herself to take a picture of this place we all found so fascinating. She felt wrong about invading their privacy even though we had asked and been assured that it was alright.

Next we went to the botanical gardens and wandered around, sometimes marveling at the scenery and sometimes the lack of it. I found a pond with lotus flowers, the first I had seen in two visits to India even though it is their national flower.

The auto-rickshaws took us from there to the Parliament Building built in 1954. It was a gigantic wonder of architecture compared to most of the buildings we had seen . It was more regal than our own state capital in Illinois.

For lunch we went to Mahatma Ghandi Road where I felt at times like I was back in the states, in that other world. There was mostly a young crowd with few sarees or salwar kameezes, more blue jeans and t-shirts. We saw the face of Colonel Sanders and stopped into the three-story fast food restaurant for lunch. Inside were more of the white faces we had begun to see, something that had been extremely rare in Hyderabad. We saw one European in a mini skirt and tight spaghetti string top. It looked so out of place and inappropriate. It angered me some because women who are insensitive to the culture that way are what causes the rest of us to have a hard time, like when the school boys grabbed me my first day in Delhi.

We wandered around streets with shops that rivaled the modernity of Chicago. There was a Levi’s store, a Lees, and a three-story Bombay just like at home except with cheaper prices. The coffee craze has caught on here too. There is no Starbucks, but the Indian counterpart, Café Coffee Day, serves delicious imported Columbian and Ethiopian brews in addition to southern Indian grown varieties.

As we were skirt shopping in a small Tibetan side store, a well dressed man in a pressed, blue, button-down shirt approached me with a smile and good English. He wanted to “borrow” Austin for half an hour. (!) Down the street they were shooting pictures for a Toyata advertisement and they wanted to add his photograph to the collage of faces that would surround the new automobile on billboards and on their website.

Christy looked leary and I knew she was having visions of the abductions her family had warned her about when she said she wanted to bring Austin to such a foreign world. We were all trying to figure out if there was an angle, a scam of some sort. I trusted my instincts and we went with the gentleman, staying close by Austin as we went up three flights of stairs to a modern studio. I told him his nine year old sister, Ashley would be so jealous if she could see him then. A makeup artist began applying base, rouge, mascara and lip gloss. I couldn’t help but laugh when she also tried to outline his eyes with brown pencil. It was hilarious to watch, especially seeing the expression on Austin’s face. The experience earned him the nickname of Maybelline with our group.

We were in a nice studio with an expensive camera and some other beautiful, progressive young people who presumably were the other paid models. There was an expensive camera and a warm, polite photographer. He directed Austin through fifty or so photos that flashed onto a nearby laptop computer screen as he worked. Everyone seemed happy with the pictures. The ones I saw looked very good. Christy signed a handwritten release form with a carbon paper and left her address and email for free copies of the photographs. The website, which isn’t due to go online with the pics until after February 24th, is www.toyataindia.com.