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T U E S D A Y , M A R C H 2 0 , 2 0 0 7

Visakhapatnam

I flew to Visakhapatnam from Tirupati last

Sunday (March 18) at the invitation of Dr.

Prasad Rao (Francis is his Christian name),

Dean of the School of Education, Andhra

University. The city of Visakhapatnam, called

Vizag for short, is on the shores of the Bay of Bengal, in the northeast corner of Andhra

Pradesh. It is the largest city in the state, though not the capital. That honor goes to Hyderabad.

Dr. Prasad has kept me hopping from the time I

arrived! He’s pretty much unflappable, sharp as a tack,

and really good at adapting quickly to unexpected

circumstances. If I were a military man, I’d be very

comfortable with Dr. Prasad as my fearless leader

because I know for sure he’d have my back!

By the time I leave Guntur tomorrow, I’ll have lectured

to four groups of faculty and students at four different

colleges or universities and visited two local schools,

where I’ll have addressed several hundred of the

students and been given the opportunity to check out

the state of technology-integrated school curricula. I

will have addressed close to 500 faculty and students.

At one of these events, I was introduced to Dr.

Pushpanadam, a visiting professor from Gujarat state, who invited me, in the course of

conversation, to visit his university in the city of Vadodara (Baroda). I eagerly accepted the

invitation, knowing that I already had invitations from two other academic institutions which

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were conveniently en route: one from SNDT university in Mumbai, Maharashtra state, and

another from the Mahatma Gandhi Labour Institute (MGLI) in Ahmedabad, Gujarat state.

But Prasad has a great sense of fun, so my visit to Vizag was not all business.

We took a day-long trip through the Araku Valley, a

spectacular volcanic geological formation that runs

north for miles out of the city of Visakhapatnam.

We stopped along the way to visit various locations

of interest, such as the Dumbriguda waterfalls.

During the rainy season, this whole area is deluged

with rain and the waterfalls explode into raging torrents. But now it’s the dry season.

Down in the dry

river bed I saw

women working by

a truck. They were

digging up silt and

loading it into the

truck so it could be

used to make

concrete—clean,

washed silt makes

the best sand for

quality concrete.

No backhoes here,

though; just

buckets and

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spades. Labor is cheap. These women probably earn little more than a dollar a day doing what

they do.

We stopped, too, at a

reservoir not far north of

Vizag, where Dr. Prasad

rented a boat which took

me, his wife, Esther, and

two of Prasad’s colleagues,

Dr. Rao and Dr. Douglas, to

a lake island for a picnic

lunch.

Dr. Douglas is a pretty

amazing guy. He has a PhD

in Chemistry and he's now

pursuing a second PhD in

Educational Technology,

which is why he was asked

by Prasad to accompany us

on this trip.

When I meet notable people

like this—and I meet them

all the time in India—I

wonder why India is finding

it so hard to bring some sort

of a decent education to the

masses. But I’m learning

that the problems are

legion, starting with

corruption and going all the way on down to prejudice and poor management. Such beautiful

people deserve better government, but it’s hard when you have over a billion mouths to feed

and to clothe and to provide with an equitable opportunity at advancement.

It’s hard, too, when you have a history of social stratification based on a caste system which,

until 1950, denied a formal education to all but those at or near the top of the social heap.

Before 1950, the British government was interested in educating only as many as it needed to

man the civil service establishment.

Sixty years later things are better, but not by much. In 2011, despite a high overall enrolment

rate for primary education (93%), among rural children age 10, half could not read at a basic

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level, over 60% were unable to do division, and half dropped out by age 14. While the official

teacher-pupil ratio in the Public School system is 35:1 (not too bad, though could be better, of

course), teacher absenteeism is out of sight, with 25% of teachers in India apparently not

showing up for work. On this account alone, the school system nationwide loses $2 billion a

year in wages to teachers who never show up. Add to this the remarkable fact that, of the

teachers who did show up for work, only 3 out 5 were found to be actually teaching! To make

matters worse, the corruption was such that it was rare that any absentee teachers were

punished in any way. With all this in mind, one can understand how the students are hardly to

blame for poor performance.

Unequal access to a good education translates directly into unequal access to economic well-

being. India’s private-schooled, English-speaking urban elite may attract global attention, but

they are in the minority. India’s trying to do something about it, but can it do so effectively in

less than a lifetime?

