A Winter in India

Well, dear friends, you might ask what happened in India today? India is a big place so I will confine my ramblings to what happened to the tiny bit of India where the Bakers took oxygen today. The picture above is the fountain in the middle of the round-a-bout which constitutes Bengali Market, the little corner of New Delhi that we call home. I wish that the water was turned on, there are so many water jets that I bet it is really beautiful when activated. Of course, the last time it was energized could have been when Jawaharlal Nehru (d.1964) was still PM. In defense of the government there is only so much money and providing infrastructure to a rapidly expanding population is a daunting task. New Delhi is rapidly building a brand new subway system and an extensive highway pattern. We were here in 1998 and in comparison New Delhi today has become choked with automobiles. All the cars look very new so India’s recent prosperity seems to have been translated into the words of LBJ, “a car in every garage and a chicken curry in everyone’s pot.”

These pictures are the brand new building housing the Maulana Azad Dental College. Dental school in India, as in much of the rest of the world other than the U.S., is a Bachelor’s degree program (B.D.S.). Dr. Verma wisely planned for us to visit some classes before we start teaching any, and today were the first two. Right off the bat we saw a custom that we think should be immediately instituted in U.S. colleges. As we entered the classroom, all the students leaped to their feet and stood respectfully until we had taken our places. No one left the room until the lecture was finished, and then only after standing respectfully until after we had left. Yikes! That was both cool and intimidating. The students sit on benches, and packed tightly together so that as many as possible could be in the front two rows. Not a single person at the back of the room.

As you can see I’ve finally been found! Our apartment is at the far right side of this map about where the second ‘b’ in Babar Road is placed. The other curiosity that needs pointing out is that the spot where I am standing despite the title is not on this map!!!! I am still on Babar Road, but we have passed under the fly-over bridge, and directly behind Pam the photographer is the Intercontinental Hotel which is beyond the left hand margin of the map. This hotel is a five-star establishment surrounded by gardens, which must be the source of the other American looking folks we have seen in Bengali Market. We were on our way to Connaught Place to do some window-shopping, but were stopped by a concerned Indian gentleman. He said that it was not good to go to CP today since there were demonstrations and rallies in support of candidates vying for the position of President of the Market. I am assuming that each market has a form of government with a president who is the contact person with the city licensing agency. That’s my guess until I find out more. Connaught Place is the British version of a huge Neo-Classical Greek design shopping mall. Built in the 1920’s it has an inner and outer ring of buildings separated by ring roads, which are interlaced with radial access roads. Huge.

At our office at the Dental College, the same scene is repeated as at the house. The door opens and people appear and do things like wash the floors, fill our water thermos, bring tea. Where they come from, where they get the water or the tea, and where we find any of it ourselves are all Mysteries. So we just say “thank you” or “namaste” and go on. (They seem startled and flattered that we say anything at all).

We do most of our food shopping right in Bengali Market, in little shops that are semi-self service. Some things are out on the shelf, but many more are hidden away in nooks and crannies, so you tell one of the people what you want and they disappear into back rooms and overhead lofts and come back with whatever it was. Then another person jots up how much it costs, and still another person takes your money. Since they see us every day, they have concluded we live nearby, so now, unless we insist otherwise, they take the bags of food right to our door. Two cases of bottled water were stacked on the back of a bicycle and brought to our house this morning. Dave’s pressed sports coat was carried on a hangar to the house from the dry cleaner. No tips are expected for any of this. The landlady and others tell us, “just call up and tell them what you want and they will bring it, and then you don’t have to go to the store.” Trouble is, we don’t know what we want, and we like seeing the people and the show at the store.

We are moved in, and the holidays are mostly over, and so on Monday we went to the Dental College. Dr. Verma put us in the hands of Dr. Meera Chowdhury, Associate Professor of Paediatric Dentistry, a wonderfully gentle woman with a great sense of humor. Dave was able to start teasing her immediately.

We were shown into our office, a nice space on the second floor. We have a big desk, two plants, fresh gladiolas, four chairs, a sofa, a big thermos for drinking water, plates, coasters, and six glasses that look like dandy scotch glasses but are really so we can serve our guests water. (They apologized that the set-up for making tea wasn’t all there quite yet). We have office supplies, and a phone that calls other offices in the building but isn’t hooked up yet (will be in a few days). We are right next door to the dental school library and there is a computer there, and there will be internet connection on that soon. The whole building is designed to be a wireless network, but that won’t be up for a while. They have only been in the building themselves for four months, and the priority was definitely on getting the clinics up and running. Beautiful Adec equipment, made in Oregon.

