Oh Happy Day [Jim]

Exciting News!!!

The TV schedule for EPSN India is posted on-line for the upcoming 14 days. Football starts in two weeks. And…*both* the Sunday Night Game and the early Monday night game for week 1 are televised here! 5:30 am on Monday morning and 4:30 AM on Tuesday morning.

Alas, the 2nd MNF game (Raiders at Chargers) is not televised.

Classes have started and thus far have been going well. The Western Civilization class has been quite interesting. The first class was on Homer. Plato and the development of the Athens tradition; the second class was on Abraham, Moses, Jesus and the development of the Jerusalem tradition; today was going to be on the culmination of Athens (Aristotle and Euclid), the culmination of Jerusalem (Christian Theology) and the early synthesis, but we never got to the synthesis—there was 45 minutes of questions on Christian theology.

Last Friday, I also had a question and answer session with the first year MBA students—two hours of questions on a huge array of topics: e.g., outsourcing, agricultural price supports in America, free enterprise zones, polices for economic development, infrastructure, health care in America, the “political and economic unrest” in the wake of the pictures from the prison in Iraq, corporate social responsibility, corruption, investing in bankrupt firms, and more.

One student I talked to yesterday mentioned that I was the first Westerner to whom he or most of his classmates had ever spoken From what I can tell, almost all the students here are from Kolkata itself.

A few of the class norms are odd—students all stand up and say “Good Mooring Sir” when I enter the room. (I think I will try to convince my MHC students to do this—it will be an interesting sociological experiment.) They are invariably enormously polite when talking to me; they always look surprised when I talk to them in the hall or whatever. They take attendance in every class here—and they do it by calling out numbers—every student has a number.

In the Western Civ course, I asked how many students would be willing to fail out of school in exchange for knowing the Truth. Not one of them would take that offer. Similarly, none of them would be happy if God walked into the room and told them the Truth. In the US, I usually get most students giving those answers, but never such unanimity. [And the students here aren’t unanimous on other questions, so it isn’t just a reluctance to say something different—at least I don’t think it is that.]

Also, the school day runs from 10:30 to 5:30 with two half hour breaks—every day of the school week--that is 30 hours of class a week—an MHC student has 10 hours of class a week.


Mansi asked about the difference in Kolkata this time compared to the last time I was here. As many of you know 5 yeas ago I thought Kolkata (then Calcutta) was a dying city. Now it is split. Most of the city has the same problems as before, but there is an overlay of a middle-to upper class society on top. There is a whole set of western-style stores here now which most of the city would never enter, but those of a certain social and economic class could now buy almost everything at them. The coffee shops are exactly like that too. It is mostly young, affluent Indians in these places. I can imagine that in another 5 years, one will be able to function in this city with very minimal contact with the way most Indians in town are still living. Thus, it isn’t obvious to me how the city will remedy the problems it had and has, but there is emerging a whole society independent of the mass of Kolkata.

The subway is another interesting sign—last time I was here, it was quite strange—the subway was clean, modern and ran on time. It is still all those things, but it now has added Smart Card technology—I just wave a smart card over a scanner to get on and off, and it keeps track of the balance on my card. Now remember, this is in a city where most people don’t have credit or debit cards, internet connections, or anything else modern—and the city spent the money to put in smart card readers in the subway.

In other news:

1. The ever-popular book reports:

David Lodge: Nice Work. I presume since he has published so many novels that Lodge has at least a decent number of readers, but I cannot figure out why any non-academic would enjoy his books at all. This is the third one I have read, and they have some charm for their depiction of academic life, but I can’t find much other reason to read them.

Graham Greene: The Tenth Man. A nice novella presenting a reflection on cowardice; not the best Greene book by any means, but still very good.

Kurt Vonnegut: Breakfast of Champions: Vonnegut is almost good. He is silly, but engaging and has something to say. But, and here is the problem with his books, while I have read half-a-dozen of them, I cannot remember anything about any of them. They are so light, they just evaporate. So, while I thought this book was decent, I suspect, I won’t remember a thing about it in 2 months.

Dashiell Hammett: The Thin Man
and Dashiell Hammett: The Maltese Falcon: At the library, I picked up the Library of America copy of Hammett's complete novels, so there are still three more to go. He is interesting. An exceptionally good writer in the crime fiction genre. (In many ways, he helped define the genre). Most impressive though was how different the two books felt—the detectives were strikingly different and the books reflected the nature of the detective. Cleverly done.

