September 2009
3 posts
Philadelphia to Boston and Back on Under $50
I’ve been back in the US for almost three weeks now, and spent close to two weeks staying with friends who live in Inman Square and working part time at the National Bureau of Economics Research/Harvard Center for International Development. First, shameless plug for the Bolt Bus which runs $1-20 trips between Philadelphia and New York and New York and Boston. I’m blogging from the...
August 2009
9 posts
I love my India
An unedited email from Vasanth:
My project assistant who came home for lunch was impressed with the new car and decided to take his car out in the evening. He drove through the gully of a slum and hit an old lady. Though the old lady did not sustain much injuries the slum dwellers tried to extort him. They took away his car, his MP3 player and his money purse and made him a hostage and demanded a...
Bangalore is awesome. सच.
So, in a fit of cross country flying madness, I decided to spend the weekend in Bangalore, and stay with Vasanth, erstwhile former SKS project assistant, now long-suffering Sendhil RA. Theresa, former bosslady extraordinaire, also came up from Chennai for - as Vasanth’s Auntie-Ji made very clear - an all too short trip. Mark, typically, tagged along for some free food and housing. The...
“Natalie, can you by any chance tell me who Mao Zedong is?”
– Nameless Victim of the American College System. Yesterday was the day my faith in college education in America died.
July 2009
23 posts
Code Switching
Mark: You speak Hindi with a French accent
Natalie: Could be worse. I could speak Hindi with a Texan accent.
Kumbhalgarh
Kumbhalgarh is one of those places that, even more than Fathepur Sikri, for whatever reason, never became part of the beaten international tourist track. It seems odd since everyone in Rajasthan seems to know about it. Professor Modi, of Rajasthan University, told my class it was one of Rajasthan’s must-see sights. My host family recommended I take a day or weekend trip there. Lonely...
They say Udaipur is the most beautiful city in the...
Udaipur was so charming, despite the demise of its famous lakes thanks to two years of poor monsoon, we cancelled the Mt Abu portion of our trip altogether to stay an extra day. We watched the sunset over the verdant Aravali Mountains from the mountain top Monsoon Palace. We explored the former Raja’s once opulent rooms in the City Palace. We tried to unravel the why of a field of over a...
On the Road Again
School’s out for midterm break! Taking an overnight train to Udaipur, the currently drought ridden “Venice of South Asia” tonight, and then hitting Mount Abu, Rajasthan’s only hill station, where the temperatures are supposedly “cool(er).”
Hyderabad vs. Jaipur
After living in Jaipur for about a month, I feel supremely unqualified to tally up the pro’s and con’s of Hyderabad and Jaipur. Major axes of (Indian) city assessment below:
Coconut Wallahs: In Hyderabad, you can buy fresh conconut water from a scyth-wielding vender with a cart full of fresh conconuts every few hundred feet for 10 rupees. In Jaipur, there isn’t a conconut...
Still Got It
Rickshaw Driver: You want to make friendship?
Natalie: Oh, it's okay, I already have many friends
Rickshaw Driver: No, make friendship!
Natalie: ...
Driver: Be girlfriend!
Natalie: Oh, no thank you.
A Very Rajasthani Wedding Anniversary
As it’s no doubt been documented here, I live with a host family — two lovely people, a government agronomist and a high school headmistress, who surely never did anything to deserve having to feed me, worry about my ability to traverse the state bus system, and provide me with a constant stream of landmarks to tell Jaipur’s address-challenged autorickshaw drivers. Besides all...
“It’s an Ivy League cuddle party.”
– Mark (UPenn), on platonically sharing a king-sized bed with Haley (Princeton) and me during the Delhi trip
July 4
This weekend, I made my way to Delhi for the American Embassy 4th of July party. With not one but two layers of metal dectectors, it was the most high security party of my life. It was also awesome:
(1) There was a 10 foot plus Indian Uncle Sam on stilts
(2) There were BBQ pork sandwiches
(3) The marines were selling tshirts featuring dogs dressed in army uniforms and armed with machine guns...
Poisoned!
Predictably, two weeks into India Voyage III (cause, India, I just don’t know how to quit you), I’m sick again. (For some reason, two weeks is persistantly the crash mark.) But, adding glamour to misery, I am wildly assuming that I was poisoned Slumdog Millionaire style. Which is to say, remember that scene at the Taj where the boys are repackaging nasty, nasty Indian tap water as...
June 2009
12 posts
Growing Up
Natalie: I miss Harvard.
Joebu: Well, you know Natalie, part of growing up is learning how to make friends and traverse life outside of the intellectual community of the university.
Natalie: Or I could go to grad school.
I miss Balla
Saturday night, I found myself sitting in Jaipur’s Kamat, eating a masala dosa. Naturally, as Kamat (the TGIF of South Indian food) and dosas were key repeated elements of my Hyderabad-Gulbarga summer, I was seized with feelings of nostalgia. And of course, I remembered Balla. Balla has had a starring role in this blog for a long time. I believe he is mentioned more than any of my...
Social Capital
In China, panic about the swine flu epidemic has led to the installation of temperature-detecting screens in airports. People entering from the West are screened and, if their temperature is elevated, they are quarantined.
India has also instituted a quarantine for sick Western visitors, but their system is more honor code than hi-tech. Visitors are expected to declare themselves if they...
One Foot Out the Door
Washington DC today, 15 hour flight to Delhi starts tomorrow.
Semi-Finalized Life Schedule
June 2009-August 2009: Critical Language Scholarship in Hindi; Jaipur (Rajasthan), India
September 2009-July 2010: Clinton Service Fellowship with the American India Foundation; Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh), India
August 2010-June 2011: Masters in Science in Mathematical Economics and Econometrics at London School of Economics; London, UK
Exciting and scary.
May 2009
2 posts
“Well, it’s fun to dress up. When do you expect us to wear coats if not...”
– Anosh, defending his desire to own a sweatshirt
Dearest India...
It’s official. I’m coming back.
January 2009
4 posts
