mysore, not pronounced mi-se-ry

...
i like it alot
easy going large city
bustled unhassled streets
temples mosques churches
the maharaja's palace the largest cream cake i've ever seen
free entry with lights and band between seven and eight every sunday eve
rip-off tuktuk drivers assure you the hotel you want is demolished when its very much alive just around the corner
big ben style tower
ornamented ceremonial cows wander up street
...

cool [2000 foot up]
large [700,000 people] but doesn't feel it
green and spread out and lowrise
a tad tout-hassly but very friendly

...

best hotel, nicest rooms and feel, yet
rooms around clean whiteish central courtyard
500 r
superfriendly staff
no tv [hurrah]

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crowd cow dog tuktuk car bus whistle cry shout hum blast bang crunch bark yell kids stall cafe hotel restaurant dhaba office truck horse'n'carriage street basement alley stairway kerb gutter hole pothole shop fruit sweetshop necklace copper-piping tout rubbish poster traffic
...

bustle all shifting together, and separating to space, and all shifting together and tighter and thicker and tighter and loosening and tightening and looser, sprawling, emptying, and then tighter busier thicker knotted crowded and loosening to space, to road, to path, and thickening again to busier to bustle to thick to crowd

...
a place i've heard of as exotic since i was eight or ten or twelve
like malabar
or cochin
or rangoon
or penang
[from imperial style children's books?]
and now i'm here
...

large bazaar,
incense alley,
banana alley,
banana leaf alley
coconut alley
bangle alley

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and i read priscilla's first draft of play
which, as you can imagine, was a tad daunting cos...
what if i hate it?...
what if she can't write?
but i whistled through it in an hour and yes
she can write
i like the writing alot
... its very a first draft
and lots of it won't make the cut
and she's asking alot of herself as a physical performer
and there's masses of reworking to do
but the chief thing is the ability to write...
everything else stems from that...
and then slowly thinking the story into natural human shape over the months
...

cos we both got into vancouver so as long as she gets into the winnipeg fringe she still has a tour
...
so outside the hot streets await
inside i'm reacquanting myself with various fall classics
your heart out, the classical, no bulbs, what you need, etc
and outside its the bazaar and the bustle and the gentle high heat and the intense light
...

and we go to sriringapattnam
lovely temple by a town in what was a huge fort
where the british defeated tipu sultan
after four hard wars
they finally beseiged him and killed him
the duke of wellington when he was still arthur wellesley
and after that the british had south india for 150 years
some venerate tipu, others see him as cruel and murderous
and well, being british, what do i think? ... hmmmm, i think
it was one bunch of brutal toughnuts taking what another bunch of brutal toughnuts had
but that's not enough thinking...
...