Charles Wheelen: Naked Economics: This is one of those economics books for people who know nothing about economics. A decent entry into the genre, but not one I would recommend to anyone. I find the title particularly inane—it is economics devoid of all the graphs and equations and hence “naked.”

2. The Institute has also brought in someone to teach a course on Indian philosophy twice a week—it started Monday, and I agreed to attend. It should be interesting to say the least.

3. I had the first of what I expect to be many questions from a student today asking how he could get into a graduate program in the US.

4. Today I met with the head of a goverement energy program modelled after the Tennessee Valley Authority. I also talked with one of his assistants about their plans to modernize. It was interesting; they are both new at this job and they both seemed highly competent.

She Speaks! [Janet--yes, really!]

India is great, but as you know in ways it is a lot more work.

I finally have a routine down with the domestic help which seems to be working. The maid comes around 10 and leaves at noon. She cleans the floors, does the breakfast dishes. (I keep trying to show her to rinse dishes with hot water from the tea kettle, but it's a foreign concept to her.) She also does the kids' laundry and some of mine that I don't want to send out to the cleaners, and irons clothes. I also get to hear her complain (in Bengali) about her afternoon job on the 6th floor. I don't know what she's saying, but it's not good. The sweeper comes about 10:30 and is done by 11 with both bathrooms. He does a really good job. Between 7 and 8 am a man delivers our 3 bags of milk for the day. Someone else delivers our papers. On Monday mornings around 8, Dosa man comes with fresh dosas on banana leaves, and idlis and coconut chutney. Nimki man comes once or twice a week to sell fried snacks. I am learning to say no firmly because he's been walking all over me and we end up with way too many bags in the pantry. Fruit and vegetable man comes every other day around 2pm. He is great. Very nice and gives me better prices than I can get at the market. I just buy whatever he has for the day. He has a pretty good selection considering he carries his whole inventoryin two giant baskets on his head. My neighbor across the hall says we get better prices because he starts at the ninth floor where the rich people live and works his way down to us. Laundry man comes when he feels like it (probably also when the weather cooperates). It's a pretty nifty system compared to last time. He has a form to fill out which is carbon-copied for us. He fills in how many shirts, pants, hankies, etc we have, then puts everything into a bag and weighs it with a hanging scale. We pay 35 Rupees per kilo, which is more than the maid but we don't have to have clothes hanging in every window all the time. A bargain I'd say. They come back perfectly ironed. Jim finally wears ironed shirts everyday.

Shopping has changed tremendously since last time. Several new large malls (large by Indian standards) have been built and they are pretty impressive in a consumer-culture sort of way. We have one new one within walking distance that is 8 or 9 stories tall with a huge Filene-style department store anchoring it. We have a large 2-story bookstore with cafe next to that mall that we've visited several times already. On the other side of the mall there is a new grocery store that has AC, is large enough for actual shopping carts, and has scanners at the cash registers along with movable belts just like Big Y. Of course it's much smaller with only 4 cash registers, but still! It even sells organic food there. Plus, this being India, you can have your purchases delivered free to your home if you don't want to lug them around.

I am amazed at the number of girls and even housewives going around town in jeans. I think I could count on one hand the number of girls I saw in jeans last time. It has certainly changed in 5 years. However, there are still large numbers of pavement dwellers and desperately poor people even with all these materialistic gains.

Well, this is quite long. I don't know what got into me.

Barista Creme [Lily]

Yesterday I found out that not only Heaven is in India, but the best coffee shop Barista Crème, is, too. And we’re talking better than Starbucks. I happened to order a Swiss Chocolate Shake, and Clara happened to copy me. Emma got a boring old strawberry smoothie. “It didn’t even taste like a smoothie. It tasted like a milkshake. But It was still good,” quotes she in a whiny voice. My shake was as rich as melted Hershey’s chocolate bars with sweet, creamy vanilla ice cream and thick, delicious real whipped cream topped with chocolaty chocolate sauce and a sprinkle of sprinkles. It was refreshingly cold and felt sooo good trickling down my hot throat. We shared an appley apple pie with custardy custard. Mom got a latte with caramel sauce.
To get to this section of heaven, we happened to take a cab in which the driver happened to be smoking pot. The smoke kept blowing into my face. If you would like more details on this interesting experience, you’ll have to pry them out of my mother, who for some reason, won’t write on this blog.

