A Winter in India

The police have asked people to stay at home, and so we are here at the Guest House. All entrances and exits to the city are controlled by police roadblocks. The military has bolstered security everywhere. New Delhi is so large that we don’t have any first-hand knowledge of the tragedy; without TV we would be quite ignorant of the happenings. The email shops are closed on Sundays. But other shops are open as usual, in defiance of the terrorist’s attempts to create fear. Just as in New York, New Delhi seems determined to rise above, deal with the problems, and show a stiff resolve.

Sunday evening Jane Schukoske, the Executive Director of USEFI, invited us to join her at a party for the Indian contemporary artist Naseth Kaporia. It was held at the home of Shavin and Herbert. Shavin is a classical Indian dancer, and is on USEFI’s Board of Directors. Herbert is a former Austrian diplomat. Their home is a beautiful place with a large enough yard to have an evening garden party for a couple of hundred people. Herbert gave a very good speech in which he said that they had thought of canceling and then decided that the best resistance to terrorism is to go on with life. A woman sang a moving lament, and the artist asked us all to light candles and place them on the pathways after a moment of silence in remembrance of the 61 dead and more than 250 injured.

USEFI arranges for a local student to be our facilitator the first few days, for which we are very grateful. Kaushik is a law student and a great guy. First order of business was to find an ATM machine. When we were in India in 1998, ATMs didn’t exist and getting money was at least a 2-hour process. Now, on the second try, we found a bank in the same network as Peoples/BankNorth, and voila, cash! The next stop was a cell phone store. We are now the proud owners of a basic Nokia, a pre-paid phone card and a phone number. Jet-lag required an afternoon nap, then off to an internet shop, it’s that “flat-world” again. It was about an 8 by 10 foot building with 6 computers, right in the middle of this very nice residential area where we are staying. While many people use the internet now, fewer actually have a connection in their home, and instead go to a shop like this (reminds me of the “communal” public telephone in villages in Wales 35 years ago.) While sitting at our rented computer terminal, we stared eyeball to eyeball with a very large sacred cow on the doorstep.

We woke at noon to the sound of the call to Moslem prayer. And our first real sight of Delhi is the one pictured here, from the veranda of our hotel. Beautiful, flowering trees, all decorated with lights for the upcoming Hindu holiday, Divali, and right across the street, a mosque. Shows the contrasts present at every moment here. This being the last Friday of Ramadan (Eid is next week), there was a big crowd worshipping at the mosque, and about 25,000 men left on foot two hours later, filling the street (where you see the bicycle rickshaws in the picture) for more than 20 minutes.

When the street cleared, we were collected by a driver from USEFI and taken to their offices, where we were delighted to meet Girish, Bharathi and Varratika in person, after months of correspondence with them since our initial acceptance as Fulbright Fellows by the US State Department last November 2004. Then we went over to Maulana Azad Dental College to meet Dean Mahesh Verma, our official host. We had been corresponding with him for over two years, as the first part of a Fulbright application is to locate an Indian institution willing to sponsor you. He is a ball of energy and made us very welcome.

Basically, it’s a long trip any way you do it. Our itinerary took us west from Portland to Detroit (2 hours) with a long enough layover to see the airport sites: a psychedelic light show in the tunnel between terminals, the world’s best fountain, and an indoor elevated train. The next leg took us from Detroit to Amsterdam (7 hours). According to the in-flight map monitor, we flew right over Auburn, Maine, exactly eight and a half hours after leaving home! Several hour lay-over in Amsterdam’s airport then another 7 hour flight to Delhi. Immigration and customs went very smoothly, and we emerged to a lobby of hundreds of people waiting for arrivals. We found the driver sent for us by USEFI (United States Educational Foundation in India), who took us, and our 5 suitcases, to our hotel, 27 hours elapsed time from Auburn. A long but uneventful trip, with smooth flying all the way, so it was a surprise to see our one suitcase (pictured here) that looked like it had traveled by garbage truck. Think we can ask LLBean for our money back? Amazingly enough, with the strap around it, we didn’t lose anything out of the suitcase, but our carefully packed computer keyboard has an interesting U-shape now!

Just a quick note to let everyone know we got here safely very late on Thursday night. Met our hosts on Friday. And Saturday were the three bomb blasts here in Delhi. We are fine and were not near those areas. People were asked to stay inside Saturday night and Sunday, which we did. By today everything has returned to normal, with people taking the attitude that the best resistance to terrorism is to go on with your normal daily life.We will write more as soon as we find a high speed internet.

Before we left for India, we (with our dog Rudy) made one last trip to our favorite National Park, Acadia. This is on the top of Cadillac Mountain, where the sun first rises in the U.S. each day. Kate came with us too (her photo will be in a separate entry; haven't got the kinks worked out as to how to get multiple photos into one entry). Hard to leave all of this.