Ramen and Realization

My daughter Katie predicted that I'd have difficulty maintaining my blogging habit after I'd been here a week. I was skeptical. She was right.

When she was in Africa for a semester, she blogged initially. But at some point, I suspect she chose to live the experience… rather than invest time sharing it in cyberspace. I now get it.

I'm now a little past the mid-point of the misadventure, and have been feeling a bit bipolar. One minute, I'm bewildered, enchanted and charmed by this country, its culture and its people. The next, I'm lonely, angry and generally pissed off.

Let's start with the bottom rung of Maslow's hierarchy. My shelter is quite acceptable. I occupy a one-bedroom apartment on the fifth floor of a well-located campus building. Not bad. But there's an AC unit in the bedroom that has yet to issue a single breeze that's below the temperature outside. And for an internet connection, I descend five flights of stairs to the lobby for a Wi-Fi signal that's iffy on a good day.

The cooking facilities in the "kitchen" (for which I pay a premium), consist only of a water-boiling device. So I've rediscovered Ramen noodles, and come to cherish instant coffee. But I do have a full-sized refrigerator and the proverbial kitchen sink.

I finally found a communal washing machine in a sixth floor utility room that's usually locked, but nobody admits to being the keeper of the key. As for drying clothes, we all use the clothesline on the building's roof. Normally, that would be fine. I like stiff, shrunken blue jeans. But monsoon season commences in June… meaning torrential downpours without warning… meaning drying a load of laundry becomes a multi-day process.

So, when I'm not eating Ramen, I dine out. There's a university cafeteria in my building. The food's dirt cheap, but the menu is limited to about a dozen selections… all based on some curry-flavored combination of flour, rice, lentils and chili peppers. There are items with chicken and/or egg on the menu, but every time I attempt to order one, the counter person says "no chicken – no egg" as if it was the mantra of some south Asian religious cult.

So I often hit the neighborhood restaurants for a different curry-flavored combination of flour, rice, lentils and chili peppers… but with about an ounce of bone-laden chicken added (and a few flies for ambiance). Except for the teaching, that's the highlight of most of my days.

So here comes the bipolar part. I love teaching here. The three American students in my "official" international marketing class are awesome. But the real kick has come as the result of accepting invitations to address Indian students in a variety of business-related classes. I've lectured to high school (called junior college here), undergraduate and MBA classes. Virtually every Indian student I've encountered seems to feel incredibly fortunate for the opportunity to learn.

The classroom setting is amazingly formal. The word I hear most often is "Sir." They stand collectively as I enter the room, and individually when asking or answering a question. And get this… they applaud at the end of the session.

I always liked when Steven King closed stories by directing a final message to the "faithful reader." So I will do the same. What's been my big realization so far? I now know that five weeks in a truly foreign land serves only to teach one how much he doesn't know. Three weeks in… I know nothing. Except perhaps, what I don't know yet.

India: Where three-legged dogs almost outnumber flies. But the mosquito outnumbers them both.