Good Morning Bangalore

A man’s voice blares in Kannada or Urdu or Tamil–I’m not sure which one–and my eyes open in startled disbelief.

What the hell is happening? Who is this guy? How is this allowed? What time is it?

I have woken up to these same four questions for the past 10 days.

Every morning before the auto rickshaws start to buzz, and even before the doves really start cooing, the Call to Prayer erupts over loudspeakers strategically placed throughout my neighborhood. The Shia mosque just a few blocks away is my very unwelcome alarm clock.

You would think I would be accustomed to the routine but unintelligible chanting at four thirty, maybe five in the morning, is simply startling. It’s still pitch black out.

While it might sound like I’m complaining, I’m not. The fact is I’m partly to blame for these early morning jolts and I have almost come to enjoy them.

I take great pleasure in sleeping with the AC off and the windows open, letting the cool, night air seep into my room after evening rainstorms. I arrived in Bangalore at the tail end of monsoon season and it seems almost every afternoon or evening the city is blessed with thunderstorms or showers to wash away the day’s grime and push back the heat.

At dusk I often stand in the living room of the apartment listening to the rain tap dance on corrugated tin awnings. I wait for the evening Call to Prayer and breath in one impossibly rich and exotic aroma after another as kitchens in neighboring buildings come alive before dinner.

While I may not understand what is being said in my early morning wake-up calls, I have decided to translate them this way.

“Conor, if you needed a reminder, welcome to India.”