Starry night

As I was walking over to have lunch yesterday, Benny walked up to me and asked what I was doing for the rest of the day. Benny is a Computer Science graduate student, and I met him when he recruited me for his Founder's Day tug-of-war team (which was last week, instead of on Founder's Day this coming Monday for some reason, and we were soundly defeated by the grounds crew).

"Nothing planned," I said. I had actually planned on doing nothing, because I woke up with a bit of a sore throat yesterday, and wanted to take it easy. It was not to be.

"Do you want to go and look at stars?" he asked.

"Sure."

"Then go and get on that bus, it is leaving right now."

I had just enough time to go and change for shoes from flip flops and grab a jacket. The bus was about half full of people from the institute, and we filled up the rest of the seats, picking up people who had some connection with TIFR on the way out of town. The program was primarially a science outreach program, so there were plenty of undergraduates and kids.



(Thanks to Mahua for the pictures!)

We played logic puzzles and movie-title charades on the way out of town. Probably half of us had missed lunch, so we stopped for vadapav, which is a roll with a deep fried ball of spiced chickpea flour and vegatables. Vadapav is the quintessential fast food of Mumbai.

After a few hours, of jostling along we turned off onto a dirt road. I was just thinking to myself that the driver was doing a much better job that the unlucky guy who Jill and I encountered on the Lost Coast when one of the wheels slipped off the road and we were stuck in a ford. There was not much further to go, so we walked, and the bus was unstuck by morning.

Our destination was the flat top of a small hill, with a nice unobstructed view of the sky and the surrounding valley. There was water available in large clay pots, which one would dip a stainless steel cup into, and then, in the way that Indians have adopted to keep one's germs to oneself in such situations, pour the water from cup to mouth without touching the lips. I'm getting better, but I still usually end up with some dribbles on my shirt. We milled about for a while and watched the sunset. The place is called Shivalik Eco Farms, and is a small establishment that the astronomy group has been patronizing for these semiannual night sky outings. Shivalik provides chairs for those who want to sit and a tarp for those who want to be on the ground, water, tea, dinner and breakfast, toilets, a shelter for those who want to nap, and electricity for the slideshows that were part of the program. Like everywhere here seems to be, it was in the midst of many half finished projects. A swimming pool/mosquito breeding pond was full of slightly green water, and about half suurrounded with paving stones that already had grass growing up between them (though to be honest, that probably takes about 30 minutes). Piles of dirt and bricks were scattered about. Were they part of the pool project or perhaps the start of something else? One of them was decorated, and there was some debate as to weather this was a purposeful shrine or just something thta some of the kids who lived there had built.

We settled into the chairs or arranged ourselves on the tarp after enjoying an excellent sunset. Our two main lecturers introduced themselves. One was a theorist, who would tell us about the history of Astronomy and the mechanics of celestial objects. The second was our rerpository of lore, who would point out the individuals in the sea of twinkling points. It seems that the theoretical astronomers don't all know the night sky so well. Punching in coordinates to a computer doesn't take familiarity whit what is where when. I guess it is sort of the same thing as the rediculous phenomenon that happens when a table of mathematicians tries to figure out a restauant bill. You might think that a PhD in algebraic geometry equates to quick access to all sorts of facts like 18 percent of 47.32, but you would in fact be wrong. Anyway, I like the amazing pictures that these telescopes produce, but I think that my personal interest in astronomy is more of the naked eye sort.

The first lecture, as the stars began to show themselves, was a 90 minute version of Astronomy 101. It began with speculation about the first astronomers, imagining hunter gatherers observing the cycle of the moon waxing and waning, and the longer cycle of the sun, and how the paths of the zodiac would become apparent after time, especially as agriculture took hold and people became more sedentary. People would notice the wanderers, and after many years, discover mysteries and learn that Hesperus is Phosphorus, and discover the longer cycle of the moon, predict eclipses, invent telescopes to further sate one's curosity, and continue on to the idea of a not-moment not-place fourteen billion years ago where the uiniverse began expanding from every point at once.

The stars were now shining in much of the sky, and the waxing crescent moon was falling into the west. The next lecture was a sky talk. I leaned back and looked up at the sky as my attention was drawn in turn to Casseopeia to find Polaris, which sits a mere 19 degrees above the horizon here. From there we wandered over to Lyra, Aquarius, Cygnus, Aquilla and their neighbors. We were told the Sanskrit names of the constellatons and stars as well, and shown some of the 27 Nakshatra, or constellations of the lunar Zodiac.



There was a break to look through the telescopes at the moon and at a nice binary star. Dinner was served, a tasty meal of puri, rice, vegetables and Lassi. Our bellies full, we reconvened for a lecture about telescopes, which many took as a chance to catch a breif nap in preparation for staying up all night. I listened to most of it, but the power point slideshow was bright and out of place, so I just looked a the sky. Following this was a talk about the status of Pluto by our first speaker, who also had a slideshow, but seemed to have perhaps tailored it a bit better to giving it for an audience who didn't want to lose their night vision. He is a fan of the new situation, and viewed the contreversy as mostly silly. But, he at least appriciated the political humor that emerged alongside the debate. He showed a few political cartoons that maybe I'll find on the net at some point and post here

During the talk, a black dog emerged from the night and sat down beneath the table where the equipment was sitting. Chuckles went out, as people exclaimed that Pluto, or perhaps Cerebus had come to visit and listen to the talk. I guess that our hosts were embarrassed, because they quickly appeared and carried him away.

