Arrival

So. I'm off in India. I would like to keep in touch with people somewhat while I'm here. The magic of the fiber optic cable running under the Pacific Ocean means that as far as the internet is concerned, I might as well just be keeping strange hours in Seattle.

The title Three Spheres occurred to me this morning. The Escher print of the same name has always been in my house. I'd say that there's a good chance it influenced me in some ways. It certainly reflects some of my ways of thinking about art, perception, and mathematics.

Read slightly differently, three spheres could also be referring to what it has been long suspected and we now know are the only three dimensional simply connected closed manifolds. The peculiarities of three dimensional geometry which Poincaré's conjecture reflects, while they are not what I study officially, are one of the things that keeps me fascinated by mathematics. I am sure that more meanings for this title will reveal themselves as it continues.

I dont know exactly what or when I'll write here. Once a week at the least, I think. We'll see how this evolves.

Anyway. I arrived late Friday night:



The aging 747 lumbered onto the tarmac with a series of thuds and the roaring rumble of 300 tons shedding speed. According to a plaque at the rear of the passenger cabin, this plane was decreed sanitary by the city of Seattle in 1989 for use by Korean Air, and it still carries markings in Hangul informing passengers to fasten their seat belts while seated and return their try tables to their full upright and locked position. It had ferried its cargo from Chicago to Frankfurt to Bombay. Or is it Mumbai? It depends on who is speaking. The name of this city seems to be a word slightly akin to potato in Hungarian, which is spelled burgonya and pronounced krumpli. It was not until the following afternoon that I overheard the name Mumbai used in conversation. The mix of Marathi, Hindi, English and other languages in this city is amazing. I'll catch snippets of conversation as the speakers shift through English mid sentence.

One of the first thing I noticed, as always when I land in a new place, was the smell. I recognized it immediately from 15 years ago, when I was last in India. It is a smell of warm damp stone, lush trees, richly spiced cooking, auto exhaust, and the sweat of 13 million people. The memory washed through my time addled self and I smiled with it as my feet carried me up the jetway.

By the time I reached baggage, my things were on the belt. There was some confusion at customs regarding my bicycle, but eventually I just showed the TIFR in my visa and was waved through. The taxi driver met me at the curb, and a throng of self appointed porters helped carry the box and bags. This was a task for which the cart I had been using was a perfectly fine tool, and the porters soon came to this conclusion as well. The box was too large to fit in the car, so I unpacked it and my bike sat in the back seat while I rode up front. After 22 hours of flying, I was too tired to make conversation, so we drove in silence. At 1am there are still lots of cars on the road, and many of them drive without lights.

It took a bit more than half an hour and we came to TIFR and my apartment. It consists of an interestingly angled kitchen (a sink, small fridge, and propane hot plate), living area (couch, chair, coffee table), balcony, bathroom and bed. From the balcony one looks over a riot of green trees and can catch a glimpse of the Arabian Ocean.



In the morning I wandered across the street to the institute. The gardens could be nicer, but perhaps it is the look of things late in the monsoon season. In any case, I am glad to have them here. Hooded crows with iridescent black bodies and grey hoods fly about making a familiar corvid ruckus. The campus is on the water, and one can walk along a sidewalk and look out over the ocean or across the bay to the high rises of Malabar Hill. Inside, I found the canteen and breakfast. Options were an omelet or a scoop of what seemed to be very cooked rice with onions, peas, and spices. And there was tea of course.



Upstairs, I found the library and the math offices. Sukhendu, who I had met in Köln last month, was in his office. I stopped in and we chatted a little. He's working on something having to do with Bridgeland stability conditions and Frobenius manifolds. I'll read up a bit and try to learn some things from him. I guess he's giving a talk next week. I told him a little bit about my ideas on rationally generated arcs too. Sukhendu's office mate, Sreekar, is not here right now, but I look forward to when he gets back - he and I know each other from Budapest in 1998.

After lunch, Sukhendu and I found my office. It looks out over the garden and the ocean. Right now there is scaffolding in the way, but the view will be great when that is gone. I share my office with Frenchman, who is here with is wife and their small son. From the collection of texts he has here, I can't tell what he works on, other than that it is Algebraic Geometry. A well worn copy of Hartshorne is a good sign - with good appropriately interpreted. Srinivas stopped by and said hello. I'm sure I'll learn a lot from him this year. There wasn't too much to do in my office except look out the window, so I went down to the library to look through the journals. I started reading the paper about the recent Hamilton-Perelman results in the Asian Journal of Math. I figure if the New Yorker is going to do a story about it and my friends are going to ask me to explain these things while we are out for beers, perhaps I should know a little more about the topic than what can be picked up by osmosis. And it is interesting math.



Later in the afternoon, I walked up Homi Bhabha road, past the Afghan Church and towards the part of town called Colaba. The air was rather thick with dust and pollution and I had to blink a lot to keep my eyes from becoming irritated. The never ending activity of this place is fascinating. TIFR is in Navy Nagar - the Navy area - so I'm only allowed to walk down Homi Bhabha road for the first mile or so. Then I turned left at the church and walked into an area with many stores, including "Car-O-Parts" and a nice little photo studio where I had some ID photos taken.

On the walk home, it started raining. It was a soft, warm rain, and it was not unpleasant to walk in. I kept waiting for the sky to open and drench me completely, but perhaps that happens more earlier in the season. The air was much more pleasant after the rain.

I'm sure that India will offer me many opportunities to explore, and I look forward to this. But for now, I seem to find myself in a place where the atmosphere is ideal for doing mathematics. Distractions are not difficult to avoid, and my basic needs are well cared for. Received wisdom tells me that what I do now mathematically does much to paint what I will be doing mathematically in the future, so I am glad to be here.