Fulbright House stay and moving to Safdarjung Enclave
On Sunday I relaxed a little and enjoyed the quiet atmosphere of the USIEF campus. I enjoyed the Indian style breakfast.
I did venture to walk out to Bengali Market and Connaught Place, expecting it to be a little easier to navigate on a Sunday. It was pretty quiet until I got to CP which was very frenetic. I popped into the Starbucks to overdose on coffee just because I could, unfortunately all the Starbucks gift cards my students gave me didn’t work in India, too bad.
This is very light traffic
I walked back to the guest house and went around the back to see what I was looking out from my window. Here is the view from both sides.
The property next to the guesthouse had lush greenery that I was fortunate to look out on.
Walking back, I took some random pictures as the sun was setting. I’m not sure how much the smoke in the air contributes to the “atmosphere” of the sunsets, but they are still pretty nice.
The next morning I had to pack up and move to a new guesthouse. On the way my Uber driver was diverted because the roads were closed for a dress rehearsal of the big Republic Day parade on Thursday. I was able to get a look at some of the floats while the car passed by!
The new guesthouse is very nice, here is a look at the room before I unpacked.
I’m set up on the top floor and there is a nice rooftop garden to hang out in.
I went back the the Adish restaurant to eat, the biryani was not as great as last time, but I managed to eat twice as much since I wasn’t sharing. Is it weird to spit out the cloves? That took me back to childhood. This trip to India is all about “you’re never too old to have a happy childhood.”
After dinner, I sent more emails and made phone calls as there are so many opportunities to learn about schools in the coming weeks. Tried to avoid the vortex of Facebook with all the drama back home. I’m glad that people are protesting and doing so peacefully, if that’s the result then I can see that the pendulum will swing back towards the social progress no politicians can forever contain. I try to avoid political discussions because they often are not rational. Politics itself seems to me the art of persuading a large group of people to go along with something, sometimes in their best interests and sometimes not. The politician has to have the ultimate poker face. Say what you want about President Trump, but he knows how to play poker and you don’t know when/if he’s bluffing.
About 15 years ago I wondered why I was never exposed to the genius of Ralph Waldo Emerson in school. Then I read a little (not just the quotes) and understood his vision to be so radical, so ahead of its time, of course it doesn’t fit into the safe boxes of school. I was recently was exposed to the writings of Thomas Paine, not the famous Common Sense which popularized the American Revolution, but The Rights of Man which has even more radical moral political ideas. I guess my inoculation against the insanity of our times is to try and go deeper into what was so special, that endures and inspires still about the American Revolution. This is the reason, I think, why Americans seem to think they are the best. If you take what it started out as, remove the slavery and disrespect for women, it is something to be proud of.
