Despite the efforts of the local auto-rickshaw drivers I have arrived in NID unhurt. There was some incredible scenery during the journey, including crazy buildings, enormous rivers, giant wildlife, and three old men riding a rickety vehicle of their own construction the wrong way along the adjacent railway tracks.

Most of my students are away at a film festival in Mumbai until Tuesday, so I have three days to cobble together some sort of syllabus. My plan is to as much cobbling as possible today, and then hang out in the gardens, among the peacocks and monkeys, with a real book and an imaginary gin & tonic.

I met the first of my students last night. He grinned at me welcomingly and said, “I was expecting some big professor”. Tomorrow I am going to the market to buy a false beard with which I shall assert some authority. Local beards are quite impressive, so it will have to be a very big one.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 4th, 2006 at 7:53 and is filed under Diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.