Posts Tagged ‘Mat Tombers’

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Letter From New York 04 06 15 Back in the US of A…

April 7, 2015

Late last night I arrived back in New York and pulled up to my apartment building 24.5 hours after I had left the India Habitat Center, buttressed by a few hours sleep and some good service on the flights home. I did a few things of straightening up and then slipped into bed, awaking just a few hours later but then I slipped back to sleep and managed to clock near eleven hours.

As I drove through New York toward the apartment I was struck by both the familiarity of the skyline and how alien it seemed to me, as if it had been centuries since I had last seen it.

It was a familiar route, one I had traveled often in the last years, going from JFK to the apartment. Yet, somehow, it felt different this time. As if I was approaching it from a long way off, as, indeed, I was.

George, the doorman, helped me in with my luggage.

Waking at six, I rolled over and went back to sleep until 11:15 and then got up to have lunch with Nick Stuart at Le Monde, one of our haunts.

It was a great introduction back into the Western world.

After lunch, I went back to the apartment, gathered my things together and went north with my good friends, Lionel and Pierre, who were returning from a visit to their New York vet before leaving for Baltimore. They wanted Marcel, their dog, to have a final looking over before they left.

In the meantime, I’ve had little contact with the outside world and its events.

I could go on in this blissful ignorance but choose not too.

However, there seems to be little of great consequence happening in the news – and for that I am grateful. Too often I look at the news and see word of some great slaughter somewhere.

Today, we have Rolling Stone magazine caught in a scandal of bad reporting on a Virginia rape case. Reporters won’t be sanctioned but lawsuits are being prepared.

Last week, as reported, Misao Okawa passed away, having held the crown for being the world’s oldest person. The crown then passed to an Arkansas woman, Gertrude Weaver, who passed away today.

It’s been a bad week for living old.

In not a bad week for some. McDonald’s is raising its basic wage though not enough to stifle the protests of many. Starbucks is offering college tuition to its employees though I can’t tell you many details, as the story seems frozen on my computer.

Kenya has struck back at al-Shabaab in an air attack on two of their strongholds, following the deadly attack on students at University in Garissa.

So the violence goes on, while I sit at my laptop putting together the day’s events, even as I attempt to manage my jet lag.

Arriving in Claverack, Lionel, Pierre and I went to the Red Dot. Alana, the proprietress, was genuinely glad to see me and I was genuinely glad to see her.

It amazes me that I am still alive after my Indian road adventures. I thought, for sure, I would be road kill on one of those trips across India by car. But I am here, alive, and better for the journey.

It is 11:30 at night in Claverack. In India it is 9:00 in the morning.

I am sure that soon my body will catch up with my time zone.

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Letter From New York 04 05 15 On the way from Delhi…

April 5, 2015

It is Easter, the most important and holiest of Christian holidays, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the central moment at the heart of the Christian religion, celebrated each day a service is held. Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again, in all his glory to judge the living and the dead.

If I were in Hudson, I would be at Christ Church Episcopal, celebrating Easter with that little community, listening to my friend Lionel sing his Easter solo. There would be coffee and cakes and community afterwards and then, probably, I would have cooked an Easter dinner or a group of us would have gone out for Easter dinner.

As it is, I am some 30,000 plus feet in the air, in the final hours of the long flight from Delhi to London, where I will spend a few hours and then head on to New York and to home.

The flight has been uneventful, which is always what one wants a flight to be.

A very young lady from India has been very unhappy and has spent most of the flight screaming at regular intervals, a series of wails that soared through the cabin. She has now, I believe, exhausted herself and slipped into sleep; she lasted six and a half hours.

While I napped, I never completely fell asleep as I could hear her in the background. It reminded me of a time when I had teeth pulled. I was asleep but was going around a wheel with a candle at the bottom and every time I went round, the candle burned me.

When I boarded, I was handed a copy of yesterday’s Daily Mail from London, a paper short on news and long on gossip.