Experts [Jim]

“An expert is someone who carries a briefcase and comes from more than 200 miles away.” A line from the sermon at Saint Paul’s Cathedral (Church of Northern India (Anglican) on Sunday.

The service itself was nice. High church, naturally. Lots of switching between assorted books to follow the order of service. The hymnal has no notes in it, so one sort of makes up a tune as one goes along, trying not to get too far away from what the (small) choir is doing. Clara reports that the kids’ program is very good—she got orange soda and cookies, so her judgment may be suspect.

St. Paul’s is a huge landmark in town—a tall clock tower means it is relatively visible. Yet, none of the four cab drivers we asked to take us there had any idea about what we were talking. Finally someone standing nearby gave one of the cab drivers directions, so we got there—rather quickly, I might add—there is virtually no traffic in Kolkata on a Sunday morning.

Last night we had dinner with the Mennonite missionaries we met the last time we were here. They are leaving in April and offered us their jobs—it is a six year term running the Mennonite Central Committee, doing mostly development work.

We declined.

I spent about an hour and 45 minutes stuck in traffic yesterday; I think I finally have an excuse to stop getting rides home from work—the subway is *much* faster.

Janet, Emma and Lily bought new clothes this weekend—Emma and Lily look great in Indian Apparel. Presumably some day, there will be a picture of this on the blog site. (But, don’t hold your breath waiting for it—as you may or may not know, it is relatively important to maintain a supply of oxygen to your brain in order to function—indeed, I believe scientists have shown that oxygen is second only to caffeine in its importance to maintaining life.)

Yankees sweep the Red Sox in a 5 game series! Hysterical! Just three weeks until football season starts and I can stop paying much attention to baseball. (Here is the test: It is Sunday night; Game 7 of the World Series is on, but so is the Raiders-Patriots [or insert your favorite team here] game. Which do you watch?)

Monkey See... [Clara]

We were walking in the street and we saw a little man with ropes that tied around two monkeys’ necks. The guy said, “Would you like to watch a show?” So, we watched it. The guy had a musical instrument and he shook it and the monkeys did a dance. The monkeys did flips on a stick. He asked me if I wanted to shake a monkey’s hand, and so I did. It was fun.

Mixed-up games [Clara]

The other night I played outside with some friends. We played tag and hide-and-go-seek mixed up. Kolkata is a nice place. A hot place and an awesome place. I like it a lot. It has a lot of good food too.

The Ettiquette of Unlocking Doors [Jim]

Since the visa in my passport attests that I am here on business, I suppose an update on said business concerns would be in order. Things are still going quite well at work. Many of the things I will be doing have been finalized. Next week, I will start teaching a five week course on Western Civilization—basically an overview of the Western Mind via a tour of the development of Western thought. It is largely an exercise in convincing Indian students, whose education has been highly specialized since they can remember, that the liberal arts are something worth studying. I am looking forward to seeing how it goes.

At the beginning of September, I will begin a course on microeconomic theory for the students in the Master’s program in retail management. That course will run about five weeks. Afterwards, I will do a similar course on macroeconomic theory for the same students. And then in January, I will do a topics in advanced economics course for them too.

I will also be giving a few lectures on macroeconomics in the seminar series for the MBA students—the exact topics of that are yet to be determined.

The Director of IISWBM is also arranging an visit to the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur—no date has been set yet. The whole family will go over there for a few days whenever that is arranged.

Today, I spent 2.5 hours in meetings. Both of the meetings were largely discussions of curriculum. The interesting part was that that discussions were about what courses people were going to teach in the term which is starting in two weeks! Yes—two weeks before the start of classes and nobody yet knows what will be taught or when it will be taught. It is amazing to me but nobody else seems to think it is odd at all. Oh, and they were also deciding about vacation days during the term at one of the meetings too.

On the whole, the people at the school are treating me extremely well—indeed, I may have a hard time adjusting to life back at Mount Holyoke (what do you mean I have to fill up my own coffee cup???) On the other hand, I can tell that I am seriously disturbing the guy who waits outside my office whenever I unlock or lock my office door all by myself—the norm would seem to be to have me hand him the key so that I don’t have to do this myself and then he can return the key to me after he is done. At times I realize how deeply American I am. I also carry my own briefcase to my office, but the staff member in charge of such things doesn’t seem to mind too much.

