Nothing (Day 12)

Today I did nothing, and it was all that I thought it could be.

Last night however, I danced with a Bollywood movie actress. Never got a good handle on her name. Her brother owns the club inside Le Meridien Hotel. I hope she is back there tonight. If I am fortunate, there will be an interesting update to this.

My Next Car (Inspired by the Monkey)

Indian kids would kill for this. Developing nation chic.

Long Post Written Mostly in the Airport (Day 11)

I don't think he has a permit

First on the agenda: dinner with the prospective student (who we will call S) and her parents (who we will call M & D). This is the first time I have had dinner with a prospective student. I know some reps do it often while traveling. I suppose one must be careful with this, not to get too close (academic bedside manner and all), in case the student is not accepted, or can’t find the resources to attend if they are accepted. The former I’m not too worried about. S is very bright and talented. The latter is the question. S and M meet me at the Taj Bengal. Their car and driver are waiting outside (clue one). M speaks flawless English, as does S, with a cultured accent (clue two). We are meeting D at a Chinese restaurant. He has just finished teaching a college course on international marketing, which he does as a sort of hobby. He owns his own manufacturing business (clue three). This business calls for him to travel quite a bit, at least once a year to the US (clue four). During dinner I let M & D grill me all they want. S is very set on going to my university. M & D are warming up to it, even though when she first proposed going to school in America they thought it was crazy. By the end of dinner, they say it is up to her. They will go along with it, but they want S to get some sort of financial aid through scholarship. I get the feeling they could pay for it without, but they want her to help defray the cost of this crazy thing she wants to do. Perfectly understandable. After dinner, D’s car and driver (different from the first, clue five) pick us all up and drops me at the hotel.

Today’s First Digression: “As you please.”
When a cabbie says this to you (as mine did in response to my query as to the price of his services for the day, as he dropped me at the hotel [yesterday]), it means, “You may or may not know the going rate, but I know if I leave it to you, you will pay me more than if I quote you the rate.” This is true. I do know the going rate. However, unless I am explicitly and directly instructed to pay this amount, a very feeble sum, I cannot do it. It just isn’t enough. So I over-pay, but I don’t feel like a sucker, because I do know the going rate and over-paid voluntarily. It is still a lot, lot less than you’d pay in the states. Besides, this is the first cabbie I’ve had who has not once had to stop and ask directions.

My wake-up call roused me at 5:30am. Shower, pack, breakfast, check-out, cab to airport. Now, my same cabbie from yesterday was supposed to be at the hotel to get me. He was not. I even waited a bit for him. My over-paying (see digression) probably led to his absence, as he probably went out on the town and blew the wad of cash I threw at him.


No, not the entrance to Arlington


At the airport I discover that my ticket says the 17th. Today is the 18th. Hmmm, I put off wondering how the mistake was made and go to the counter fully expecting to be bent-over for a new ticket. However, they fiddle on the computer, then simply scratch out yesterday’s date and write in today’s. Wow. This brings me to…

…Today’s Second Digression: Indian airport oddities.
1) Friendly, helpful employees. Ahmedabad aside, which might be the exception that proves the rule, all my airport experiences in India have been very pleasant. The people who work here are friendly and seem to enjoy it. Great, now I’ll get even more pissed off when facing the insulting, moronic quagmires that are American airports.
2) I have never been asked to show ID of any kind in an Indian airport. If I ever do anything very bad in the States, I will immediately fly to Mumbai, then buy a ticket to another city with cash. My new name will be Raj.

Delhi: check in and then wait an hour for my box of pre-shipped materials to be brought to my room (Did I mention I needed it quickly? Only three times). Then I load up and go to the local Fulbright office. There I speak to some employees and then one-on-one with several interested students.


No, not the Washington Monument

Rather than go straight back to the hotel, I decide to walk around a bit. Delhi feels deserted compared to other Indian cities. In parts it seems that the wide, tree-lined boulevards serve no purpose other than to link lavishly landscaped roundabouts. Then there is the Indian version of the National Mall. Quite impressive, what with the huge India Gate and all. Oh, and there are monkeys all over the damn place. I’m kind of afraid to make eye contact with them. Will they attack? Throw feces? I just avoid them. I walk ‘til me feet are killing me, then grab a rickshaw.

Confession: McDonald’s for dinner.

Cause for joy and celebration: I’m going out tonight! Woo-hoo!

Lotta Kolkata (Sorry, Day 10)

Holy Cow! I slept in ‘til 8:30am. That is by far my best yet. Didn’t have an early appointment, so I went to the gym and had a late breakfast. My school visit not being far away, I waited ‘til a half hour before to get a cab. I was still early. It’s amazing what competent drivers can do, and traffic moves pretty well here in Kolkata.