It did report the depth of unhappiness Prime Minister Netanyahu holds about the potential Iranian nuclear deal and a great deal about Nicola Sturgeon, who heads Scotland’s SNP. She may be the power broker in the general elections in Britain in May. Seems she did a right fine job of outdebating her English rivals. She’s being hailed “Queen of Scots” today. If her party wins a predicted 40 or more seats, she could align with Labour and form a government. That wouldn’t have happened since 1924.

There was also a huge exegesis of the fashion turnaround of the last ten years by Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and wife of Charles, Prince of Wales.

Several juicy stories about politicians in sexual peccadillos followed.

All fascinating.

And here I am, having awakened in Delhi and, if all things go as planned, will fall asleep in New York, half a world away from where I have been living the last two weeks.

One of the things I was thinking about this morning as I was closing my suitcases was the light in India. Everything in India seemed bathed in a softer light than New York, as if light came through a filter, even when it was at its hottest and brightest. I remember thinking that in other trips to India; how different the light was. It may be the dust and the pollution or some other factor.

Indulging myself, I have been reading Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, great fun for long flights and travel. I have several of them on my Kindle.

Sitting here in my seat, I have a sense of traveling away from somewhere; a sense of movement, which I am sure, would have been intensified a century ago when the only way to India was by long sea voyage.

Today we are catapulted from one world to another, with just hours to adjust. I think I would like to have that time at sea to contemplate what I had seen, heard, felt and experienced.

Now I am rushing to make sense of things. It is the way of the world in which we live, a rush of things, a rush of information, a rush between places and a rush to assimilate the information we are receiving.

Yes, right now I would like to be on a deck chair on a steamer slowly making its way back to London so I could pause and gather my thoughts, feel my way internally through my experiences.

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Letter From New York 04 04 15 A Delhi afternoon, thinking and writing…

April 4, 2015

It is early in the day for me to be writing but a hole just opened in my schedule so I decided to make use of it and write my blog for the day. My friend Raja was to have come and picked me up and we were to have gone to his wife’s shop. Unfortunately, he was at a shoot late into the night and then up early again working so he cancelled for the afternoon.

It is a greyish day in Delhi and on the cool side as it rained all night while I slept.

My day started with a late breakfast with Kiran Karnik, who was GM of Discovery India when I was here in the 1990’s. He is a small, thin man, very gentle and razor sharp. He is currently doing many things. One of them is being on the Board of the Reserve Bank of India as well as being President of the India Habitat Center, where I am staying.

Service in the restaurant this morning was impeccable, he said smiling.

Sanjay was at the breakfast, too. We were nostalgic for the days when we were launching Discovery India, laughing at some of our adventures. Talk then moved to politics, both here and in the States. Both Sanjay and Kiran are concerned that parts of the fabric of Indian society are becoming worn in the rush toward modernization. Within twenty-five years India will be one of the world’s top four economies and that change will be wrenching, just as it has been in China.

Prime Minister Modi seems to be enormously popular and is, from all accounts, charismatic. “Conventional wisdom” is that he should be Prime Minister and have all his ministers from the Congress Party, his opponents, because they have experience in government. The BJP, which is Modi’s party, has not governed all that often in India and hasn’t had a lot of national experience.

Some large announcement is coming shortly about interest rates though Kiran gave no hint as to what it will be. He did say they [the Reserve Bank] were closely watching the situation in Yemen for what affect it might have on oil prices along with the “rain issue.” This last season was exceptionally rainy, having a negative effect on food production. Every little thing becomes a factor that needs weighing.

It was interesting to hear Kiran’s perspective on the Yemeni situation. He pointed out that this is the first time in memory that Saudi Arabia has used its military in this way. Thinking about, I had to agree.

They intervened in Bahrain but that was minor compared to this.

We all agreed that the world situation is remarkable and deeply fraught. The Kenyan massacre of Christians at Garissa only underscores the situation.

Pope Francis spoke out about it at Holy Friday services in Rome. Christians are being killed for their beliefs in Africa and in the Middle East. Shabab is promising more Kenyan attacks.

In the Middle East, Tikrit has been freed from IS though the once bustling city, hometown of Saddam Hussein, now lies in ruins. The Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider al-Abidi, has ordered looters arrested.