Appendices:

1. As to the matter of pictures: by previous arrangements, all blog entries entailing pictures are the sole responsibility of the Long Suffering Wife. And since we are in India, the prior division of labor simply cannot be altered until several centuries have passed. So, pictures will have to wait until Janet gets around to posting something.

2. Emma doesn’t hate home school as much as she says she does. I know this because I am her father and Fathers Know These Things.

3. On Tuesday, Clara and I went for a walk and stopped in at the local coffee shop. Wow! Once inside, it was exactly like a Starbucks clone. “Dani California” was playing on the satellite radio being piped in through the speaker system. I had a cup of truly excellent coffee (50 cents!!). Clara had a strawberry smoothie ($1) which she loved. The whole experience of sitting in there, drinking coffee was surreal—unless you looked out the window, there would be no way to tell you were in India.

4. Book Reports: Tom Clancy’s *The Bear and the Dragon* was finally finished—I started it on the plane. The book divides nicely into an introductory part, in which the scene is set for the Story Proper, and the Story part (the reason people read Clancy books). The Introduction part was not terribly well done—a bit tedious to put it mildly. Fortunately, the introduction to the Story Proper was a mere 800 pages long. At about page 801, the Story started and it was…OK. The first bit of the Story was fine, but the last part was downright silly. Sigh. *Cat on a Hot Tin Roof* on the other hand was much, much better—awfully good as a matter of fact. By all means read the original version and not the stage adaptation. I haven’t seen the movie—if anyone has, do let me know if it is any good. Trollope’s *The Warden* was the best of the lot, though. I have decided to read the entire series while here—there are five more books. I enjoy Trollope, but he demands to be read at a very leisurely pace—India thus makes the perfect place to read him.

5. We went to an excellent Chinese food restaurant tonight for dinner. Two of the best Chinese places in town are within walking distance of our apartment.

6. Clara and the little girl from the apartment across the hall from us have become quite the playmates.

The Joy of Grammar [Emma]

We’re in the second week of home school now. I’m doing more reading this week. I’m reading Call of the Wild, some short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, two essays by Orwell, and a few other things. The short stories are really weird, but I liked Call of the Wild a lot. I don’t have to do worksheets this week, but I do have to do grammar and creative writing. I think grammar is just about the most boring thing one could possibly have to learn and I am horrible at writing and I hate it. The algebra is still pretty easy, but the science this week is a bit better.

A Dissertation on Heaven [Lily: seriously, Lily did write this]

In my quote that was posted, my father would not include what the heavenly thing was that caused me to quote the quote that was quoted. In fact, his words were, “if they care, they’ll ask and you can post it” and you did ask, so here I am, posting what caused me to quote the quote that was quoted. For those of you who are wondering, (which by now, many of you probably are) the heavenly food was a dosa, which I had for breakfast last Monday morning. And that is why I quoted that quote that was quoted and posted on our blog.

Heigh-ho [Jim]

Having spent two days at my new workplace, I suppose it is time to let anyone who cares (a small set, to be sure) know what exactly it is that I will be doing. But, first, I suppose I will answer the most frequently received question in the volumes of mail we have been receiving: Of what Nature is the Office to which you have been assigned? It is, as they say, a rather nice office—desk, plus a separate meeting table, and chairs for 6. It is one of the few offices in the building that is air-conditioned. No bookshelves, but 6 lockable cabinets. There is also a guy who sits outside the office; I have a button next to my desk which I can use to buzz for him—he brings me coffee, tea, bottled water and lunch. I suppose there are other things he will do, but I have not yet figured out what else I am supposed to ask him. The coffee, alas, is the standard Nescafe stuff—think instant coffee with enough milk and sugar to disguise the taste. The tea comes in china cups.

Thus far they are carting me to and from work in the school cars; I have no idea how long that will last. And, while getting a ride is nice, I do hope that I will eventually figure out a way to convince them that I would rather work more hours in the day than they seem to think I prefer.

Tuesday and Wednesday are Holidays—hard to believe they are having Holidays, no?

But, back to work. After two days, I am still not sure what exactly I will be doing. They have kept me busy in assorted meetings and introducing me to everyone in sight—I even met some visiting members from the Indian Banking Association today—they invited me to the lunch with them. But, given all the conversations to date, here is the list of projects which have thus far been discussed:

1) Teaching a non-credit course on Western Civilization. This is the project which the Director seems to want the most, and from what I gather, what the Director wants…

2) Teaching a 5 or so lecture series for faculty and students on modern macroeconomic theory.

