A Winter in India

The Fulbright people asked if we would be interested in speaking at some of the cities that don’t get many foreign visitors, and we jumped at the chance. We left Delhi on the 6 AM train on Feb. 1 and went south, through Agra, and on to the state of Madhya Pradesh (“Middle State”) to the city of Gwalior. We were met at the station and whisked off to Jiwaji University, a beautiful, park-like campus for 4000 students, half of the seats reserved for students from Madhya Pradesh and the other half open to applications from any student who can meet the entrance requirements, which are quite stringent. Jiwaji has Basic Sciences (Zoology, Botany, Physics, etc.), which many universities do not have any more, with those having been replaced by Biotechnology, Molecular Biology, electrical engineering, etc. Jiwaji has a good mix of the “old” and the new. There is a pharmacy school that is testing 300 traditional medicines, a medical botany department that is developing standardized ways of growing the medicinal plants, and a reproductive biology/physiology department. We spoke to the faculty and students in the master’s degree programs in Neuroscience and Biotechnology. Dave spoke on “Oral Health is General Health,” an overview of the connections between oral disease and systemic diseases (heart disease and diabetes, as well as preterm low birth weight babies). I gave a summary of the molecular cell biology of HIV/AIDS. Both seemed well received. We had a very good meeting afterwards with one of their researchers who is doing work on the effects of chronic inflammation causing infertility. He has a mouse model for this and has found that intraperitoneal injections of LPS (a molecule from Gram negative bacteria) shuts down implantation of embryos. He is interested in finding out whether oral bacteria could also be a source for this LPS. So he was very interested in Dave’s talk, and in my mouse model.

We stayed in the University Guest House that night, and the next morning took the train on to Bhopal, another 400 kilometers (250 miles) south of Gwalior. As you may recall, in 1984 Bhopal was the scene of the worst chemical disaster ever. Twenty-eight thousand people were killed by a gas leak of isocyanate (cyanide). No one wanted to talk about that. Bhopal is the state capital of Madhya Pradesh and really a very beautiful city. Part of it is on a high plateau so there are sweeping vistas out over lovely farmland and five lakes. Two of these lakes were manmade but so long ago that I’m not sure the term still counts. They were made by building a catchment for five seasonal rivers by Raja Bhoj who ruled way back in 1030 AD! The biggest of the lakes is up on the plateau and has several of the huge jet-pump fountains like the ONE in Geneva, Switzerland.

We both spoke at the Microbiology Department of Barkatuallah University. This is a government University that not only runs its own graduate programs, but oversees 200 private and government colleges around Madhya Pradesh. “Oversee” means that it administers and grades all the exams in all of those colleges. Everyone has the same syllabus set by the state government; tests are not given by the lecturers but centralized under the university. Dave gave his oral health talk and I did one on cell and molecular biology, this time on cancer. We got the full ceremonial welcome, flowers and “momentos” for each of us, plus welcoming orations by several Chairs. A very nice group of people and we enjoyed visiting with them afterwards. Two of them took us up to see the lake just at sunset, and it was beautiful, especially because with Delhi’s air pollution we have seen only two sunsets since we came in October, one in Agra with Kate and Rob in December, and now this one. We were also able to add another data point to our global study of the orientation of the rising crescent moon at different latitudes. In Maine at 44 degrees N latitude it is close to vertical, in Quito, Ecuador on the equator it is perfectly horizontal. Here at 19 degrees North latitude it was just slightly off from horizontal with the concavity oriented up.

Spent the night in a very nice hotel owned and run by the Madhya Pradesh Department of Tourism. Had the morning free, so they arranged for a government car to take us sightseeing. Went to the Shiva Temple built in 1030 by the same Bhoj who built the lakes. It’s in the process of being restored, but even in its present form, its humbling to see the kind of craftsmanship and building and architecture skills that people here had one thousand years ago.

In the afternoon Pam gave a lecture to a group of about 40 faculty and students from the Madhya Pradesh Bhoj Open University. The Vice Chancellor of Indira Gandhi National Open University also attended. These Open Universities are meant to serve “non-traditional” students of various sorts: people older than 22, people from villages, people who didn’t get high enough marks on the competitive entrance exams to other universities, people who are working and/or raising families so they need to go part time. While the concept seems very good and certainly offers a flexibility that the regular university system here does not have, there are concerns among some academics about the academic rigor at these Open Universities. At Bhoj Open University the students meet on campus for 12 days out of each 6 months, where they receive their assignments and then spend the rest of the six months working on those assignments completely on their own. The group that Pam talked to was adult students, and not science students, for the most part. They were pursuing degrees in various subjects, particularly Social Work. So, although the topic they chose from Pam’s list was “Molecular Cell Biology of HIV/AIDS”, she aimed it at a general non-science audience. They were attentive and asked good questions and seemed eager to get all the details.

After dinner we were taken to the Bhopal airport and flew to Indore where we were met by a dental resident with armloads of flowers. Had a great dinner on the rooftop of the hotel. So nice to be outside. Winter, if there ever was one, is definitely over here, quite a bit south of Delhi. And it was especially nice since you could actually see the moon and the stars.

We thought that we had been feted grandly at Barkatuallah Univeristy in Bhopal, but Indore even topped that. We each received a huge garland of roses, mums and marigolds, and a “trophy”. The garlands weighed at least three pounds! So many flowers strung on a string (see photo). All this ceremony happens before you even give the lecture, so it almost seems an anticlimax to get up and talk! We gave three lectures to about one hundred faculty and students, including medical students from Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College and dental students from the nearby Government College of Dentistry. Dave spoke on “Oral Health is General Health” then Pam spoke on “Finding Genetic Markers for Susceptibility to Chronic Diseases”, and lastly, Dave spoke on “Private Practice Dentistry in the United States”. That evening we boarded a plane and returned to Delhi and our own beds. What a whirlwind tour!!