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W E D N E S D A Y , M A R C H 2 1 - 2 2 , 2 0 0 7

Visakha Valley School

More and more elementary and secondary schools in India have computers. The model

generally applied in their use is the same as the model applied in most American schools until

not so long ago. You put whatever computers you can afford in a computer lab where the

students go to learn how to use them. Nowadays, when most American students have their

own computers at home or in their backpacks, schools tend to have computer labs for students

who have classes in computer programming.

In India, on the other hand, it’s still rare to find computers in the actual classrooms. Very few

teachers even have computers; they’re too expensive. They have mobile phones which give

them internet access, but that’s as far as they go with computer technology. So, as far as I can

make out, there’s next to no attempt made to integrate computers into the curriculum.

There are, however, exceptions to every

rule. This morning, for example, with

Mrs. Radha Chary as my guide, we

climbed to a high point above Vizag to

get a panoramic view of the bay and the

city below. Radha then took me to visit

Visakha Valley School, a private Vizag

high school. Radha is one of two Pre-

Service Program Mentors for an ongoing

K-12 technology integration project in

Andhra Pradesh. The project is funded by

Intel Corporation and it is called “Intel

Teach to the Future.”

I met first with the Principal, Dr. Sharada,

who, as it happens, lived in Pittsburgh, USA,

for a little more than a year in 1988 when her

husband was a consultant with the Bureau of

Mines. Our paths may well have crossed

during that period of time. It’s a small world

anymore.

Dr. Sharada was gracious and welcoming. In

our introductory conversation we talked

about the challenge of introducing computers

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for teaching and learning. It was quickly clear to me that she knows what it takes to successfully

integrate technology into the curriculum.

Judging by what I observed, albeit

briefly, her students are using

computers across the curriculum to

bring learning to life. I attended a

session in a classroom where the

students demonstrated what they were

doing with the computers. Their

teacher, Mr. Prasantha Kumar Panda, is

one of the Master Trainers in Intel’s

Teach to the Future program. I saw two

classic science projects where the

research the students were required to

complete involved social studies,

language arts (writing and speech communication), mathematics, art and design, presentation

skills, along with a solid core of science.

Very impressive. It was evident that the

students loved using the computers to

help them do their academic work and

that their teachers were willing to go the

extra mile to learn how to integrate

various technologies into teaching and

learning. Radha told me that Intel has

funded this project in India since 2000.

There are offices in every state and I

would love to see more of what’s being

done. I asked Radha lots of questions and I

have many more that have occurred to me

since we parted ways at the railway

station in Vizag this morning. Fortunately, we’ve exchanged email addresses, so our dialog will

be ongoing. I intend to follow this project closely over the years ahead.

I’d like to know if Intel Corporation pays for all the hardware and software in the schools where

they are training the teachers. If so, how often do they update the hardware? If not, how often

is it updated by whichever agency is the source for the money? Does Intel provide the essential

technical support? If not, how is technical support handled? What percentage of the students in

the Intel schools get to use the computers for the kind of learning across the curriculum that I

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saw demonstrated this morning? Are there any other non-government organizations as

seriously involved as Intel in this effort to help Indian schools?

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T H U R S D A Y , M A R C H 2 2 , 2 0 0 7

On the train to Guntur

Right now, I’m on the train with Dr. Prasad, bound for Guntur, about 300 miles south of

Visakhapatnam. I’ll be lecturing at a School of Education affiliated to Acharya Nagarjuna

University and I’ll later visit a local elementary school where they’re doing good work

integrating computers into the classroom.

While on the train to Guntur with Dr.

Prasad, we sat next to a young Indian

family. The father and mother had their

little girl with them and I engaged them in

conversation. I took out my laptop and

started showing them pictures I’d taken

of my travels in India. The little girl

immediately wanted to use the computer

herself, so I let her operate the keyboard

to go from picture to picture. It was

immediately obvious that she loved using

the computer and would have taken it

home with her if I’d let her! Dr. Prasad

took a picture of the little girl

using the computer, with me

and her mother at her side. I

now use this picture as an

illustration of the model

technology-integrated teaching

environment, where you have

the student, the technology, a

loving parent/teacher who

understands how to effectively

integrate technology into

teaching and learning.

Perfect! That’s how learning

should be for every child. It’s

just a matter of time before much learning for every child will come from this interaction

between good parents and appropriate learning modalities provided by appropriate, well-

designed digital information systems.