Our night sky expert returned to lead us further along the Zodiac, to Pegasus, Pisces, Andromeda, Perseus, Cetus, Aries and Taurus. As well as being the first sign of the Indian and Western Zodiacs, Aries contains the first two Nakshatra, the third being Kritika, or the Pleadies. He continued to refer to Pluto as a planet, perhaps indicating that a bit of the debate existed in Bombay as well.

The telescopes returned, and we peered 22 lakh light years into the past at the fuzzy patch of Andromeda, into the cluster that is the Pleadies, and at a few other places where the 4 inch scopes could show some nice detail.

There was a quiz game to kill some time and reinforce what we had learned, and then our guide's torch drew us to Gemini and the gates of Heaven, which all the wanderers pass through in their travels, Cancer, and Leo, where Saturn bides his time these days. The Indian version of Orion is not the hunter but the hunted. The belt becomes an arrow, and the legs and shoulders of Orion are the splayed legs of the fallen prey. The hunter who shot the arrow is brilliant and faithful Sirius.

This time, the telescopes turned to the Orion Nebula and to Saturn. It was unfortunate that Saturn was our only wanderer visible last night, but he made up for it with a beautifully clear display of his rings and of Titan.

I lay back on the mat and watched the last hours of darkness give way to dawn. The blackness sprinkled thick with faint stars gave way to a deep blue upon which Orion, Saturn, and Leo stood bold and nearly alone. I got up and stood at the edge of the hill, watching the misty valley of rice paddies and scattered huts resolve itself. The sun climbed its way over the ridge to the East, and it was time for breakfast and our return to the city.

Sharing space

This afternoon a package arrived for me. It has clearly seen a bit of travel.



Luckily the things inside were ok. Everything had been rifled through, the cards had been opened. I respect the fact that India has to worry about terrorism, especially at a secure institute like TIFR, but was still a little miffed to see that someone had felt it necessary to see what messages my family and friends were sending me.

But I really only thought of that after the fact. I was really happy to get this package from Jill. We met on a .83 ride one year today. So when a box from her shows up in my office this afternoon it was a great bit of serendipity.

When our friends Michael and Kate asked Jill and I how we met, she replied, "Bikes." I could elaborate some, but it also works just to leave it at that.

The last year has been one of the most interesting and eventful years of my life, and I'm glad to have had such a person to share it with. Her enthusiasm and desire to explore the world is a rare gift, her compassion is deep, she is smart, funny and can be tough as nails when need arises. She has created her life rather than let things carry her along. Her profession, making maps and collecting information for the emergency response and restoration division of NOAA, applies her compassion, competence and intelligence to help heal the environment and mitigate the damage that our society is doing to our world. One of their next projects will be this one.

It is difficult, being so far away from each other. But the rise of the internet has made these distances not such an insurmountable obstacle as they once were. We communicate daily, by email, chat, and phone calls by VOIP. And in the real world, she is coming to visit in a couple of months, and we will take a month to go out and explore some corners of this sub-continent of a country.

We're looking forward to it.

As to what's happening in the meantime, I've spent most of the last week laying low, reading and thinking about math. I figured a few things out that will be useful in the long run, but for the time being are actually steps backwards in what I thought I understood. But this is how doing mathematics works.

I've also been reading a little bit about the shared space design philosophy. This article in Salon is an interesting intro. The idea is that regualting traffic flow doesn't necessarily work better than anarchy, and in fact, the latter may be the way to go because it gives more freedom for the individuals who comprise traffic to use their collective intelligence. There is a bit of that going on here, and in most crowded developing countries, where there are just too many people using the streets in too many ways to have it completely organized. When I am out riding, there are signals and such, but they are treated as safety signals. They tell you when it is probably safe to go and when it probably is not. The pedestrians and smaller vehicles like motorcycles and bicycles filter through when traffic is stopped, and make room when it is not. It is interesting to watch and to be part of.

The rains have ended and the heat has settled in. The evidence is not conclusive, but it is possible that the term "Indian Summer" refers to this time of year in India. For the past couple of days, it hasn't been as bad, but during the beginning of the week, I wasn't been able to do much in the afternoon that seemed at all productive besides nap.

Seattle Times article

The Seattle Times has an article in their Sunday magazine on cycling in Seattle. It begins:

"CULTURAL CHANGE reveals itself in weird ways.

Like the week gas topped $3 a gallon and Zack Treisman, a mild-mannered mathematician and avid cyclist, was arrested by plainclothes King County Sheriff's deputies while pedaling through Belltown with 300 others during a monthly ride called Critical Mass."

Diwali

Imagine 13 million people.

Now give them each a box of M-80s.

The festival of lights quickly becomes the festival of very loud and very smokey.

Countdown to the new moon

Mumbai is home to a few million Muslims, who are currently observing the month of Ramzan (Ramadan). From the walk along the shore of the Arabian sea, or the crow's perch atop my apartment building, I can hear the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. His song is blasted through a loudspeaker, that industrial instrument that makes the human voice, that most primal of musical sounds, into a mechanical thing capable of being displayed at city-wide volume. Even so the call to prayer is always quite clearly a holy song. Hearing it, I can easily imagine hundreds of thousands of prayer rugs unrolling across this city, the devoted taking a few moments to contemplate the spirit in the midst of the city's noise.