As we pass through the Easter weekend, which culminates on Sunday with the celebration of Christ’s resurrection, the world is parsing all the reports on the Iranian Nuclear Deal, attempting to see if there are true threads of hope or mere obfuscation.

Pakistan is walking a tightrope between Iran, with which it shares a border, and Saudi Arabia, which has been a staunch Pakistani ally. Saudi Arabia wants Pakistan’s help in Yemen and Iran is doing its best to make sure that doesn’t happen. So far Pakistan has managed to stay upright on the tightrope but it is going to take some deft diplomacy to continue that if the Yemeni situation continues.

Easter, when I was young, was always a time for new clothes and long hours in our Catholic church. Some of it I remember fondly. Some of it not so much. One year it was unseasonably warm and Visitation Church grew so hot students at Good Friday services were fainting by the dozen.

Those seemed like simpler times. Perhaps that is nostalgia. “The Go-Between” is a novel by L.P. Hartley, adapted for the screen by Harold Pinter. Both book and film begin with the haunting line, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

I do not think I would want to go back to the days of my youth. There were too many things that were wrong there but sometimes I am nostalgic for the simplicity that seemed to live there.

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Letter From New York 04 03 15 Good Friday in Delhi…

April 3, 2015

To my great surprise, I discovered that today, Good Friday, is a national holiday in India, created as such in an effort to secularize India. My friend, Sanjay, thought it was an excellent idea.

Felled late last night by Jaipur’s version of Delhi Belly, I spent an uncomfortable night, waking tired but with the storm having passed. So far, so good today. I’ve been incredible lucky health wise in India, except for last night.

Meeting Sanjay for breakfast, I declined to go with him on a business meeting he had and went back to my room and slept an extra hour, which was good for me. I read a little, did a few emails and then Sanjay and I headed out of Jaipur toward Delhi.

As I have become accustomed to doing, I willed myself into nap mode on the drive back, finding it easier on the system to not watch in real time the continuous close calls that make up a day on the road in India. I popped an eye open to see that we were virtually on top of another vehicle. Closing my eyes again, I went back to my happy place.

On the part of the trip when I was awake, Sanjay commented to me that he is discouraged by how India does not pick up after itself. He said that it was always dusty and dirty but not trashy, now trash lines the roads in some parts. Such is India. Up and coming and down and dirty.

At one point, we drove through Gurgoan, a city within the city of Delhi, skyscrapers swarming the landscape, modern buildings that look like they belong in Phoenix or Des Moines or any other mid-sized American city. It’s where the advertising agencies have settled along with most of the cable networks, like Discovery.

Next time you suspect your customer service call has been directed to India, it may well be to one of the buildings in Gurgoan.

From my long night last night, I am planning to stay in my room and recuperate. I’m still a bit tired.

Tomorrow morning, I am having a late coffee with Kiran Karnik, who was head of Discovery India at the time I was out helping with the launch. He has gone on to do many more things, including leading NASSCOM, the association for the software industry in India.

Following that, my friend Raja is picking me up so he can introduce me to his wife, who has been down in Mumbai, and so I can see at least one of the shops she runs in Delhi.

Sanjay’s wife, Natasha, has been in Thailand and is returning tonight. Hopefully the three of us will have dinner on Saturday, my last night in India this trip. Sunday at 1:05 I should be lifting off for the long flight back to New York, crossing at least nine time zones and ending in New York at 11:00 PM on Sunday. It’s my intention to go straight to the little apartment in New York, line my bags up like good soldiers and dive into sleep.

While I slept, President Obama announced a framework for a deal with Iran in the Rose Garden. Apparently, it is more detailed than expected. Not unexpected is the war of words that will follow, accompanied by some gnashing of teeth, as Kerry and Obama continue to work to a final agreement.

A thirty-seven year old man, Louis Jordan, survived sixty-six days at sea before being rescued by a container ship. During the ordeal, his boat capsized several times, all his equipment was smashed and he learned to harvest fish that found his laundry enticing.

Nearly 150 individuals, mostly students, were killed in a Shabab attack on a Kenyan University in Garissa, in the eastern part of the country. They came in, separated Christian from Muslim and killed the Christians.