This apartment is 74 feet from front to back, and 20 feet across(1480 square feet, which is about 80% the size of our house in Maine)!! The kitchen floor and the floor in one of the two bathrooms are tiled, and all the rest of the floors are marble. In the front room, the living room, there is a big rug over the marble. Our landlady, who lives downstairs, asked if we wanted her “girls” to clean for us. It was more of an expectation than a question and we were happy to say “sure”. So two women show up every day, including weekends. One, who is about 4 feet tall and who has worked for the landlady for over forty years, washes the entire floor by hand with a 2 by 3 foot wet rag and sweeps the living room rug with a bundle of sticks. She wears a sari while doing this and somehow doesn’t get it wrapped up in the washrag. The other, a young girl who wears a salwar kameez, dusts all of the furniture and cleans the bathrooms. Neither speaks any English, but the older one smiles a lot and chatters away to us in some extremely rapid language. So we smile and chatter back.

We were very lucky in finding an apartment quickly and right close to where we will be teaching. It is in an area called Bengali Market, in the old part of New Delhi. What that means is that we are in the part that was designed as the new capital by Sir Edwin Lutyens (so it is also known as “Lutyen’s Delhi”). In 1911 the British King (George V) came to India, the first time that a reigning British monarch had come here. One thing he did while here was announce that the capital of Imperial India would be moved to Delhi from Calcutta. Our apartment is a fifteen-minute walk from Connaught Place, one of the focal points for the architectural layout of the new city.

After just a week in a Guest House we moved into the apartment where we will live while here in Delhi. This first night was the night that Bates Media Relations office had asked us to take a picture of ourselves for a “Bates minute” project. At the same moment, around the world, Bates people were asked to photograph themselves in an activity typical for that time of day where they are. Our time here was 7:17 PM. Since we had just moved in at 4 PM, it was hard to know what was typical. So we took these pictures of us with some of the artwork here in our apartment.

The Buddha is trying to get Dave’s attention. Pam is appreciating the Goddess of Curly Hair. And to complete the picture, here is the one of Kate that we tried to put on the blog before. Great photo of Kate on the top of Cadillac Mt. Sure miss her!

Today is Divali. People visit family and friends and bring them gifts. We had invitations to people’s houses, but knowing how many dozens of people would be in and out of anyone’s home in the course of the day, we decided that no one needed to have the extra burden of us, and we elected to stay here at the Guest House. We went out for a walk, and while many things are closed, many shops are open. The hair stylist and the Chemist (Pharmacy) in particular looked to be doing a brisk business, as were the countless stalls selling the wrapped boxes of dried fruit and candies that people will take to “gift” each other at these parties. Meanwhile, across the street at the mosque, the courtyard wall is receiving a fresh coat of paint, white for the wall, and turquoise for the crenellations at the top.

This morning we went over to the Dental College and were immediately sucked up into the Dean Verma Whirlwind. We thought we were going to go see a possible apartment to rent, but before we got to that, he had scheduled a meeting to introduce us to their faculty, a wonderful group whom we look forward to working with. Tomorrow is Divali, which is a Hindu religious holiday, but now also a pan-Indian secular festival. And so we next watched while the staff came into the Dean’s office, one at a time, and received their gifts, most of them bending and touching his feet in a sign of respect. Then we put in an appearance at the parties happening in each of the departments, and then off to East Delhi. Maulana Azad Dental College is a government institution, so the Dean is a high government official and has a white Ambassador car and a driver. Dean Maheash Verma’s wife, Meena, is a general practice dentist with very modern offices across the Yamuna River from Delhi. There a Hindu priest performed a puja (blessing ceremony) for the staff. Seated on the floor in the waiting room, there was a long series of chants and building up of a pile of offerings to Lakshmi (goddess of money, prosperity and good fortune) and Ganesh (the elephant god). A fire was built in a metal brazier about the size of a wastebasket, and everyone added offerings to the flames. After lunch (and by this time we were absolutely stuffed), we roared back into Delhi to the Bengali Market area, to, at last, see the apartment. Dean Verma had found this place by knowing the people next door to another place (long story). After more eating and drinking at his friends’ house (a general practice dentist and her husband, an orthodontist), we went to look at the apartment which was on the third floor and literally inches from the expressway over pass, so we said no thank you. But it developed that the property manager actually also had another place that turned out to be great and we said yes. We will move in right after the holiday, on Thursday. After sealing the deal with a handshake, the Dean dropped us off at USEFI so we could go to another party there, while he went on to an entire evening of parties. For him these almost all-night Divali parties have been going on since last Thursday, but we couldn’t detect any loss of energy on his part. He is sure taking good care of us!