This year, Diwali, one of the largest holidays in the Hindu calendar, and Ramzan fall together. Diwali is a festival of lights, the celebration of Ram's return from Sri Lanka after defeating Ravan, the demon who had stolen his wife. The holiday happens on the new moon of the month Ashwayuja, which in the Hindu calendar spans the end of October and the beginning of November. Its observance involves lots of fireworks. I was talking to one of my neighbors who was also on the roof watching the sunset last night, and we heard a different sounding sort of bang. It didn't sound quite like a firework, and my neighbor asked if I knew what that was. I didn't. It was the sound from the loudspeaker indicating that the sun had gone down and it was time to eat. Last week I went to the barber to have my beard trimmed (my trimmer would have needed a voltage converter, and I decided to find myself a barber instead of buying a new one here. He did a much nicer job than I usually do anyway. When he was done, he vanished quite quickly. Baitosh, the young guy who I had been chatting with while having my trim told me that my barber had run off to eat, since the sun had gone down and he was observing Ramzan. Though fasting is prescribed between dawn and dusk, some of the treats offered in the evenings are quite special.

Last week, I went with Ilangovan, Chan and Sukhendu to Muhammed Ali road where the Kebab restaurants and sweet sellers do a brisk business after dark. Ilangovan is vegetarian (here they just say "veg") so we went for dinner at a place called Shalimar, which was quite good. Afterwards, we made our way through the throng to one of the places selling sweets, including firni, a rice pudding that we had plain or flavored with mango, and malpua, a pancake of eggs and flour, much like a German pancake, but deep fried instead of baked. At the next shop down, we sampled donuts in syrup, some of which were decorated with silver foil. The use of silver to decorate sweets in India is widespread. A very this foil is laid across the top of the item, and then there may be some further decoration adding color, or perhaps a few slivers of nut. It is estimated that Indian annually consume in the neighborhood of 13 tons of silver in this way. It doesn't seem to be killing them. When I asked Yogish about the effects of eating silver, and mentioned that I was trying to figure out what these might be, he said that if I found anything out, I should tell him, and perhaps this would explain some strange behaviors universal in the subcontinent but not so elsewhere.



At this point, we were all quite full, and so made our way to Churchgate to catch the TIFR bus back to the colony. While waiting, I picked up a couple of books from a sidewalk seller. The books that these vendors sell are marked "for sale on the Indian subcontinent only" and are printed on news print paper. Sometimes the pages are out of order or missing, or the printer ran out of ink on a certain page, but they are not so bad that they cannot be read and enjoyed.

Most of the way to the bus stop, we were followed by beggars, many of them children. Sukhendu has tremendous compassion for them. During one of our first conversations, he expressed an idea to me, that while I don't think that I really understand what he is saying, and probably the idea is not absolutely clear to him either, is essentially that while some Americans may be able to think of themselves as 'citizens of the world' an Indian who does so is abandoning something that should not be abandoned. Even by going abroad and becoming a successful mathematician, there is a way in which he fears that he is abandoning his country. It seems sometimes that his heart is broken by every child we meet with an outstretched hand. I follow his example, and when possible, buy an egg or an apple from a vendor to give to them. But in this city, I require for myself a certain callousness. It is one of the largest collections of people living in poverty in the world, and if I were to offer myself to them in any but the most limited way, I would be picked clean in moments. By the time we were at the bus stop, I was out of change and small bills, and I believe that Sukhendu was as well. While we were talking, a boy maybe ten years old walks up to us, bends down and touches Sukhendu on the foot. The boy straightens and brings his hand to his mouth, asking for food. We shake our heads and he walks away. I hiccupped and my over-full belly offered up a small amount of bile to remind me of this disparity.

Today is Sukhendu's last day here. Laurent, Agnes and I took him out to dinner last night. We went to the Kebab Korner, on the second floor of one of the fancy hotels on Marine Drive. It was a delicious feast which occupied the whole evening. He will return in March. Now he is off to England to work with Bridgeland.

This morning I sent off a batch of applications for various options on what to do next year. There are good reasons professionally why I would want to stay here for a second year, and it would almost certainly be a possibility, but there are reasons I'd like to come back as well, and now is the time to make sure that my options are available. The job search in academia has a bad reputation that is not entirely undeserved. It is sort of a ridiculous procedure. People send out, in some cases, hundreds of applications. Then of course they get to throw out the very confidence boosting hundreds of rejection letters. I had a friend in high school who used the sheaf of rejection letters that he got from colleges who were not interested as the background pages for a 'zine. It was quite clever.

For myself, there are lots of places that I'm just not interested in moving, so I sent out a more reasonable number of letters. Even so, it was enough that it took a chunk of time. Last year's process was a lot more of a pain. This year, even though I rewrote at least half of the materials in my applications and applied to a somewhat different set of places things went much more smoothly. Anyway, I'm glad to have that out the door and now I feel like I can get back to doing math and being in India more whole heartedly. Somewhat appropriately, I came across this poem in one of the books I picked up the other night.

Ithaca

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
and angry Poseidon - do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your heart does not set them up within you.

Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenecian markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities, to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind,
to arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry on the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all that you have gained along the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches,
Ithaca has given you a beautiful voyage.
Without her you would never have set foot out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must have already understood what the Ithacans mean.

Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933)
Translated by Rae Dalven

I have a few different threads running in my thoughts mathematically. The battles with the ants that I had over my apartment last week have me with ants on the brain, and I imagine my mathematical explorations as akin to trails of ants radiating out in search of forage. On Tuesday afternoons, Yogish is giving a series of talks about multiplier ideals, which we worked on understanding in our algebraic geometry seminar at UW but I would certainly be lying if I said that I really understood them well. So I'm reading Lazarsfeld and listening to Yogi. He had the superfastallatonce lecture style down rather well, and they are 90 minute talks, so Tuesday evenings I always feel a bit drained.

Then on Fridays Srinivas's student Vivek is giving a series of talks on logarithmic schemes, as a way of learning about them himself. It is moderately technical material, but seems useful. I'm trying to translate some basic things about arc spaces into this language in order to help my understanding. Also, there has been some interesting work done by El Goul, Dethloff and Lu using logarithmic jets in the context of Kobayashi hyperbolicity, which I studied for my Master's project. All of that was in fairly analytic language, so it will be interesting to see how it spells out once I can write it down in the language of sheaves of monoids, functors and moduli spaces.

In addition, my own ideas about rationally generated arcs are still moving me along. Venkatraman pointed me to some ideas of Bien, Borel and Kollár about homogeneous spaces. Some of the background material is in French, so I'm trying to do some translation. Luckily I share my office with a guy who knows some French.

One of the habits that many of the researchers here have which I have taken to is the habit of pacing back and forth in the courtyard between the auditorium and the main entrance, beneath the A-wing. The ground is covered with slabs of grey stone, and the building keeps the sun off during the hottest part of the day. This is where the doggies like to hang out too. TIFR, like Reed, has its dogs. It is refreshing to be in a place where they are welcomed, or at least tolerated with friendliness. Hopefully the Diwali fireworks this Saturday don't scare them too badly.



I'll probably go down to join the crowd and watch the fireworks along Marine Drive. I was there on Tuesday, and there was a little bit of a preview of what's to come, but just a little. After Yogi's lecture I felt the need to be out on my bike. So I went home, picked it up, threw a few things in my pack and headed out. I first went to the barber shop, because one of Baitosh's friends said that he wanted to ride around at some point. He was there, but didn't want to go for a ride. One of the pairs of pants I brought with me needed some mending, so I dropped them off at a tailor.

Then I rode over to Marine Drive, and made my way along to Chowpatty (said Choh-pohtti, not like a burger) beach as the twilight quickly faded. I locked my bike up and wandered out along the beach, was a thin layer of dirty sand over hard packed dirt. I was accosted by a few hawkers, a massage guy, a mat to sit on the sand guy, and a tea selling kid. They realized before long that I wasn't interested and left me to wander along the beach. A storm drain/sewer outflow was dumping into the bay near the west end of things, and a clan of fisher-folk was camped out, cooking dinner and lighting off fireworks. I was reminded of the week before the fourth of July in the US.



I wandered back and across Marine Drive, where I found a place to print out some photos, which I have been wanting to do. They said it would be an hour, so I wandered around a bit more. One of the streets I walked down was the diamond and jewelry district, with all sorts of fancy shops and a Mercedes showroom. Then I ended up on a back street and stopped to admire a very picturesque orange paper lantern over a light bulb hanging over the flower-box outside someone's window. While I was admiring it, someone invited me to take his picture in front of his store, so I did. It seems like the smiling for pictures is not an Indian thing.

Elephanta Island

So, I sort of have a kitchen now. I was walking over to the colony's convenience store on Sunday and passed a woman sitting in the courtyard with a basket of stainless steel kitchen things in front of her. Unfortunately, the combined propane of both my tanks was barely sufficient to make one cup of tea. Supposedly refills can be arranged. But I'm still moving slowly on this, because I'm not yet feeling like I need to cook.

I also made my way into the gym, which is good. Working out here does remind me that my genetic center of mass is somewhere in north-eastern Europe, and that much of my life has been spent in places where when it was hot, you could sweat, and it would cool you down. Here, it just makes one hesitant to touch anything that anyone else might want to touch in the near future. On the other hand, there is something to this warm climate makes you more flexible idea.

Mathematics is moving slowly, but at least I can perceive that it is moving. This is better than the normal state of things where it seems that "doing mathematics" and "sitting around staring at the wall" are roughly synonymous. I'm hoping to have some things I can point to by the time people start showing up to go out exploring India in December. I'm also being slowed down by the fact that it is try to get a job in academia season again. In some ways it would make sense to stay here for more than one year, but in others coming back to the US is the better plan. So, I'll go back on the market, and come spring, we'll see what happens.

In the meantime, I'll continue to sneak in an adventure or two. Today's was a trip over to Elephanta Island, which was previously named for the caves that are the current draw, but was renamed by the Portuguese for the large stone elephant which is no longer there.

Elephanta Island is a one hour ride on the same sort of boat that ferried me across to Mandwa last week. It is a lush green hill sticking up out of the brown water. The brown is partly caused by the fact that it is the mouth of a river, but I wager the industry and large population nearby have a bit to do with it as well. As is often the case in poorer countries, many people here think nothing of littering. It is not that it isn't having an obvious effect, but people do it regardless. During the boat ride over in addition to the plastic bags and juice boxes that went overboard, I saw a compact fluorescent light bulb launch off the upper deck into the water.