For Christians, this is the holiest time of the year, the time when Jesus was crucified, died and rose from the dead.

It is remarkably sad that religious hatred rips this world apart as fiercely as it did when the Christ lived, walked the earth, preached and died.

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Letter From New York 04 02 15 In the shadows of the Maharajahs…

April 2, 2015

It is sunset time in India. The bright, sunny, hot day has ceded to a grey and hazy time. My friends have gone out to dinner tonight; I chose not to join them. I had a restless night last night and woke with a sniffy nose and a scratchy throat. Discretion seemed the better part of valor.

With a guide and driver in hand, I ventured out into Jaipur and visited the Amber Fort, arriving just too late to take an elephant up to the Fort.

Youssef, the guide, took me through the corridors of the palace, which are actually three palaces in one huge building – one for summer, one for winter, one for the monsoon season.

Next door is another, smaller palace which can be rented from the Royal Family for about $50,000 a day.

We then went to the City Palace and wandered there where I bought a few gifts to bring home. Next door to the City Palace Museum is the seven-floor palace that is home to the Royal Family. The Princess sits in the legislature and the family is involved in raising and donating money to charities around Rajasthan. The next Maharajah is now sixteen and will be installed when he is eighteen. He has no power but he’s got prestige and money. The Royal Family of Rajasthan is the richest of India’s Royal Families.

Then we went on to the famous Jantar Mantar, the astronomical observatory build by Jai Singh II in the first half of the 18th Century. He built five of them in his territories but this is the largest of them. I’ve seen pictures of it and was suitably impressed with the real thing. There are fourteen giant instruments. The Samrat Yantra is a giant sundial that can tell time within two seconds of accuracy in Jaipur. I was amazed and humbled by the sight of these giant tools built two and a half centuries ago.

While we were there came the haunting call to prayer though no one in the observatory observed the call to prayer. Indian Hindis, Germans, French, British, Americans and the occasional Muslim Indian surrounded me. Jaipur was a capital of the Moghul Empire and they were Muslims.

While the city is called “The Pink City” it is actually more amber/orange in color. When Edward VII of England was still Prince of Wales he visited Jaipur and the reigning Maharajah had the city painted pink in his honor. And it has stuck.

It is so hard to describe the riot that is India; the clash of colors and smells and the intensity of millions of people going about their business is inescapable and indescribable.

For a half hour I watched a tiny man do a block print on fabric that would then be sold in the store next door. He moved with speed and precision, never missing a beat, never screwing up. I went in to the store and purchased a square tablecloth a friend asked me to find. It is one of the hand printed ones. I resisted all other enticements to spend thousands of rupees on beautiful works. The man who was guiding me was disappointed but gracious in the end.

Eventually exhausted, I returned to the hotel and attempted to sleep a bit but didn’t really fall asleep so I got up just as the phone rang from America; it was my friend Nick Stuart wondering how my speech had gone. He had received neither my email nor my text so we chatted for a minute and then signed off.

I am going down to a have a light bite to eat and then come back to my room, read and hopefully sleep early.

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Letter From New York 04 01 15 Lunching in a Maharajah’s Naveli…

April 1, 2015

As I begin to write this, I am looking out at a lake across the road from the Trident Hotel in Jaipur where I have checked in. A small balcony is attached to my room and from there I have a clear view of a lake and the palace that sits in the middle of it. The story goes that the palace was built five stories tall and was a place for the Royal Family to picnic. Then they decided they wanted a lake, so they built that and now only three stories of the palace rise above the water.

It’s good to be Maharajah.

Speaking of which, I had lunch this afternoon at the Royal Heritage Haveli, a boutique hotel owned by the current Maharajah, even though they don’t officially have Maharajahs anymore. He still has the title and property. The State of Rajasthan has been encouraging the old aristocracy to turn their residences into hotels for the sake of tourism.

Pradip Singh, who runs the Royal Heritage Haveli, is related to the Maharajah through is wife. Once a very powerful politician in Ahmedabad, he retired from politics when he got on the wrong side of someone and came to Jaipur and took over the renovation of an abandoned villa into a glorious boutique hotel. Go take a look: www.royalheritagehaveli.com.

