I’m currently sitting on my balcony enjoying an amazing thunder and lightening storm. Somehow I doubt it will help with the heat and humidity tomorrow but storms are my favorite. Another busy afternoon- after a powernap and teatime, I joined Dr. Jolly on a walk around three neighboring campuses- University of Delhi, St. Stephen and Hindu University (which is the oldest university in the city). We walked for over an hour around the gardens and academic buildings. She’s going to try to arrange a private tour of the photo archives in the Vice Chancellor’s house. Apparently, she has wanted to go and she’s excited to have me as an excuse to visit soon. I chatted with her about many of her struggles and successes of being an administrator (this is her sixth year at Miranda House). Although the days are long and filled with meetings, its obvious she finds her work rewarding. One of the many projects she discussed this morning was improving the water purification system- finding drinkable water has been one of my major concerns about being here. Access to clean and relatively unlimited water is something I will view with renewed gratitude when I return to the US.
She spends a lot of time writing grants for funds for her construction projects. We walked around the construction site that will add 50 more rooms to the hostel and she said she hadn’t anticipated envisioning architectural changes to the school. Concern for blending the new buildings with the traditional housing adds another important consideration but she’s a woman who enjoys overcoming challenges.The fruits of her labor are obvious and she greets every student we come across, asking about their exams or the various clubs they are involved in. After our walk, we had dinner in the dining hall then went out to ice cream at a semi-fast food joint down the road. She also pointed out the location for early morning yoga so I have to see if I’m brave enough to display my beginning yoga postures in a fieldful of Indians. Definitely before I leave I’ll go but in the meantime, I’ll enjoy generating a dust cloud as I improve my poses until they are presentable in my ginormous room.
I didn’t get to discuss the extreme contrast of Indian society with Dr. Jolly too much but she said how she anticipates that India’s economy will continue to grow but there is just so many people that the social problems probably won’t improve much. I know I won’t want to be in charge of a huge country like this and I won’t know how to begin to fix the problem but from what I can tell, it doesn’t sound like battling the homelessness is anywhere on their agenda of top issues to focus on. I’ve seen how they have been fairly successful with environmental efforts (almost all the public transportation runs on natural gas, and there’s advertising to urge people to be environmentally conscious and improve public transportation with the extensive metro system to promote energy efficient practices), which leads me to believe positive change is possible.
Ok, well Rekha is coming over to plan a trip to the Taj on Saturday- we’ve got to navigate the dozens and dozens of transportation and tour options. She also mentioned going to the Dellihart after tea tomorrow to visit the open market where I can see/ buy traditional crafts and eat in the food court which highlights regional cuisine from all over the country.
At some point soon (uploading 5 pictures takes like an hour), I’ll post some pictures of some of our walk. But not without a disclaimer- upon reviewing these photos, I realized how misleading all my pictures are. It looks like there’s no one around but I’ve never seen this volume of people before coming to this country. I’m hesitant to photograph many of the most interesting things I’ve seen- the Hindu temple, the crazy combination of people/ vehicles on the roads, the people strewn on the sides of the roads, the incredible variety of traditional and western clothes that women wear each day, etc. Hopefully when I visit more of the tourist attractions, it’ll be more acceptable to sneak in some photos to give you a better idea. Until later!
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| Vice Chancellor's Rose Garden and the Commonwealth Games Stadium in the Background |
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| Chapel at St. Stephan's College- don't see many of these around! |
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| Vice Chancellor's house at the University of Delhi- Dr. Jolly's trying to arrange for me to visit inside! |
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