3) Consulting with the head of the new program in Retail Management about the design of that program.

4) Teaching the macroeconomics course in the first semester of the Retail Management Program

5) Teaching the microeconomics course in the first semester of that same program.

6) Teaching the topics in advanced economics in January for that program.

7) Teaching assorted lectures for students in each of the various programs run by the school.

8) Consulting with the Public Policy Program about ways to improve its program.

9) Co-authoring a paper with the professors in Sports Management on the topic: Is Sports Economics properly a topic in Microeconomics or Macroeconomics? [Don’t ask—I have no idea what that means either—but I got made a co-author before I was even told what the paper was about!]

10) Consulting with or helping write a report on rural housing which was commissioned by the Indian Government. [No, I don’t know anything about Indian Housing.]

I have no idea which of the above will actually end up occurring—and I suspect by next week there will be another dozen things on the list. But in short, they are treating me extremely well and I will actually have work to do—so things are good.

In Other News:

1) “Who knew that Heaven was in India?” Said by Lily Hartley.

2) The streets are flooded again today, but since I got a ride home, there are no new adventures to report.

3) A new vendor showed up at our door today—this one selling Dosas—Janet bought some—they were excellent. This apartment complex is large enough that there are a series of vendors who are given permission by the housing society here to go door-to-door. We buy all our fruit from a guy who delivers. We also get our milk and newspapers that way. And there is a guy who sells Indian Snack mixes—Janet bought something from him once, but I don’t know if he is a regular or not.

4) For Independence Day tomorrow, there is a flag raising ceremony on the roof of our complex at 9 AM. It should be interesting.

5) One thing I miss from America—hearing all the Red Sox fans moaning in agony these days.

6) By the way—my fantasy baseball team went 15-1 last week.

Poem of the Day [Lily]

Kolkata
By Lily Elizabeth Hartley


Kolkata is an interesting place,
But there’s lots of intimidating things to face.
Beggars, yelling, busy streets,
Too much walking for your little feets.
Cars and noises everywhere,
Sweat on your skin, and dirt in your hair.
Stray dogs sleeping on the sidewalks,
Bengali and Hindi’s how people talks.
Spicy food is what they eat,
With chicken kurry you just can’t beat.
And even through my sad self pity,
I see Kolkata as a neat city.

School is FUN!!! [Emma]

We had to start home school practically as soon as we got to India. In math I’m just reviewing stuff. I get to do logic puzzles. They’re my favorite thing to do. I’m also doing Earth Science, but I haven’t done anything exciting in it yet. I had to write an essay on 2 Corinthians 11:23-29. I didn’t like it. My dad makes it too hard. Then he made me rewrite it. One of the things I was most looking forward to about home school was not having to do dumb worksheets, but I have to do them anyway.

The Old Man and the C [Jim]

C for Chowringee Ave.

Wednesday afternoon, I went down to the American Center Library to work. [As an aside (as if everything herein isn’t fundamentally an aside (determining to what it is on the side is left as an exercise for the Reader)), said Library (refer to previous sentence if the referent of “library” has been (understandably) forgotten) was the site of the terrorist attack two days before we left Kolkata on our last trip. The exterior of the building has been turned into quite the fortress. Impressive in a way.] In the middle of the afternoon, a rather large thunderstorm hit the city, but it was over by the time I left to go home. The trip home is a 30 minute walk (or, I suppose, about a 45 minute cab ride). I began my stroll in good spirits and a half a block away I encountered a terrific flood. It seems that Kolkata has done little to improve its drainage system in the last five years. You can imagine the number of vacant taxis available in such conditions. So I continued to stroll. On the way home I encountered numerous such floods—by taking alternate routes when said obstacles were found, I was able to avoid all but three of them. The remaining three involved wading through water which came up over my ankles. As said water had all the cleanliness of the streets of Kolkata, it can be imagined that the wading was through matter exhibiting something other than completely Sanitary Conditions (i.e., it would be inadvisable to Drink said water). At long last, I arrived home with Shoes Most Water-Logged. However, some of the scalding hot water from our shower, along with a fair amount of our kitchen disinfectant and a night spent under the fan in the kid’s room (not our room, lest the Long-Suffering Wife suffer from a malodorous evening) soon returned my shoes to normal.