It is a magnificent building, now restored to its old glory; each room is unique. Brilliant blues and startling whites are common accents; each room has a magnificent modernized bath almost the size of a studio apartment in New York.

Most have sitting rooms with contemporary or traditional furniture and it is all a stunning feast for the eyes.

We lunched, starting with a pea mint soup, followed by a superb quinoa salad, and then had chicken with gravy and a mousse for dessert.   It was easily the best meal I have had in India.

The Royal Heritage Haveli was used in one of the scenes for “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” currently in release in the U.S.

We drove down this morning from Delhi, with Joginder at the wheel, accompanied by my friend Sanjay, his friend Andy and his colleague, Angelia. They are here prepping for two Cultural and Culinary tours they are leading this fall and next spring.

We made good time despite the traffic and were in Jaipur by noon. Most of the ride, I did my best to sleep. It seems the best way to cope with Indian road madness. We slowed once to a crawl as we threaded our way carefully through a crowd of holy cows inhabiting the center of a two-lane highway.

Seeing them reminded me that I hadn’t seen many cows in Delhi this trip.

We passed a female mahout upon her elephant and carts drawn by camels, making their way slowly up the roadway.

Driving back from the Royal Heritage Haveli, Sanjay asked me what I was thinking about what I was seeing. It occurred to me that I was just taking it all in, hopefully not making judgments but simply absorbing what I was seeing.

There is great beauty, like the sight outside my window, and there is bone-grinding poverty though it doesn’t seem as bone grinding as it did twenty years ago. Shelters of brick and tin, sturdier in the monsoon season, have largely replaced mud huts with thatched roofs.

Tomorrow a guide will come plus a car and driver and I will do my best to see all that Jaipur has to offer.

In the meantime, I glanced at the headlines and the marathon talks in Lausanne continue between the P5 + 1 [US, France, Russia, China, Britain plus Germany] and Iran continue even though the self-imposed deadline has passed. Congress doesn’t return until mid-April, giving Obama and Kerry a little breathing room.

Netanyahu is unhappy.

Misao Okawa, the oldest person in the world, died at 117. Her secret to a long life? Eight hours of sleep and sushi.

In a positive sign, President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria has conceded defeat to his opponent, Buhari. It looks, thankfully, that there will be a peaceful transition of power in a country where not much has been peaceful lately, thanks to the Boko Haram.

The world ticks on. IS and Iraq are still duking it out over Tikrit. Yemen is bleeding badly. There are more than three million Syrian refugees scattered across the Middle East.

Here in the subcontinent, I am going to post this and then head for dinner at what is supposed to be the best Chinese restaurant in this part of India.

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Letter From New York 02 31 15 A Day in Delhi…

March 31, 2015

It is relatively mild in Delhi today; rain last night broke the heat. In the morning I am off to Jaipur. If I can swing it, I will go to Goa for a day but so far the flight schedules aren’t accommodating. A friend surfaced there and I’d like to see him before I head back to the States on Sunday.

My friend Raja and I were supposed to go together to his wife’s shop in Delhi but he got caught up in an unexpected shoot and so I hired a car and driver and set off on my own. In the long ago and far away when I first was in Delhi, I would sometimes walk around Connaught Place and so I did again today.

It is largely filled today with international brands. Spread out in three concentric circles, it must have at least three or four McDonald’s. I passed at least three Van Heusen stores, Tommy Hilfiger, Levis, etc.

There were a couple of folks eager to direct me but I didn’t take their suggestions; instead I continued on my walk.

I also went to Diili Haat [I think that’s how it’s spelled], an open market where I got into the spirit of the bazaar and haggled over things I was bringing back as gifts and souvenirs. I also went to one of the Cottage Industries locations and vaguely remembered having been at one before and feeling like it was a bit overpriced. Wonderful rugs but I wasn’t feeling like $8,000 on a rug.

It was a good time, by myself, with Soni, my driver always at the ready. If I don’t get to Goa, I will ask for him again on Friday to take me around to places. In the morning, I am off to Jaipur with my other Delhi friend, Sanjay, and Andy, one of his friends. They have business there and while they do their business, I will sightsee.