On getting off the boat, I was approached by a tout who introduced himself as Krishna and proclaimed himself my tour guide. After I told him that his original price was laughable (and more than I had on me), and that he would be better off finding another person to show around, he dropped it to something that I didn't mind shelling out. (I didn't actively bargain with him at all - just told him that I was only vaguely interested in a tour guide, and that I certainly wasn't interested at that original price.) We walked up the path past the people selling trinkets and old women who would let you take their picture with a jug on their head for a fee, and the sedan chairs for those who would rather not submit to the climbing of 120 stairs and the monkeys who scampered about living off the cast-offs and snatchings of the picnicing families, and up to the entrance to the main cave.

The main cave is a large hall, carved from the rock to a height of ten feet or more, supported by a couple dozen pillars and going back a good hundred feet or more. At the center of the hall loom three faces of Shiva, creator, protector, destroyer. Krishna shows me three places to stand among the pillars such that each face is revealed in turn.

Inside the cave, around the walls are a series of carvings depicting Shiva in various incarnations. First he is shown as the king of dancers, Nataraja, poised with one foot in the air and the second stomping out Ignorance. Second, he is shown as the killer of demons, with one hand holding a sword and another a demon and another a bowl for catching the demon's blood, because if the blood of a demon touches the ground, many more demons are sown. I wonder if there is a moral there that could be beneficial to people who like to make war on abstract concepts...



In the next alcove, Shiva stands on the right of his consort Parvathi, Krishna tells me that this indicates that this scene is from before they are married. Following this we see a scene where they are married, and he stands to her left. On the other side of the central sculpture is Shiva as half male half female. Then Shiva and Parvathi are playing chess. In the penultimate panel, he sits in his home on Mt. Kailash, and in the last, Shiva sits in meditation.



All of the carvings were badly damaged by the Portuguese who had used them as target practice. There were more caves, but none of them on the scale of the central one, and they were for the most part unfinished. At the top of the hill were some nice views and a couple of large guns that the British had installed in the early 1900's.

On the boat ride back, I made friends with the capitan of the boat and tried out the Hindi phrases that Krishna had taught me.

Ferengisaikell!

At the suggestion of Yogish Holla, one of the mathematicians here, I woke this morning at about 7 and headed down to the Gateway of India to catch a ferry over to Mandwa, about an hour's boat ride across the bay and mouth of the large river pouring into it. 60Rs. + 60Rs. for the bike. The boat left at 9:15, so I decided to see what was open in Colaba. Cafe Mondegar had a decent espresso, but they were out of Museli without ants. (An ant was running around inside my keyboard just now. Luckily she left and I didn't end up with a computer bug. You may think that I'm making a pun, but according to urban legend, that is the origin of the term. If you don't believe me, check snopes, and either validate your disbelief or affirm my assertion.)

As I was locking my bike, a young man walked up to me and said a prayer for me, tying a red and yellow string around my wrist, and giving me an orange flower and a few small lumps of sugar to eat. After, he asked for a few rupees, which I gave him. So now I have a string tied around my wrist. The color stared bleeding out as soon as I sweated at all, but that's ok. And then when I was unlocking te bike, another Bollywood extra scout came up to me. This time he persisted a little more, so now I have his number and if I get the urge to go and do this, I suppose I could call him.

Anyway, I got on the boat, and they took me across the brown water of the silt laden mouth of the river. I was standing at the rail towards the front and a group of twentysomethings invited me to sit down with them. They were all employees of a shipping company in Mumbai and were out for a weekend in the country. On the ride over, they sang songs, mostly pop songs in Hindi, and I tried to make appropriate noises when I could. As always happens in situations where I'm asked to come up with a song, my mind went totally blank. (Most recently GAEL in Poland, where Sam, Davis and I ended up singing Ring of Fire as the American contribution to the night of international musical merry making in the Polish castle.) Anyway, I hummed and made instrument noises along with them and we passed the time quite enjoyably. A number of large ships were moored in the harbor, and my new friends discussed the details of each.



In Mandwa, I checked that the last boat returned at 4pm, and headed out to the south. The road was pleasant to ride on, traffic was light, and I got a smile from almost everyone I passed. Riding around the city, I heard the phrase, "Ferengisaikel!" shouted as I passed in exclamation of surprise. It roughly translates to, "Check out that honky on a bike!" Hence the title of this post. I didn't actually hear that phrase out in the country. After about 5km, I turned to the left (towards the sea) and soon found myself in a small village. I found my way to the beach, but it wasn't a particularly nice one, although there were some beautiful purple morning glories vining their way out onto the sand. As I was leaving the beach I encountered a woman carrying a huge fish in a basket on her head, which she was quite willing to show off, even after she knew that I only wanted a picture of it, not the fish itself.

Moving on from there, I passed a house with a wall and a gate. On the wall, it said, "Nirrvana," and on the gate it said, "Beware of Dog."

The next village I came to was a center of the local dried fish and shrimp industry. Just thinking about being there smells pretty pungent, so maybe I'll move on a little more quickly than I did in real time (which is not to say that I lingered longer than it took to take a few pictures).



South of here, I had to turn back inland and circumnavigate a large chemical plant. When I turned back towards the sea, I ended up talking to another guy on a bicycle (there were lots of them about) who was interested in my bike. Indian males in general are really interested in my bike. After riding with this guy to his town, I turned around and went back to a little restaurant that we had passed. On the way back, three guys on a motorcycle slowed down and talked to me. The middle one spoke the most English, which was enough that we managed to communicate in the way that people do when they don't really have a common language. They reccomended that I stop at a restaurant at the roadside where a few people sat around avoiding the midday sun and drinking tea.