Calcutta International School: I do two informal sessions for students. We chat, have coffee, etc. The teacher will actually be in New York this summer, so I might have to invite him down to get a look at my university. Despite trying to drag it out, I still have a good bit of time before my next stop. I have my driver, who has been waiting (I don’t let a good thing go), to take me to the Victoria Memorial to kill more time. This thing was pretty cool, see pics:


Doesn't he look swell


The whole she-bang


Details...


...details


I love lion statues

Kolkata is not at all what I imagined. I like it. The dirt and poverty is no worse than other Indian cities, and many parts of it are a lot better, as the pics above show. They actually have large swaths of land not encumbered by heaps of discarded trash. I still have time to kill, so the driver takes me for a refreshment.

Fulbright Kolkata: pretty much all grad students. We go through most of the segments on the DVD and talk a lot. I get thrown out after going way over my allotted time.

I’m going to dinner with a prospective student and her mother tonight. More on that later.

Fox in the Hindi-House (Day 9)

My day started with a 9:30am appointment at the American International School of Chennai. The Fulbright office was supposed to send me an air-conditioned cab to use for the day. The driver of said cab was supposed to call my room when he arrived. At 8:50 I got ansy and decided to go downstairs to wait. I found that the cab had been sitting in the hotel parking lot for 30 minutes. It does no good to yell at people here, even if I could decide who was the appropriate person to yell at (driver, concierge, reception people), so I just climbed in. Ah, cool a/c, but to keep it that way means keeping the windows rolled up. Keeping the windows rolled up means quarantining myself with a tribe of mosquitoes that seem to be using the interior of this cab as a brothel. I spend the whole ride to the school alternately swatting them into olivion and covering exposed skin. I'm not yet hallucinating (or am I?) or having alternating hot and cold spells, so either I got them before they got me, or my medicine actually works. Pharmacuetical giants aren't all bad.

So I spend some time talking to the counselor and her son, then give a presentation to a group of students. No sweat. Now the cab take me back to the Fulbright office where we pick up my chaperone, for the next two stops are at women's colleges - Vaishnav College for Women, and Stella Maris College. At both I address large groups of young impressionable ladies. There is much tittering and giggling. I must have done a good job, because by the end they have shed their coy fascades and are catfighting in the aisles over whether I should next show the DVD clip on Fashion Design or on Film & Television. I scan the crowds for billboard girls, but find none.

Visits done, I grab my crap at the hotel and head back to the airport. The flight to Kolkata (Calcutta) is full of children wandering the aisles and making unpleasant noises. I'm really hoping a stewardess will lose control of the dinner cart and knock them over like bowling pins. The landing is heavy and abrupt. Another cab. Whereas previously cabbies have used a morse-code-like tooting of the horn, here they prefer to make it ululate like a distraut Palestinian woman mourning her dead/incarcerated husband. I check in. I do e-mail. I think of beer. Mmmmm, beer.

Today's digression: Hinglish
This may seem very un-PC, but after you've been here awhile you overlook that and just do what works. What I'm talking about is pronouncing things the way Indians do in order for them to understand you. Yes, they speak English, but not your version. Therefore you must adapt, even if adapting feels like tactless mockery at times. Instead of saying you are going to the Hilton, you must say you are going to Hill-Tun, both syllables distinct and equally accented. Then they respond, oh Hill-Tun, why didn't you say so.

Chennai, or Madras if you please (Day 8)

I've been spoiled by staying in one hotel for a whole week. It took a very long time for me to get all my junk together last night, and to check out this morning. But finally it was done. Also a sent a nice fat packet back to my university, full of apps, time sheets, and expense reports.

Cabbed it to the airport at 7:30. Hopped on a plane. Hopped off a plane. Chennai has a very nice airport, by Indian standards. Walking outside, I felt like I was somewhere in the Caribbean. First, because my eyes were almost scalded from their sockets by the intense sunlight, as a wall of heat overtook me, and second because there are low rolling hills around the airport, covered with short, dense vegetation. I hear there is a beach somewhere, but it might still be a little messed up. I plan to see for myself.

Another cab, to the Trident Hilton. I check in and try to get wireless access. It sucks. I have to walk the halls with my laptop, like some hick in Kansas prospecting for underground water, until I find a steady stream and a nearby seat. When I do get access and pull up the New York Times, I see there has been a large, fatal-type explosion of the deliberate sort in Beirut. I see I also have e-mails from the tour organizer in charge of the Beirut event to take place later this month. I read. The fair is still on, which makes sense. That bomb was meant for a specific person, and it was successful. It was not random. As long as I stay away from people who piss off Syria, I should be fine. I L-O-V-E Syria. So, no worries unless things escalate, in which case I'll just spend a couple more nights in Delhi.