I won’t be sightseeing in Bangladesh anytime soon. Another blogger was hacked to death there, in broad daylight, with meat cutting machetes. He was young and anti-Islamist. Three young men cut him down; two are in custody.

Andreas Lubitz, the Germanwings pilot who apparently crashed his plane into the Alps, had been treated in the past for suicidal tendencies.

Denmark has agreed to join NATO’s missile defense system with at least one frigate. They agreed to do this last August. This week the Russian Ambassador to Denmark wrote an op-ed piece in a Danish newspaper warning Denmark they risk nuclear attack by Russia for doing so.

That’s the second time in a few weeks that Russia has rattled the nuclear sword.

Still rattled is the State of Indiana. Many of its Republicans simply don’t understand the firestorm that has arrived over their Religious Freedom Act. They are attempting to clarify it and stoutly claim it is not a cover for LGBT discrimination. Utah, that most religious of states, passed a Religious Freedom Act and it specifically provided protection for LGBT individuals.
More to come on this.

It will be interesting to see if there is going to be more tomorrow on the Iranian Nuclear deal. There is a self-imposed deadline of midnight tonight and it appears there are still hurdles to jump, not to mention i’s dotted and t’s crossed. It is mid-afternoon in Lausanne and they will keep talking until midnight, I’m sure. We’ll know tomorrow if the talking produced any kind of deal.

In Nigeria the election for President is coming to a close. It appears current President Jonathan Goodluck is losing. Mostly, the elections were peaceful. Hopefully, peace will be maintained as the results are announced.

Saudi Arabia continues to pound Yemen and says it will continue to do so until the rebels are finished. Iran seems to be sending some help to the rebels, who are Shia, as is Iran.

We now know that Trevor Noah is going to replace Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.”

And I know that I am going to go to dinner tonight and then off to Jaipur in the morning. More to come from there…

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Letter From New York 03 30 15 Safely back in Delhi…

March 30, 2015

There is one thing I have learned from my times in India. The people drive with cheerful, careless, reckless abandon. After we left the guesthouse at the Indian Institute of Technology in Roorkee, I made sure my seat belt was tightly fastened. As we started down the long road to Delhi, I realized that more often than not we were on the wrong side of the road.

Drivers seem to feel that a steady use of the horn gives them both right of way and immunity. After watching death bear down on me at 60 kilometers an hour once too often, I surrendered to the experience and closed my eyes, saying a prayer and hoping to doze.

Once I opened my eyes to see us just avoiding rear-ending the car in front of us; another time to see us squeeze between two other vehicles on a two-lane road. I closed my eyes again and thought pleasant thoughts about arriving in one piece in Delhi.

We drove past ramshackle buildings that could never have been new and past new buildings that looked old before they were finished. In air-conditioned comfort, I looked out at the faces of people, many smiling in the wonderful way Indians have. Some looked intense but most seemed content, living in the world they did. A woman in a red and blue sari passed me, intent on getting where she was going with her burden of groceries in a bag.

I drifted off again and then, before I really knew it, I was at India Habitat Center, where I will be staying the next two nights before heading down to Jaipur.

An old friend surfaced this morning, via Facebook, and I am going to see if I can get to Goa to see him. I had thought he was living in Haridwar but it turns out he has not kept his Facebook profile up to date and is now in Goa.

Tonight, I will see if I can work that out.

At this very moment, much to my frustration, I am Internet challenged. While it says I am connected, no pages load so I have no connection to the greater world.

The Times of India this morning was bursting with reports about dissension in the AAP, a relatively new party that swept elections in Delhi in the last two months. Two of the founders of the party seemed to have been banished for “seditious” activities. Made American politics seem almost tame.

In Roorkee, I met an Australian named Jo, who now works at the University of Southampton in Britain and who has been on loan to IIT Roorkee for the last six months helping them revamp their administrative policies. She goes home tomorrow and is deeply sad after having become very attached to Roorkee and India.