While Shantish and Tendulkar (which may have been an adopted name, Tendulkar being the acme of Indian crickiteers) made me an excellent lunch, about 15 men gathered around to inspect my bike. They were amazed at how light it was, and they spent a while figuring out the fixed gear thing, and they asked me about the pedals, so I showed them my cleats. As soon as I did this I remembered that it is rather rude in India to point the bottom of your foot at somebody, but they didn't seem offended, and when the same scene replayed itself a few hours later, I tapped the cleat on the ground to indicate metal was there and tried to explain with hand motions, and the guy asked to see the cleat anyway, so maybe it isn't such a big deal in this situation.

The lunch was really good, or at least I was really hungry. If I really enjoyed it it was really good, regardless of what I would have thought of it in another mood, right? Anyway, I think that it would have been good either way. Shantish brought me a steel platter with a bowl of rice, and four little cups of sauces and chickpeas. After lunch, I had a cup of tea. Tea here is generally made by boiling the tea and the milk and adding lots os sugar. I tried to tip and Shantish wouldn't accept it.



Two buildings down the road, the three guys on the motorcycle were sitting at a table out front of some other sort of establishment. They motioned for me to come over and join them. (It took a little getting used to that in addition to the mysterious head wobble, which near as I can figure, means just about anything, the gestures are upside down. As in, if somebody points their palm down and curls the tips of their fingers back and forth, one is supposed to pay attention to the come here direction and no the shoo go away direction.) As I stopped to do this, a car carrying three manager-men from the chemical plant was passing, but then they also stopped and wanted to talk to me. After learning that I was an American, the driver gave me his card and drove off. I took a chair with the three guys from the motorcycle. Less than a minute after I sat down, there was a crowd of fifteen or so gathered around. They were all checking out the curiosity who had sat down in their midst. We determined that I was going to Alibagh and that there is a very nice beach there, and that India is a very nice country and that I do not approve of George Bush, and that India is a poor country, and that the chemical plant produces chemicals and that they are probably poisonous, but that the beach is very nice and I waould enjoy it. Then one man pressed his way to the front of the crowd and was rather upset for some reason. He wanted to see the card that the man in the car had given me, which I showed him, and then he explained some things to me in Marathi, and then the guy sitting next to me motioned as if to dismiss him, or at least that I should not worry about him, and that he was on crack. I wish I spoke this language. Anyway, I resolved the situation by declaring that I was going to go to the very nice beach at Alibagh, which I was glad to hear was only 7km down the road.

Alibagh was a somewhat larger town compared to the villages, a sort of typical beach town in the Indian mold. I rode through it, and after a couple of mistakes, and being told to move along and not stand in front of the police station (which is a large stone structure and I thought it might be an old temple, but was in fact an old fort which I guess is still in use). I generally have no interest whatsoever in not doing what an Indian policeman asks me to do, so I lingered no longer. Alibagh is situated at the mouth of another wide river, and the water was silty, but looked inviting enough to dip my ankles in. The sand was a very nice mix of dark sand and crushed shells, making sharply defined ripples when the waves receded. My recent trips to the ocean have all been on the Pacific coast, where the surf tends to be more significant than in many places, at least many places in Bombay and Alibagh.



I lingered here for a while, and talked to some locals, including a kid named Ashish who looked about 16 and was no longer in school and working at a concession at the beach, but spoke the best English of anyone I met after the folks on the boat. There was a young family of upper class Indians visiting the beach, and the little girl shyly came up and introduced herself to me. Her father was clearly very proud of her for doing this.

After a little while I decided that I should get back to the boat. So I turned back north. A little bit past where I had turned back onto the main road after lunch I passed a man with a pushcart full of bananas. I had passed him earlier on another road and had almost bought some bananas then, but forgetting that there are bananas in ones bag and setting it down at the wrong angle can be a bad idea. This time, I stopped to sample his wares on the spot, and soon found myself in the the middle of a throng of young boys. I bought a round of bananas for everyone. The banana seller remembered me from earlier, and soon figured out my story, which he explained to the boys. They were happy with this, and wished me well on my way back to Mandwa. I took their leave and found my boat. No charge to bring the bike back. On the ride back, I made friends with three guys who had also been out enjoying the not-city for the day.



All in all, it was quite a day.

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Another spin of the globe, the sun drops into the clouds. It occurs to me that I am moving faster than usual with respect to the center of mass of the Earth, my own core's worldline tracing out a curve with greater amplitude in the solar system's equitorial plane spirograph.

The crows call each other to court, mobbing from tree to tree to roofline, reporting the news of the day in the fading light. They are joined by a few swallows, a small group of long tailed and shrill voiced bright green parrots, and an occasional broad winged sea bird of some sort. And of course the bats. I just watched one being harried by five crows. The arching and relatively ponderous flap of the bats' wings make them catch the eye quickly in comparison to the hustle and chaos of the avian mass. I have yet to catch one of them in the act of taking off or landing, and they usually fly low among the foliage, so they are hard to catch with the camera. But they fascinate me.

So I realized today that people have been leaving comments and that they weren't showing up. I'm glad you are reading my ramblings! I'll try to keep doing interesting things. Also, I finally got a phone in my apartment so now people can call me without using skype. I don't want to post my home phone on the internet, so if you want the number you have to email me.