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This is what Dr. Maria Montessori (1870-1952) had in

mind with her carefully designed, age-appropriate

“didactic materials.” She told her teachers to stand back

and not interfere when their students were engaged in

learning using the materials made available to them in

the classroom. They should be allowed to learn

“spontaneously.”

Montessori missed the Computer age by just a few

years. A serious working digital computer hadn’t been

invented till 1951 (UNIVAC) and compared to today’s

computers it couldn’t do much. I’d bet even money that

if Montessori were alive today, she’d be the first to

welcome the computer into her classrooms. She

wouldn’t call it a computer; she’d call it a “Gateway to

Learning,” or a “Learning Portal.” She’d have her team

of teachers carefully designing room after virtual room into which her students would be

guided to discover what they wanted and needed to know.

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T H U R S D A Y , M A R C H 2 2 , 2 0 0 7

Guntur, St. Joseph’s College of Education for Women, and Amravati

We arrived in Guntur late in the evening and I spent the night at a Catholic college in Guntur

(St. Joseph’s College of Education for Women) run by the Sisters of the Society of Jesus, Mary

and Joseph. I stayed in a guest room in the convent, and passed a pleasant couple of hours on

the evening of my arrival dining with the community and later watching World Cup cricket with

one of the older sisters. That was both unexpected and definitely cool. I just didn’t expect

women to be interested in cricket; but then again, everyone is mad about cricket in India,

including the nuns!

The next morning I met with

the Mother Superior of the

community of nuns, who

was also President of the

College of Education, before

lecturing to the faculty and

students. At the end of the

lecture I was more or less

mobbed by students asking

me for my autograph. They

pressed close around me

and thrust their notebooks

at me and I signed every

single one. I can’t imagine

how it must be for famous

people who have to deal

with this more or less every day of their lives. Me, I was flattered, to say the least!

“Good tools do not make a good teacher, but a good teacher

makes good use of tools.” (Eleanor Doan)

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After lunch, two of the nuns, Sister Mary Mazza and Sister Sherly, and Dr. M. Vanaja, who is

responsible for ICT at St. Joseph’s, took me to visit another elementary/secondary school where

they are making every effort to integrate technology into the curriculum. I addressed a large

group of the children and then visited some of the classrooms and the computer lab. These

experiences have helped me understand better than ever that India will truly be a force to

reckon with if and when this great nation is able to bring quality education, of the kind such as I

saw going on around me in Vizag and Guntur, to every child in the land.

Dr. Vanaja and Sisters Mary Mazza and Sherly next took

me to an archaeological site not far away at the ancient city of Amravati, which lies on the

banks of the River Krishna, about

65 km from Vijayawada, the second

largest city in the state of Andhra

Pradesh. At Amravati we saw the

remains of a 2,000 year old

Buddhist settlement, along with the

great Buddhist stupa known as

Mahastupa.

Close by is an excellent museum

which walks one through the

history of the settlement and leads

to an outdoor walk-around model

of the stupa as it was when

flourishing in the full bloom of Buddhist life.

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F R I D A Y , M A R C H 2 3 , 2 0 0 7

Hot, hot, hot!!

Things have been

heating up in South

India since the middle

of January and now the

soaring temperatures

are becoming hard for

even my Indian friends

to bear. Typically, these

days, we have a high of

around 37C (99F).

Whichever way you

look at it, that’s hot!

It’s a dry heat, though,

in Tirupati at least, so

not unbearable. The

same was the case in

Saudi Arabia, where I lived for three years and where we experienced temperatures that rose

well above 40C (104F) by early afternoon. I’m told that that kind of extreme temperature will

be the norm in South India, too, by the time I leave in May.

So, when walking outdoors in the middle of the day, I use an umbrella or a hat to protect my

bald pate from the direct rays of the sun. Even some of the Indian women use umbrellas for the

same purpose. Alternatively,

they’ll cover their heads with

the yard or two of extra cloth

at the end of their saris which,

in these parts of India, they

usually drape gracefully over

their left shoulder. To cover

their head, the women slip

their fingers under the edge of

the cloth where it passes over

their shoulder near the neck,

and deftly slide the cloth up

and over their head where it

provides a light, yet effective,

shield against the sun.

