Day 76, Oct. 25


Today I begin the last phase of my journey to India. All the goals I had set for the trip ha more or less been accomplished. I still had to analyze it all and put it all together in my mind so I could make some difficult decisions. In the very near future, I also had to work for those priests and seminarians who wanted to work in the United States. I will be contacting bishops in that regard. But now, I had a few last days to relax.
I did a lot and have loads of memories and experiences. Yet, among the few places I failed to visit was a jungle. I wanted to see some wild animals. That opportunity came in the person of Fr. Anthappa who is the priest I met on my second day in county. He took me to and from Anjeli Ashram in Mysore. I reconnected with him and planned a trip.
Sunday morning began with Mass at 8:30. It is the most crowded Mass of the day. It was in Kannada (the State language of Karnataka). Fr. Mariappa told me I was to preach. I spoke in English and he translated. It went very well. I was supposed to say the evening Mass in English but negotiations were been held telephonically about the trip to see wild elephants. Fr. Anthappa wanted me at his rectory Sunday night and that made sense. That’s what we decided that morning. These conversations had been further complicated by the suggestion (agreed to by the V.G. of the archdiocese) the night before that I visit the archbishop on Monday morning. That was scrapped at the last minute when we looked t his schedule and learned he was on retreat that week. So the rest of the morning would be spent catching up on my blogs (you could have figured that out when you saw I combined days) going down to the Bloggers’ Spot (which is the only connection to the internet available to the public here), and pack.
Now the problem was getting from the church to the bus station. Our pastor does not drive (a good choice with all the craziness that takes place on the streets here. He does have a car. Today being Sunday, his driver was off. But there were some young men working on the last details of the church building who volunteered to take me in the pastor’s car. He foolishly allowed it and, even more foolishly, put my bag in the back nod we left. The mad hatter’s wild ride with Alice was sane compared to a 20-something male driving on Bangalore streets. The CD was blaring on full mps (would you believe) music or Mass. The engine’s RPM’s were at the red line and the near misses were reaching the triple digit level. But, we reached the station and found nowhere to park. No problem or these guys. They found a dead end alley off a side street, park at a construction site and asked the workers to mind the car. We dashed across about ten lanes of two way criss-crossing traffic hopping median fences to get to the station where they found a bus pulling out. The conductor was still hawking for more customers. I became one of them. In two hours I arrived at Maddur, a town on the route to Mysore nearest Fr. Anthappa’s rectory. He arrived five minutes later and we were off to spend the night there before departing for adventure the next morning.