I still don't have a kitchen in my apartment. On Wednesday afternoon I rode over to a store called Sathari Bhandar, near Regal Cinema. Number addresses here are not the norm. People give building names and nearby landmarks. Movie theatres are supposed to be really good landmarks, especially for giving directions to taxi drivers. Speaking of movie theatres, I haven't gone to see a Hindi movie yet, but I'm sure that I will at some point. I was asked if I wanted to be an extra, but it was the day befoer my talk, and I wanted to prepare. Besides, since it was one of the first things that happened to me in public, that it wasn't all that rare an occurence. It turns out I was right; Kevin (the South Aftrican string theorist on the trek) spent a day hanging around the studio looking like a token white guy a while ago. Apparently he was the envy of a number of the grad students because he was in the same room as a rather famous film star. Digressions aside, the housewares section of this store I was directed to is closed for remodeling indefinately. So still no kitchen for me. I'm not yet tired of the canteen food, and it is just as cheap as making my own, lots less effort and much more social, so I'm happy to keep as I am.

One thing I would like to have that I don't is a card for the sport center. I did manage to learn that this requires a visit to at least one more office, which is not at the sport center, and I'll bet is hidden in some labyrinthine corner of this complex. They will want two more passport sized photos, a copy of my invitation letter, and a copy of my ID card, which I needed my invitation letter to acquire, but never mind. I suppose that it never occured to them to just have the ID card function as the mambership card for the rec center. Or perhaps it did, but they dismissed that outright as not in keeping with the way things are done here. Kevin put it appropriately when he described the Indian love affair with beauracracy with its forms in triplicate and neverending series of receipts and rubber stamps as a "colonial hangover." 250 years of being administered by merchants has left some marks. I bet that the paper trail person tracking system that goes on here shares some features with the British East India Company's system of managing bales of tea.

The game Settlers of Catan has been described as analog Civilization (referring to the computer game, not the tendency for large groups of people to come up with complicated communal habits). In that vein, moving to India is analog hardware installation. The same analogy applies to the network of Dabbawallas or lunch couriers, whose deliveries are like analog email. I passed by their meeting point at the train station on the ride I ended up taking after not getting any kitchen stuff on Wednesday. In the late morning a Dabbawalla picks up a tiffin (specially marked stainless steel lunchbox) from the home of a customer. By not long after noon, it has passed through various hands and ridden on bicycle, train and pushcart to the office of it's recipient. I wasted some time reading about them on the internet after seeing their depot.



So although I have no kitchen or access to the sports center, I did manage to I post a paper to the arXiv and send a copy to a journal for consideration yesterday. When I showed the link to Jill her comment was that the notes say that it is a distillation of my PhD thesis, and she wonders if I was making moonshine. Hopefully not, but least then I could drink it. The fact that I sent it out means that I think that this project is at a point where I am okay telling random people about it. But it certainly doesn't feel like I've told a complete story.

Meditations on the color green

I heard that critical mass yesterday was one with a high turnout, and that the family was very moved to see so many people come out to West Seattle to honor Susanne.

Also, I heard some distressing news forwarded from my friends in Oaxaca. They have friends who are seeing military helicoptors flying over their city and are fearful of violent military disruption of the teachers' strike and associated protests. The city has lost a lot of money because of the disrupted tourism, but sending the military against protesters is not the way to deal with that. The forwarded email said:

"there are helicopters flying over oaxaca tonight, 2 from the marines, 2 from the army. thousands of oaxaquenos are sweeping into the city to guard their zocalo and the radio stations. we are asking friends to immediately call amnesty intl 888 368 9356, and the tony garza, us embassador in mexico, the mexican consulates in their states, email amy goodman of democracy now, and contact local papers and radio stations. make it know that we want no bloodshed/ni una gota de sangre, and we want a peaceful resolution our hope is to prevent bloodshed."

I wrote a few emails this morning...

In less depressing news, yesterday I joined some folks on a hike (or trek, as they say here in these parts). We went up to the lookout fort at Manekhat. I woke up at 3:15 and walked out to meet the others in the just beginning rain. After a few minutes everyone else is there. We were: Girish, Antiaji (the -ji suffix is an honorific, similar to calling someone 'sir'), Sam, Niruj, Anupam, Kevin and myself.



Travel ran through the spectrum. We took a taxi to CST (which is odd to see empty, even at 4 in the am) and got on a local train for an hour or so. From the terminus, we walked through the heavy predawn rain to the bus station. The bus was scheduled to head out in ten minutes, so we went to a stand and had some chai. Eventually it shows up and we get on the bus. It fills up with people as we bounce along and the dawn breaks. Villagers are waking up and engaging in their morning routines as we pass.



We arrive at the village at the end of the bus line and head from there up to the smaller group of houses further out. Our objective, a sizeable chunk of rock jutting up from the green of thick forest and rice paddy. Walking through the fields, I was reminded me of a hike that I took at the Cycles conference in Mexico, though that one was a lot easier to get to. I pointed out a waterfall coming down from the nearby ridge. Kevin remarked, "actually, that might be a trail."



Soon enough we turned onto another path, one headed through the brush up the hill. The plants here grow so vigorously, and there are so many paths criss crossing the hill that the trails are quickly swallowed by the all covering greenery. Having lived in the Pacific Northwest, it is moderately difficult to be impressed by the amount of greenery in a place. The rain forests of the Olympic coast are as lush and full of life as most any place in the world. Even so, the sheer volume and vibrantness of the green in this place immersed me in a world where the distribution of hues followed rules unlike those I was accustomed to.