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Most of the girls, the students, wear the traditional salwah and kameez—a longish top that

flows below the waist over loose pyjama trousers. This outfit is invariably accompanied by a

chunni, which they wear over their shoulders in various

styles. The chunni is a light silk or cotton shawl which is

worn for purposes of adornment and decorum. For

modesty’s sake, it is often draped, not like a scarf with the

ends hanging down in front of the shoulders, but rather the

other way around,

with the ends of

the chunni hanging

down the back,

with the center

piece of the cloth

arranged across

the chest. When

it’s hot, like now, the girls use the chunni to cover their

heads.

The women look beautiful to me when they do this

with their saris or their chunnis, their faces framed by

the flowing, colorful cloth. This afternoon I saw a girl

riding along on the back of a motorbike covering her

head with a newspaper. Anything to keep the heat at

bay.

It’s hot!

In the steamy sub tropics of Nigeria and Florida, the humidity in the summer months makes the

heat index distinctly uncomfortable. In Florida, we can count on air-conditioning, so we can

drive out of our air-conditioned houses, in our air-conditioned cars, to an air-conditioned store

anywhere in town. We really rarely need to experience the full brunt of the blistering heat. In

Nigeria, on the other hand, where I lived for two years in the 1970s, there was no electricity at

the school where I worked. So, no question of air-conditioning or even fans, other than those

made by the locals out of straw, which we held in our hands and flapped at our faces in a

desperate attempt to try to cool off the old-fashioned way. The energy required to flap the fan,

however, actually generated more heat; it just made matters worse—and I couldn’t afford a

servant to move air for me.

Ah, for those halcyon, decadent days of the British Raj!

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Earlier this week, in Visakhapatnam (Vizag), which is on the ocean, the humidity was predictably

high. I was housed in a YMCA hostel where there was no air-conditioning, but I did at least have

an electric ceiling fan over the bed. I figure I

can survive any kind of heat if I have a fan. I

can collapse on the bed and flake out under

the fan as it whirrs and stirs the air to the

point where I suspend disbelief, close my

eyes, and gladly mistake it for a blissful

summer breeze.

They didn’t have air-conditioning in any of

the classrooms or lecture halls at the

universities or colleges I visited in South

India. I didn’t take advantage of the fans in

the lecture halls, either, because I like to

move around. It didn’t even occur to me to

park myself under one of them, so by the

time I was done with a presentation, my

clothes were usually soaked with sweat. I

swear I could have wrung out a glassful of the stuff if I’d chosen to try.

Drinking water has become liquid gold, nectar indeed. I never fail to carry a bottle of it with me

in my laptop bag and ply myself with it at every opportunity till the supply is gone. Then, when I

get home from the university, I engorge myself from the huge 25 liter bottle I have in my room.

Then I step under a blissfully soothing shower. Ironically, by midday the water from the

shower’s cold faucet (tap) is almost too hot from the sun’s beating down on the rooftop water

tank. Believe it or not, in order to cool the hot water coming from the cold faucet, I turn on the

hot faucet, which delivers relatively cold water from the indoor geezer's tank. I never need

switch on the geezer these days. Hot water is the last thing I want. The cold water from the

geezer mingles with the hot water coming from the roof and turns it deliciously cool. What a

thing!

Samasyalu layvu, parishkaralu matramay—that’s Telugu for “No problems, only solutions.” No

problems, only solutions indeed.

Barbara Gasdick, my wife Marilyn's best friend, asked me in an email why I wear long-sleeved

shirts when it's so hot. Wouldn’t short-sleeved shirts work better against the heat? Well, I'm

very susceptible to skin cancer and have been treated for a couple of lesions over the past few

years. So I cover up as best I can, especially when it’s over 100 degrees in the shade!

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S U N D A Y , M A R C H 2 5 , 2 0 0 7

Religion and politics

I was out enjoying my evening walk just now. I had to take a different route than normal which

took me all around the perimeter wall of the university campus for about a three-mile round

trip. This is because, these days, the university campus is out of bounds after 6:00 pm to

anyone other than students, staff (not including faculty), and security.

While I was away in Aurangabad two weeks ago, one of our students committed suicide. It is

difficult, if not impossible, for me to understand what would bring someone to such a point of

utter despair, but it's not that unusual in India—or anywhere in the world for that matter. Every

day I read in the newspapers of people committing suicide because they've gotten themselves

deep in debt or, in the case of students, because they've cracked under the pressure of family

expectations in the face of public examinations.

So sad. When one looks around one, there's a lot of sadness in this world of ours. Perhaps this

has always been the case, and perhaps this is why a lot of people turn to religion to find solace

and meaning in what might otherwise, according to their perceptions, be a pointless, perhaps

painful life.