At 3pm I am supposed to be visiting the local chapter of USEFI (the US Fulbright people). In the lobby they want me to pay 550 Rs (about $13) just to have a cab take me there, nevermind wait and come back. I decide to just walk out to the street and catch a rickshaw. This is what I got:


The Zen-Master of Rickshaw

A rickshaw is like a motorized big-wheel with a windshield and a back seat. I was initiated into using these last night. I must now digress for a moment:

Last night I went to dinner with an Indian I met on my last trip that has many connections in the art and education world. He suggested we take the rickshaw to the restaurant. For the next 40 minutes he proceeded to subject me to psychological torture. He blinked too much, he gestured too much, he definitely talked too much, and way too fast. I wanted to put a bullet between his eyes. I wish I could say the food made up for it, but this was the first time I got some Indian food that disagreed with me. I don’t mean that I got Delhi Belly later, I mean that I wanted to vomit right there. Imagine a root beer float, but instead of root beer, the fluid medium is some sort of way-too-sweet fruit juice. This juice is fresh squeezed, with pulp and seed floating in it that have the consistency I’d imagine 3-day-dead tadpoles to have. Add to this chunks of gelatin floating about for no reason. Yeah. Digression over.

So my rickshaw driver is a zen-master. Even though we are bobbing and weaving all through traffic at speeds defying all common sense (we were outrunning motorcycles), I never felt the chill hand of certain death. Not once. I could have gone to sleep back there, if not for the fumes. He was so good, I had him wait for me outside the American compound during my appointment. He then took me on a short tour of Chennai.


Where do I find these billboard girls?

The main thing worth mentioning is Marina Beach. This is the biggest beach I have ever seen. I drank a whole bottle of water just hiking across its Saharan expanse to get to where I could get some shots with water in them. See pics below.


See? Looks like desert. Except for the boats.


This is Ground Zero of where the tsunami hit India. Honestly, you can't tell. And we bitch about hurricanes.


...

After a couple more stops my buddy took me back to the Hilton. For dinner I had pizza at Pizza Corner, which is around the corner. Imagine that.

Mumbai Day Seven: My Funny Valentine's Day

I actually managed to make myself sleep in 'til 7:30 this morning. Congrats to me. I ate breakfast then headed out to two solo school visits. They were both in an area called the Bandra Kurla Complex. Going into this spacious, modern development, I thought I'd somehow been beamed to Dubai. Huge, gleaming, brand-new buildings all around. Wide streets. No squalor. Amazing. The schools, the American School of Bombay and Dhirubhai Ambani International School, look like hip office parks surrounded by playgrounds and soccer fields. Wish I'd brought my camera. At each I met with the guidance counselor and took a look around the place, speaking to a few interested students. Then I zipped back to the hotel to say goodbye to M____ and K____ as they caught their cab to the airport.

I finally managed to enjoy the pool a bit. I took some sun, read some Cryptonomicon, ate lunch, and had a swim. After a shower I took my laptop down to the lobby area and CAUGHT UP ON ALL MY E-MAIL! That is, until the sun rises in Southville and they start forwarding me more. Every fourth song the piano guy played was "Funny Valentine." I almost started typing it subconsciously. At sunset I took a break and went out to the point where the movie had been filming to watch the nuclear orb burn through the layer of pollution hugging the horizon. Quite romantic.

No pics today.

Mumbai Day Six: The Grand Fair

I get up way too early once again and head to the gym. I stay here for almost two hours, because it needs to be done. Fatness is a slow creep when you travel. It will sneak up on you. There is so much going on (even when it involves just sitting: cars, planes, fairs) that you always have a good excuse not to work out. After kicking my own butt, I did some e-mail, showered, and ate a late breakfast. Then it was time to get set up for the fair down in the basement ballroom. Came back upstairs and got pretty. I even put my suit on. Why not? No oven-hot cabs to take, just the downwards elevator.


My pre-fair spread

The fair itself was a non-stop blur of babbling. Sometimes I feel like I'm losing my mind at these things. I hear and say so many similar (yet not quite the same) things that I lose track of what I have and have not said, and to whom. Things that happened at the fairs in Pune and Ahmedabad will seem like they just happened 5 minutes ago. That's why if anything important happens, I really, really have to write it down. Sometimes this doesn't help. I'll look at my notes later and think, "What the beejeezus was that about?" Despite this, I did a good job on the presentation and collected one more app from an aspiring film director. I also managed to get rid of all my materials that I shipped over (just saving a few for Chennai). This is a plus. I can't take extra crap with me, but I feel horrible trashing it. Best to hand it all out, even if it ends up lining bird cages.


All the reps, organizers, and helpers

After the fair we dress down and Husain takes us all out to a celebratory dinner. We finally get to indulge ourselves. We also let loose on Husain about what we felt could have been better about the tour. He was a good sport about it (he did ask for us to be candid). Many of the problems were beyond his control. Overall it was a worthwile experience.

Pictures to come.