We continued up this trail for a while, stopping at times to take pictures of the flowers or watch the little white freshwater crabs scuttle through the underbrush. The reddish earth on the trail was damp and would slip easily and the rocks were slippery with moss, so the footing was a little tricky at points, but nothing too significant. About half an hour into our hike, a local called out to us - he wanted us to take a route different from the one we were taking. This seemed fine by me, as Antiaji was taking us pretty much straight up the hill, and our new guide's trail wound around to the north, around to a wide trail leading up along the ridge. (The picture with the village and the mountain is taken looking south-west.) In a large open meadow we stopped for a breakfast of white rolls with butter and jam, chapati, and bananas. Looking up, our objective was close, but we obviously were not going to get there by the direct route without the ability to climb straight up wet mossy stone.



Instead, the trail brought us around the the west of the peak, through some more forest and past a small farm. Near the farm, another impromptu guide appeared and called us up to a different trail; the one we were on probably went around rather than up the hill. After a short time we came to a small shrine to Hanuman, which are apparently common on paths through the hills. Soon after this, the trail started up with more conviction and we reached the pass just south of the large chunk of rock which we were soon climbing.






The trail emerged from the forest and wound up the side of the rock. Humidity made the air thick, and the fields of the valley below were somewhat vague. After a brief scramble when the trail vanished into the grass near the top, we found ourselves on the broad mesa-like peak. In the time of Shivaji, the great Marathi leader whose name has replaced many of the colonial British ones in Mumbai, this was used as a watch tower. Three large rectangular tanks had been quarried from the basalt, one just below the peak and two up top. The stones were used to build fortifications for the watchers. In one of them, there sat a very content looking buffalo. As we approached, dozens of frogs sprang from the buffalo's head.





We explored a bit, and then sat about and napped on the rocks before a lunch of various sorts of flat-breads, some spiced and seasoned, some sweet. There were pickled chiles and dates and cucumbers. The dragonflies were buzzing about and the vultures were circling overhead. Indian vultures are endangered, their numbers having plummeted recently as a result of kidney failure after eating livestock treated with the drug diclofenac, which is administered as a pain killer and anti-inflamitory.

One result of this collapse is the possible demise of the Zoroastrian practice of leaving the dead in their Towers of Silence to be consumed by vultures. Their religion considers the destruction of a body using the elements of earth and fire to contaminate those elements with the unclean dead. I hadn't heard about this practice before coming to India, though I was familiar with the Tibetan practice of feeding a body to vultures, and it is possible that both practices have the same cultural origins. On the other hand, it seems also possible that this was once a more common practice. Any society must figure out how to hygenically dispose of its dead Most common today are practices that evolved out of honoring the person by honoring the body - taking elaborate measures to ensure that a dead body is not eaten by scavengers, such as burial or burning. it is possible that this idea merely won out memetically over the just as valid practice of making it easier for the scavengers to collect the bodies. My personal preference would be for the latter - that my body become food, but I understand that that idea might be repulsive to some.

In any case, the group of us were all quite far from death there on the mountaintop, and thankfully, so were the vultures. We lay about watching them ride the thermals, their long wing feathers splayed like fingers, wheeling and braking and gliding, framed between grey clouds and green earth.

After a couple hours, it was time to head back down. At the pass, Antia insisted that he had been down the trail leading east, and that it would be a shortcut to go back this way. There was certainly a trail there, or at least a watercourse. Kevin was hesitant. "I've been on your 'shortcuts' before Antiaji," he said. I understood that it would be faster to go back the way we came, but I was also fairly certain that we wouldn't die, so I was game to head down after this grey bearded Indian astrophysicist. After not long, it was clear that this was far more watercourse than trail. But we continued, and soon the effort that would have been involved in climbing up and out meant that we were committed.



We actually only had to turn around and find a way around a cliff once. While the advance party was scouting the cliff itself, the rest of us watched some monkeys climbing around on the ridge above. The way we eventually found wasn't terribly difficult, and brought us past a strange meter square tunnel that someone had burrowed into the side of a cliff. After one more steep stretch, we were back in the forest, bushwhacking our way back to the trail.



Soon after regaining the trail, we crossed a stream, which was a great place for a break. We rested there for 20 minutes or so before heading on. As we began walking, I felt a couple of large drops hit my arm, and quickly stowed my camera wrapped inside my jacket in my pack. Within five minutes, we were drenched, and the trail was a flowing stream. The shower I had been anticipating in my apartment showed up a few hours unexpected. Thankfully, it was not a cold rain, and there really wasn't much unpleasant about being caught out.

It stopped after about half an hour, and the rest of the walk out was spent stepping through the mud. I was one of the lucky ones who neither lost a shoe or sank in to my knees, but not all of us can say that.

Back in the village, we stopped for tea, and those with dry clothes changed. I'll certainly bring this next time, at least a pair of sandals. Of course, by the time we made it back to Mumbai, I was mostly dry, since the bus that was "scheduled" at five came at ten to six, and then there was the hour and change train ride.



Anupam, Kevin and I finished up at the apparently traditional post hike spot, Gokul Restaurant and Bar. Kingfisher beer is not bad, and with some tandoori chicken it tastes excellent after such an adventure.

More pictures here.