All I know is that, unfortunately, some of the less attractive aspects of religion have reared their

ugly head in the aftermath of this girl's untimely death. She apparently had converted from

Hinduism to Christianity and there's a feeling around India, amongst Hindus especially, that

some Christian groups go to excessive lengths to convert people to the Christian persuasion and

gather them into their fold. I won’t repeat the stories I’ve heard about this poor girl and her

family and the university, because some of them don’t ring true to me. It’s all just gossip. But

the fact is that the university has been in a semi lock-down mode for the past two weeks, with

extra security on hand and a curfew of sorts.

Hindu concerns about Christian proselytization are sometimes well-founded. On a few

occasions, I have had to resist some blatant Christian proselytization myself. This very evening,

indeed, towards the end of my walk, two men on a motorbike slowed to a crawl beside me,

announced that they were evangelicals or something, and invited me to their church service at

7:30 pm.

I told them I was Hindu and that I was up for Darshan at the nearest temple, if they cared to

join me!

Why does religion, where everyone professes love and peace and brotherhood, so often divide

people instead of uniting them? Why does religion so often result in hatred and violence and

146

enmity? It’s very odd. I’ll never figure it out. No wonder some people are driven to despair,

even to suicide, despite their religious affiliation.

I was brought up Catholic, though I long ago eschewed Catholic practice. Any alignment I might

still have with Catholic thought is purely coincidental. I think what I think, and believe what I

believe, because it makes sense to me, not because I’ve been told to believe it by my parents or

by some priest or pope.

I recently read a beautiful quote from Mahatma Gandhi who said: “After long study and

experience I have come to these conclusions, that: (1) all religions are true, (2) all religions have

some error in them, (3) all religions are almost as dear to me as my own Hinduism. My

veneration for other faiths is the same as for my own faith. Consequently, the thought of

conversion is impossible. … Our prayer for others ought never to be: “God give them the light

thou hast given to me!” But: “Give them all the light and truth they need for their highest

development!”

Now that makes complete sense. The world would be a whole lot better place if Gandhi ji’s

philosophy were understood and accepted by all. Unfortunately, Ghandi’s words are belied by

Hindu practice, which still tolerates a hierarchical structuring of society along rigid caste and

outcaste lines, and that’s an issue which will take many, many years to work out of India’s

political, social, and ethical way of life. The Constitution, carefully crafted by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar

and promulgated in 1950, states quite clearly that the caste system can no longer stand. Law,

however, is often a statement of wishful thinking because it is sometimes hard to enforce. This

is especially true in India, where the forces of law and order are so corrupt that justice often

gets overlooked.

But that’s another issue and one which must be set aside for now while we mourn the loss of

this young lady’s life.

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T U E S D A Y , M A R C H 2 7 , 2 0 0 7

Thwack! Thwack!

I hear this sound every morning around 7:30-8:00 am when I’m taking my tea and biscuits,

reading the newspaper, or otherwise engaged. It’s the sound of one of the maids in the house

next door doing the laundry.

In India, as in many, many other countries

where washing machines are not the norm,

all you need to do the laundry is a ready

supply of water, some soap, any kind of

flattish rock or stone slab and a man or

woman willing to do the back-breaking job of

beating the living daylights out of the cloth.

The process requires the repeated smacking

of the cloth against a hard place. You see this

all over India, especially when one is

travelling by train, passing through the towns

and villages and open countryside. Wherever

there is water, there is cloth laying out to dry, and men and women thwacking away. I have a

gentleman for a dhobi—the man who does my laundry, and they’re my duds that he beats to

death.

It’s fun to watch, notwithstanding the drastic

wear and tear on the cloth—none of my

clothes were fit to bring home when I left

India. I gave away everything that I didn’t

have to wear for the return trip. But the sight

and sound of the humdrum washing of cloth

conjures up timeless images of a simpler

lifestyle, before we industrialized ourselves

into our present ecologically precarious state.

Don’t get me wrong. Doing laundry the old-

fashioned way is hard work, so I’m all for

washing machines. It’s just that, with 7+

billion people on the planet and rising, the

human impact is going to be devastating if

everyone has a washing machine—and a

house with a TV or two, and a car or two, and

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a microwave, and a smartphone, and a water supply and electricity, and a fancy wardrobe, and

so forth.