She, Ron Eglash and I had a spirited conversation yesterday night about the differences between British and American politics at the given moment. She was fascinated and intrigued by the sharp differences right now between Republicans and Democrats. Her feeling is that Tories and Labour in the UK have become too similar though the advance of UKIP, a newish party that wants to pull away from Europe and which is gaining a surprising degree of popularity, frightens her. Jo’s opinion is that UKIP has a racist streak up its spine.

The Iranian talks are coming down to the wire and it may well be there will be no resolution though Iran still says it is “doable.” Tomorrow is the last day of the self-imposed deadline and negotiators seem willing to talk until 11:59:59 PM of March 31st.

The Times of India, which was left at my door at the guesthouse in Roorkee, also reported on the continuing Saudi airstrikes against Yemeni rebels.

It was actually cool when I left the guesthouse and I wore a sweater for the first time since being in India.

Now that I am safely back in Delhi, I look forward to the rest of my time in India. I am hoping I can find a way to Goa to see William, who has lived here since 1969. He was 19 when he arrived and has never really left.

I have plans tomorrow to do some Delhi shopping with my friend Raja and am going to put together a list of people for whom I would like to bring home something. It’s part of the fun of traveling, finding delights for friends and relatives.

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Letter From New York 03 19 15 With the speech over, back to Delhi…

March 29, 2015

It is always hard to know exactly how well it went when you give a speech, which I did today. Personally, I think it went well. No one fell asleep. There were very few yawns. It was supposed to go for sixty minutes; it went for 90+ with all the questions.

Professor Ron Eglash, who spoke before me, stayed for my speech and when we got into the car to go back to the guesthouse, he told me that I was brilliant! And he’s American, so he wasn’t using “brilliant” the way Brits do, to say that was nice. He thought I was really good and I appreciated it.

Twenty students rushed the stage to have their pictures taken with me so I felt, for a few seconds, like a rock star.

All good.

The day came grey and drizzly today and the grey has never really gone away. Post speech, I’m feeling a bit tired and am going to finish this and then try to catch a few minutes catnap. I’d really love a glass of wine but the campus is “dry” so I will have to wait for Delhi for that.

Now that the speech is done and the conference closed, I have gone back to perusing world events a bit more closely.

Angie’s List has put on hold its expansion in Indiana until it further understands the implications of that state’s Religious Freedom Act. They were about to break ground in a few days on a $40 million building project. In the meantime, the legislature is drafting a “clarification” of the law, which it plans to unveil in a few days. I am very curious to see the clarifications. I’ll still be in India when they come out but I will be looking.

It is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Christian’s Holy Week. Pope Francis prayed for the victims of the Germanwings crash in the service today.

In other Francis’ news, he keeps hinting that he thinks his Papacy will be short, ended by some great event. I hope not. He is popular among Catholics and is stressing Christian themes in a way no Pope has for decades.

In good news for heavy drinkers, it is being reported that coffee counters the bad effects of drinking on the liver. One cup of coffee turns back the dial on three drinks. I predict coffee sales will rise.

Rising slightly are hopes that a nuclear deal will be made with Iran, but only slightly. There are still major differences and it’s not clear they can be overcome. Secretary Kerry was to return to the States for an event honoring his friend and colleague, the late Ted Kennedy. Kerry has cancelled the trip to remain at the negotiations.

Netanyahu says the deal is worse than he feared.

There are no negotiations going on in Yemen. There are lots of dropping bombs. Saudi Arabia claims to have destroyed the ballistic missiles the Shiite rebels seized when they toppled the Sunni government. The Arab League is holding a summit and is presenting a pretty united front against the rebels, announcing at the same time a regional security force.

The situation underscores the tensions between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran. Places like Yemen and Libya are the grounds now for proxy wars while the two powers attempt to become dominant in the Middle East.

In the confusing battleground that is Syria, the Al-Nursa Front has taken the city of Idlib. As they entered the city, they reported that Syrian troops had executed some detainees before fleeing the city. Al-Nursa is one of the groups, along with IS, vying for power in fractured Syria.

It is difficult to keep the players straight.

Singapore is saying farewell to its founding father, Lee Kuan Yew. The Prime Minister of India is there along with many other world leaders. The city is said to be at a standstill. For them, it’s like saying good-bye to George Washington.