In other News:

1. Emma has earnestly and forcefully requested that the following Notification be entered into the Public Record: Emma is not responsible for the Titles on her blog entries.

2. I just reread the book to which the title of this entry refers. Here is my Book Report: It’s good. Emma will be reading it for Home School ere long. The discussions of the Great DiMaggio are Perfect. The interesting Puzzle: Was it worth it? I think so, but that relies on thinking of Work as its own Reward.

3. I also just read “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Fairly interesting. I can’t help but think of Blanche as some sort of image of the British in India. Hard to figure why that allusion would occur to me.

4. The Long-suffering Wife will presumably post something at some point, at which time, there might be something other than meandering ruminations about nothing or brief stoic observation posted herein. {Incidentally, to the person suggesting a course of study of the Stoics for Home School—a truly excellent Idea!] Next week, Emma will be reading “The Call of the Wild;” Lily will be reading a selection of Robert Frost; both will be reading Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant,” and some yet to be determined tales from Poe. Also, a selection of 20th century speeches and Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” are possible additions to the reading for the week.

5. Today I am off to IISWBM for the first time.

Happy Rakhi [Lily]

A few nights ago we went out to eat for the first time. We went to a restaurant called Mirch Masala that we ate at a lot last time we were here. It has delicious food. We take taxis a lot. They have no seatbelts or AC. Dad always sits in the front seat while Mom, Emma, Clara and I are squished together in the back. We’ve started home school already, even though it’s a month earlier than we’d start in Granby. But I’m not complaining. It gives us something to do instead of sitting around playing Uno for the one millionth time. Today is Rakhi, a day where sisters honor their brothers. Durga Puja, a holiday that worships the goddess, Durga, and her husband, Shiva, is coming up. So its ok here, but we’ve only been here a few days.

Beanie Baby Idols [Emma]

We got to India on Friday morning at around 5 a.m. We went to our apartment building and just rested for a while. My parents got the big bedroom, Lily and Clara got the blue one with two small beds, and I got the one with cushions that fold up into a tiny couch. My room is also the study, so all the school stuff and the computer is in it, so everyone comes in all the time, but that’s okay. There is a place to put an idol next to my bed where I can keep all of my stuff. I’m really happy I got that room.

Lots and Lots [Clara]

India is very fun. There's lots and lots of animals. There's pigs and cows and goats and dogs running around the streets. I saw people carrying big baskets on their heads.

There are lots and lots of taxis in the streets too. There is honking all the time.

I share a room with Lily. I really like it. There's lots and lots of windows.

The Female of the Species [Jim]

A puzzle for you dear reader:
Earlier today, Janet was testing the new iron we just bought when I walked into the room. She asked me to touch the iron to see if it felt hot to me. So I, being the dutiful husband, did so…only to receive a rather large electrical shock—and for those of you who are unaware of such things, the Indian electrical system uses about double the voltage of the American system. It turns out that there was a problem with the wall socket Janet was using; the electrician fixed the socket, and now all is fine. But, and here is the interesting bit (as if the above wasn’t the most fascinating thing you have ever read), when Janet asked me to test the iron, it turns out that she had already done so and received the same shock.

Here is the puzzle: what kind of a person after receiving a rather large electrical shock from touching her iron, asks her husband to try the same thing???

Kipling would know.

In other news: We now have a phone and broadband connection, so I am typing this from home.

The Eagle Has Landed [Jim]

Well, we arrived. Total time of travel door-to-door: 28 hours.

The Mittras met us at the airport, along with a car and driver from IISWBM (the school at which I will be working). We went straight to our apartment--we arrived Friday morning. Jet lag was rough on the kids, but today they seem to be doing OK. The broadband isn't connected yet in our apartment, but should be set up sometime early this week; posts here should be more frequent after that.

This city is in many ways much the same as last time. But, the new things are amazing. There is a modern grocery store (complete with bar scanners) just a few minutes from our apartment. In that same area there is a very modern mall (seven stories) with a multiplex theater which shows American movies in addition to Indian ones, and a huge modern bookstore.

We have spent the last two days shopping and sleeping. We should be settled in a another day or two. The lady in the apartment across the hall from us was wonderful in helping us get servants--we have a maid to do cleaning; the milk and papers are delivered daily; and the Mittras told us about a first-rate laundry service. The cable TV was hooked up last night, so the kids are watching the Disney Channel this morning.

In short, things are going well.