XVIII. Hello, Kolkata and Mumbai

I was torn between completing my thread from the more distant past to connect the ideas of social, environmental, healthcare, and economic justice back to famine or to focus on the intertwining of very recent events with memories of events and people who emerge from the more recent past. Knowing that many people who read this want to know something of the day-to-day life here, I have opted for the latter (that's Mangesh Pednekar, Associate Director of Healis and one of my main collaborators here with Hell's Preferred Citizen). I see a way to connect this newer thread to the other, older, one. So, I promise to do that in the near future.

After saying my goodbyes in Chennai, I said a whole bunch of hellos in Kolkata. The South Asian Regional Fulbright Conference brought together 78 Fulbrighters from countries throughout the region, but mainly India. About 2/3 were students of various types and the rest were lecturers and senior scholars (that's Janet Lilly, fellow Fulbrighter and Chair of the Dance Department at University of Wisconsin posing next to a poster of her then-upcoming performance at Tagore's ancestral home in Kolkata). I was among the older people present and recall with colorful and exuberant vividness those days when I was as young as the youngest people in the room. It was a wistful feeling of nostalgia that I savored – I loved both the energy and enthusiasm of the youth, which is expressed nowhere better than in relation to a foreign culture and the experience of us old India hands who have spent many decades sampling from the feast on which the young are now gorging themselves. The topics, ranging from classical Indian dance, to temple architecture, archeology of the oldest sites of human urban habitation (in the Indus Valley), law, textile art, public health street theatre, stem cell research, music, forestry, translation of ancient Parsee texts, and camel genetics was intoxicating. The energy of the students was equally amazing and there was absolutely no way anyone over 30 could have kept up (and, to the best of my knowledge no one tried). Kolkata prides itself on being the “cultural capital” of India; so, there is excellent scope for partying.

As I said earlier, above all else the Fulbright program is about international understanding. I would guess that this group of remarkable people, each in her or his own way, will doing more to advance world peace and the prestige of our country than the entire military budget of the US in a year. The bonds of friendship and understanding that are formed under such conditions of joy and deep respect for the lives, beliefs, and aesthetic values of others are deep. How beautiful; and what a bargain.

On Thursday morning I returned to Navi Mumbai and then shifted to Mumbai for the 14th World Conference on Tobacco or Health last Saturday. These days have combined meeting with old friends such as Prakash Gupta and Glorian Sorensen (flanking me in this shot) and taking in both the most amazing inaugural ceremony I have ever witnessed at a conference [the whole place erupted (in a nice way!) with everyone dancing – lead by troops of very talented Indian classical dancers and musicians and 110 slum kids trained and sponsored by Salaam Bombay Foundation] and a cultural night that was in many ways like celebrating Holi in the villages of Northern India (and it was Holi – marked by the last full moon before the vernal equinox).