Tomorrow, I leave Roorkee to return to Delhi. The weather looks ominous and so I will be praying for a safe driver. It will be good to be back in Delhi, where creature comforts are a bit more available. Not only is the campus “dry,” it is also vegetarian. I am hankering for some chicken tikka.

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Letter From New York 03 28 15 In Holy Haridwar…

March 28, 2015

When I wake up in India, everyone I know is 9.5 hours behind me, sound asleep. It’s a little odd but I have gotten used to it. Beginning the day with an Indian breakfast, I moved on to two presentations here at Cognizance that I was interested in attending. One was by Kamlesh Sharma, Director of Coca-Cola, India. He is a remarkable young spokesperson for his company, invested with more enthusiasm for company, culture and product than I have recently seen in any individual.

He was followed by Elizabeth Nyamayaro, Senior Advisor, UN Women, who was here to talk about and evangelize “HeForShe,” a gender parity campaign launched by the UN earlier this year with a speech by Emma Watson, she of “Harry Potter” fame. And, yes, there is an app for that.

Following lunch, my new best friend, Ron Eglash, of RPI in Troy, NY, just up the road from Claverack, and I went with two of our young hosts to Haridwar, one of the seven holiest places in India for Hindus, the place where the Ganges flows into India.

We traveled for an hour to get there, through the dusty plains of northern India, past the roadside shantytowns and masses of humanity, threading our way through traffic, tossing our hat at danger at every moment. We rode past massive construction projects, all of which seemed halted at some point in their development with no sign they would ever be completed.

Walking on the bridge across the Ganges, you can stand and watch people bathing in the river. People by the dozens sell empty plastic bottles of varying sizes so that the pilgrims can take home the holy water of the Ganges.

People with deformed limbs line the walks, begging. It was a scene I remember well from my other times in India. One old woman looked me in the eye and I lined her tin cup with paper rupees. She reminded me of my mother.

In some ways, it felt very much like I was part of the Raj, sliding through the crushes of humanity in an air-conditioned Toyota, passing close enough to people that our eyes met and caught, my wondering about their world, as I am sure they wondered about mine.

Whole families transported themselves on motorbikes, no one wearing helmets, children delicately balanced between parents. It appeared to me that no one in India uses seatbelts either. Ashad, one of my hosts, languidly lounged in the front seat, his seat belt unbuckled.

The students who get into any of the branches of the India Institute of Technology are the best and brightest of Indian students. Each year only 5000 are granted places. I teased Ashad that I was with two of the brightest people I had ever known.

And I was.

We returned to the guesthouse as the sun was setting, a brilliant pink orb descending in the west and I retreated to my room to write.

While I was watching the Ganges flow, it was revealed that the co-pilot of the downed Germanwings flight, Andreas Lubitz, was responsible for the crash, with the loss of all aboard. He had said that his name would be famous. What a way to get what you want.

In Indiana, Governor Pence, has signed into law a “religious freedom” bill, which allows people to refuse service to same sex couples. He is surprised and frustrated that he is getting a negative response from a lot of folks, including the N.C.A.A., based in Indianapolis. The Mayor of San Francisco has banned all publicly funded travel to the state. Gen Con, a convention for gaming enthusiasts held every year in Indianapolis is threatening to leave. Salesforce.com is outraged and has said so.

Lots of celebrities and others, including Hillary Clinton, are piling on. The head of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce has called the bill “unnecessary.” Yelp is yelping, quite loudly.

Governor Pence is perplexed. If he had thought the bill was discriminatory, he wouldn’t have signed, he said.

He hasn’t ruled out a run for the Presidency.

Amanda Knox, who along with her boyfriend, had been accused of killing her roommate in Italy, has finally been vindicated and her conviction thrown out. The case has had more turns than a ride at Disneyland.

Apparently Hillary Clinton has wiped clean the server that she used for email in her years as Secretary of State. This isn’t going away for a long, long time.

And it’s not a very long time until I am giving my speech in the morning. I am skipping tonight’s festivities, a Swedish heavy metal band, and am going to my room after dinner to further prep my remarks and say some prayers that it all goes well.

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