First Days in Delhi

These first few days have been so full, I will try to recap. I’m very fortunate to be staying at the Anand Bhavan guest house on the USIEF (United States India Education Foundation) campus. It’s located near Connaught Place (CP), a central and lively area.  The campus is like a small gated and quiet oasis in an otherwise busy area. You can see the traffic around the area can be rough.

After breakfast at the Cafe where there is a choice of Western or Indian style breakfast made to order, I had a briefing with the USIEF Program Manager, Pavitra, who could not have been more gracious. She gave me a thick folder full of useful and important information (that I’ve yet to digest).  We discussed many things including where I’ll stay after this week. Since I’m not sure where my project will best take root and I know there are other cities I want to visit, we thought best to go with a homestay-style bed and breakfast instead of an apartment. Pavitra had arranged for me to have a guide, a bright art-history grad student named Rhea to help me get oriented to the city.

Walking is kind of a challenge, you have to dodge all kinds of traffic and really have your urban game face on. It’s not easy being a total rube in a new city in a foreign country and Rhea was a great sport in helping me out. She gave me the choice of walking or taking one of the ubiquitous auto rickshaws. After walking to CP I began to understand the utility of the auto rickshaws. A challenge for someone like me, though, is you have to negotiate the price of the trip before you get in. In LA we don’t really flag down cabs or haggle much, but that’s how it works here.

First order of business was getting a SIM card so my phone (and thus life itself) could function.  There was a dizzying variety of prepaid plans that would have been very hard to sort out on my own, but with Rhea’s help I was up on the Airtel network within just a few hours.  Next task was to obtain more cash, and although the limit is supposed to be 5000 rp per day, I was able to get more than twice that much. Fortunately the currency crisis seems to be getting better, and hopefully I’ll be able to use ATMs easily and not have to do currency exchanges.

I had no idea or real agenda of where to go (which is not like me at all, I like to plan), so Rhea showed me down into the Metro and helped me get a card and start riding. We went out to where my next residence will probably be, the Vandanas B&B in the Safdarjang Enclave. It looked pretty good, nice rooftop patio. It’s in a very quiet and residential part of the city. By then we’d worked up an appetite. We popped into this place called Adish  and ordered some biryani to eat and lassi to drink. It was served out of this sealed clay pot. Was I nervous eating out for the first time?  Yes, but ordering it mild and ensuring no bell peppers, I was delighted with how delicious the dish was. Condiments on the side were these pickled onions, a green chutney and a vegetable pickle. I gamely tried them all, but when I tasted the pickle I immediately recognized the flavor as a throwback to the type of pickle my father used to make. He made a mango pickle that my extended family loved but I couldn’t handle at all. I only ate a little but I learned to enjoy the flavor!

The ride back on the Metro was a bit crowded but compared to grinding it out in traffic or walking any real distance, I could tell this was going to be a main source of transportation in the city. That and Uber. There is a cursory metal detector and pat down every time you go in, but the stations are labeled in English and it seems to work well.

The next morning I opted for the Indian breakfast and met a fellow Fulbrighter from Maine also staying in one of the three rooms at the guesthouse. After that I had a meeting with the Executive Director of USIEF, Adam Grotsky, and he really seemed to understand the essence of my project.  I was glad to have such a positive meeting with someone who clearly could make things happen. I got the feeling that I would have more schools to visit than I could possibly have time for, a quality problem to have.

I had asked Rhea to come out and guide me again, but it turned out to only take me to the National Science Centre to meet my academic advisor, Professor Anurag Kumar, the curator of the Centre. As luck would have it, they had a regional science fair taking place and I knew I was going to want to check that out for the rest of the day.

We had a great meeting and I was introduced to the Director of the Centre, who also seemed to “get” what my project was about and almost immediately asked me to give a presentation sharing some of the student videos at a new ‘Innovation Fair” taking place in two days.  Things seemed to be happening fast and I jumped at the opportunity to both share some projects directly and create an Indian student version of what you can find on the student project posts here. It’s a big auditorium as you can see.

Then I was guided to the ongoing science fair which was great primarily because the students were there to explain their projects. They had their speeches rehearsed strongly and seemed to think I was one of the judges when in fact I was just there to have fun. One pair asked for a picture with me so I did one too.

The projects were themed around solving a practical problem and I was very impressed with the students. I really wish I had more time but just like when you go to a museum and you get saturated, after about 6 to 10 projects I can’t process much more.

I was graciously invited to lunch with the museum staff and it felt very welcoming to be included so immediately into their community. After that Anurag walked me through a little of the museum, I’ll need to go on my own to really take it in, but we watched the centerpiece which is this elaborate contraption that sends these balls around a roller coaster like track to demonstrate energy conversions.

I couldn’t help but speculate what it might be like to have a camera on the ball or sensors to show changes in speed but this exhibit captures prolonged attention without any technology gimmicks. The challenge of designing great interactive science exhibits is similar to what I think about lesson design and how virtual reality experiences should be crafted. There is some exciting symmetry connecting my interests!

Since I stayed so long at the museum, I had let Rhea go and I was on my own to figure out how to get back. It’s either a character flaw or a strength (probably both), but in general I hate asking for help or directions. I figured I could do Uber all by myself, except it wasn’t accepting my payment type. Luckily I was able to put in a different debit card and asking Anurag to walk me out and into the waiting car, I was on my way back to the guest house.