New Year's Eve in Gujurat

Yes, it's New Year's Eve in Gujurat -- one hour to midnight! This place doesn't qualify as the most unusual place I've celebrated New Year's Eve -- that honor goes to a tiny village in Himalayan Nepal where Lydia and I -- hello there, Lydia! -- celebrated New Year's Eve 2001 in the light of lanterns (no electricity) with our trekking guide and a young Belgian couple who were just heading down from the higher mountains and happily enough were carrying a bottle of champagne and a delicious Belgian chocolate bar just for the occasion -- but it's also not familiar Northampton, where Bob and I argue every year about whether or not to watch the ball drop over the Hotel Northampton (I usually want to; he usually doesn't).

Normally there's a celebration here on campus, but because of the 11/08 Mumbai attacks there's apparently been a call to keep public celebration of New Year's to a minimum this year (I'm not sure I really see the connection, but perhaps just in a general spirit of mourning), so it's been cancelled. As a result, Bob and I are doing the quiet thing here in the apartment, with a little help from BBC television. We did have something to celebrate this evening, however, which I never would have guessed would be a source of so much joy for me (and rather less guilt than I might have anticipated) -- we had our first home-cooked meal prepared by the woman who is going to cook and clean for us. It was delicious. Prior to this, we have eaten some dinners in a dining room on campus that is reserved for people who come in for in-service training courses -- and since there's no in-service training course going on now, we've been the only two people (except once) in this large empty dining room, with one very attentive waiter hovering over us. I didn't mind it quite as much as Bob, who described it as dining in a setting like that in the movie "Last Year at Marienbad" -- lonely and bleak. In any event, it certainly wasn't homey. Other nights we either made do with cheese sandwiches on khakharas (wheat crispies) heated in the microwave or cold cereal. To explain why we can't cook for ourselves would involve a fairly lengthy description of the type of cooking utensils and marketing options available here which exceed our ability to cope with -- at least at this point -- but everyone (i.e., Vivek and his wife, Charu, and Bob and I) agreed that as clueless westerners we needed someone more skillful at the local scene to both cook and clean for us. So today our new housekeeper (I guess I am too guilty to say "maid") began. I'm embarassed to say I haven't yet mastered her name, and since she doesn't speak any English and we don't speak any Hindi or Gujurati, our communication so far has been quite limited, but she certainly did manage to whip up a pretty terrific meal of dal, mixed vegetable curry, rice, and home-made chapatis in a kitchen that we can barely boil water in. Charu had taken us into town earlier today to buy the necessary spices, vegetables, and other staples for her to use -- without a guiding hand, we would have hardly known where to begin. If our incompetence seems mysterious to you, I'll try to explain it another time -- for now just take it on faith that without household help we'd be in sad shape.

The big event of the week, of course, has been that I've taught my first three classes -- and I think they went pretty well (you'll have to ask the students if you want a real verdict). Following my colleague Sue Darlington's advice (and therefore being consistent with what I believe to be standard practice here), I quickly taught myself PowerPoint (hurray! something I've been wanting to master for ages) and prepared PowerPoints for each of the first three classes. Luckily, I came with a copy of all the reading material for the course, so I was able to give the readings for the first two weeks (so far; I'll do the rest later this week) to the Duplications people here, who put it into a packet to give to each student (again, the standard practice). I have 30 students in my class. They laughed at most of my jokes (e.g., I called the ground-rules for the class "Rules of the Road" and when I came to that entry on the PowerPoint I said something to the effect that while India and the U.S. had a great deal in common, when it came to "rules of the road" there were vast differences, which earned a good chuckle. Do you know on the highway there was actually a sign that said something like "It's a good idea to stay in your lane" -- because otherwise lanes are irrelevant to the drivers (and that includes cars, motorcycles, bicycles, and pedestrians) who are navigating non-highway streets in or between towns.

Anyway, I digress. At the end of the first class, which introduced the areas we would study and a bit about myself, I asked the students -- actually, they call them "participants" at IRMA, not students, a reflection of the progressive tradition of the school -- to write for about ten minutes on why they had chosen to take this course (it's an elective) and/or any particular interests they had in international law or the environment and/or any experiences they had had, either during their IRMA field placements or otherwise, that related to the subjects of the course. I got quite a few interesting responses (being this is a graduate program, and the participants' ages are somewhat diverse, there is a doctor, several engineers, and other folks with interesting backgrounds), and at least a beginning sense of what is on people's minds. After teaching for so many years, and knowing the Hampshire student body well enough that at this point I can almost predict the various things that people will say about many topics, it's somewhat disorienting to look out at a classroom full of faces that I really can't "read" in the same way. But although they certainly don't leap wildly into discussion like Hampshire students do, and they tend to call me "ma'am," which is also a bit disorienting, and their accents are sufficiently challenging that I have to listen very hard when they speak to catch it all (as I suspect they have to do with me), they have certainly been willing to speak up in response to my questions and have consistently said very useful and interesting things. We even got a bit of a debate going in today's class, which was on the controversy in India over whether or not to create more tiger sanctuaries to save the tiger from extinction that would involve the expulsion of local people, especially so-called "tribals," from the area -- one participant being skeptical of so much effort going into saving tigers while people were poor and hungry, and two others being much more "pro-tiger." When I said I was happy to see that I had both a tiger skeptic and two tiger advocates in the class, everyone laughed, and I felt like we were all connecting. At least I hope so.

I was going to put up a bunch of photos on the blog this evening, but since for some reason it was taking an absurdly long time for them to upload, I'll leave it at two -- one of me on the street in Delhi near our guest house when we first arrived, and one of the IRMA campus. I'll try to supplement these soon. Also, since it's five minutes to midnight, it's time to stop. There may be no celebration on the campus -- which is very quiet -- but just out beyond the wall that surrounds the campus, there is plenty of music playing loudly and what sounds like the start of fireworks, so there must be some serious partying going on. Even though it's not that far to walk to the edge of campus, and only about a kilometer more into town, I don't think Bob and I are ready yet to go wandering around out there at midnight, so we'll just enjoy the music from here. Good night all -- and may we all have a grand 2009, wherever we may be.