Watching the sunset from the roof

On Sundays the canteens are both closed for dinner, so Sukhendu and I met to go see what could be found. There is an open air cafeteria on the ground floor for Jagadish apartments, so we went there. The French post-Doc, Laurent, and his wife Agnes, and their 2 year old Briouc were there. We joined them for dinner and the five of us started to get to know each other. Sukhendu is only here for the next month, but the others will be here for the whole year. I haven't seen much of Laurent since then; I think that perhaps Agnes is off on a trip and he is busy with Briouc

Laurent does some sort of positive characteristic algebraic geometry. One of the things that I am hoping to get here is a better understanding of how these things work in positive characteristic. Yesterday Srinivas suggested that I look into what part of my calculations really use characteristic zero. Perhaps there are examples where the count fails, but they end up being very special objects, like the conic in characteristic 2.

Right now I am in the midst of the bearaucratic process involved in setting me up to sit in this office and do math. First there was a comprehensive physical exam (blood, pee, vital signs, etc.) in the Medical Section. I think that the reason for the exam (which took four visits - mostly waiting for the right people to be in the office at the right time, plus a visit to pathology) is to make sure that I have gone there enough times to find it again in case I get sick. This morning I finally made my way there without any extraneous loops. Once I had received a clean bill of health, there were more visits to at least three different offices with names like "Special Cell". Now there are a few slips of paper circulating about this building with my name and various bits of information, trying to find other various bits of information. Luckily, I have provided my information to enough pieces of paper that it seems that I am free for now. At some point presumably an ID card will be issued.

A few days ago I was walking around the grounds and I found the garden where all of the decorative potted plants and flowers for cutting are grown. I'll go back and take some pictures - there are some very nice plants there. After the walk in the garden, I went in to the west canteen for lunch. It is on the ground floor, directly below my office and looks out over the same lawn and strange amoeba-like topiary shrubbery. I sat looking out at the ocean and eating my rice and dhal. A few minutes into the meal, the sky erupted with rain. People came running in, and others took shelter under a tree. I think that the rain was more than they expected, because they became drenched anyway. But then, within a few minutes everything was dry again, and the dragonflies were back out. To my surprise, a large bat - as big as a raven - flew across the lawn. I wasn't sure if it really was a bat until I saw more of them that evening walking back to the apartment.

Last night I went up to the rooftop terrace (that makes it sound much more glamorous than it is) of my building to watch the sunset. At this central Latitude (18.96° N 72.82° E are the coordinates) the sun drops much more suddenly. The ever-present clouds on the horizon swiftly swallow the last rays of the day, and the sunset does not linger like it does halfway to the pole. As the day gave way to twilight and then this faded, I watched the lights of this city coming on. The lights along Marine Drive, the road along the inside curve of Back Bay follow the arc of the beach. Apparently they are referred to as the "Queen's Necklace" - a strand of pearls draped along the city. These came on first, and then the lights of the apartment buildings began to emerge. All around me are lives densely packed, and hidden, emitting less light from less high a perch, even more lives even more densely packed. Mumbai his home to around 13 million people, packed with an average density of about 71 thousand people per square mile. Manhattan, on the other hand is about 67 thousand per square mile. But then, I don't have a personal understanding of how dense Manhattan is, so maybe it is better to say that Seattle has an average density of about 7 thousand people per square mile.

The density of India's cities and its vast population mean that the type of waste that Americans produce quickly causes severe deleterious effects. In Delhi, when I was there in December 1991, the air was quite bad. Much of that was due to the Diwali fireworks, but not all, and a few years later, it became so bad that it was necessary to do something. So now many of the cars and busses run on compressed natural gas. Sukhendu is from that area, and tells me that the air is much better. I can't image - I don't want to imagine - what it would take to do that in an American city. The sparseness of the cities in the Western US makes the degree to which we produce waste far less apparent. If the 26 Mumbaikers produced as much waste as their 1 counterpart Seattleite, the city would overflow with trash, choke with foul air, and die of thirst in a matter of weeks. The press of humanity here is impossible to forget.

But I can avoid it, I think fortunately, and only encounter it when I venture out of this ivory tower that is becoming home. In here, life is quite calm and relaxed. The difficulties and challenges of life in India will present themselves soon enough, I am sure. And I will welcome them. But for now, I appreciate this refuge.