Right now, it’s the small minority of people on the planet who enjoy such earth-depleting

“luxuries.” What on earth are we going to do when all the Chinese and all the Indians have

enough money to join the rich man’s club?

Population isn’t going to decrease any time soon. Conservative estimates put world population

peaking by the end of this century at from 10 billion to 12 billion souls. I’ve talked to highly

respected academicians, close observers of the human condition, who think such statistical

projections are poppycock. They work fine for other species; natural limit cycles limit

population growth for all species when left to the natural order of things. But humans are

different. We have this wretched intelligence of ours which enables us to overcome what would

otherwise be natural limit cycles.

We run out of space, so we build higher and higher, and we build in places once considered

precarious or out-of-the-way. We run out of food, so we go get it from someplace else or we

invent alternative ways to nourish the human body—popping pills perhaps. We run out of

sources of cheap, easy energy—wood, coal, oil—so we develop alternative sources of energy—

wind, water, solar power—which are not quite so easy to harness, but which will keep us going

into perpetuity.

I’m not sure what will keep the human population from growing. The nasty thing about this is

that the more people we have on the planet, the less likely it is that other species will survive.

Species extinction is already at an all-time high.

The desire for the good things in life is what makes humans get up in the morning. With

globalization, more and more people are joining the ranks of the reasonably well off. Really?

Whatever are we going to do when the planet is overrun and everyone wants a piece of what

little is left? It won’t happen today; it won’t happen tomorrow; it won’t happen any time soon.

But it will happen, and what then?

One of the reasons I so hope there’s a life after death--somewhere comfortable where I can sit

in an armchair sipping a G&T—is because I want to watch and see how things pan out.

It’ll be very, very interesting indeed.

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T H U R S D A Y , M A R C H 2 9 , 2 0 0 7

March Madness

As far as I can make out, it’s that time of year in India. Conferences, workshops, seminars,

symposiums--you name it--are springing up like crocuses, azaleas, and daffodils in an American

Spring.

Money that has been made available for grants to cover the cost of academic gatherings must

be spent by the end of the financial year, which, in India, is the end of March. So every

academic everywhere in India has been scrambling to disburse the money they’ve been given

the opportunity to spend.

As a result, in recent weeks I’ve been truly inundated with requests to speak here, there, and

everywhere. I estimate that I’ve addressed well over a thousand academics in the past two

weeks alone. Not that I've received much of the grant money that's been floating around. My

services are usually given gratis, though I’ve been grateful when some universities, though not

all, have covered my expenses.

I’ve been the guest speaker at a gathering of Sanskrit professors at Rashtriya Sanskrit

Vidyapeetha in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh. I was the “opening batsman” at a conference of the

National Academy of Psychologists held at Sri Venkatesvara University, also in Tirupati. At the

same University I was the keynote speaker at a two-day workshop on “Open and Distance

Learners” for the Directorate of Distance Education. Again, at the same university, I addressed

the graduating seniors in the College of Commerce. The following day I spoke to the Sri

Venkatesvara University students studying for their Masters in English Literature.

I’m obviously not being asked to give speeches because I’m famous or anything. Nor am I being

invited to do so because I’m recognized as an expert in any particular field. I’m being asked to

speak because I’m willing and available and can be slotted in at a moment’s notice.

For example, I was asked to give the keynote address for the Open and Distance Learners

conference, mentioned above, a mere five days before the event! I’m guessing that originally

they must have had someone else in mind, but they failed to snag whoever it was, so I was an

afterthought. What also happens is that some professor will come up to greet me after I've

given a presentation and he or she asks me if I’d be willing to come to his or her university to do

the same thing. Sometimes it’s a friend of someone who has attended one of my presentations.

Either way, I’m in the habit of saying “Yes” to all such invitations, so inevitably I’m kept busy.

Put me behind a podium, flip the switch, and I can talk the hind leg off a donkey when I think I

have some relevant information to convey. I hasten to add that I’m not good at fluff, which is

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why I could never be an administrator or a politican. I’m not much good at small talk. I always

want to get to the heart of the matter in any conversation.

But, having said that, it’s fun having a platform or a podium where I can express my opinion. It’s

even more fun when people appreciate what I have to say. There’s no way this "celebrity

status" will go to my head, by the way, even though, as my dear wife, Marilyn, will attest, I am

“a legend in my own mind!”

Believe me, any inflated delusions I might have had about where I fit in this grand scheme of

academic affairs were very effectively deflated when one of the universities where I was to

deliver the Keynote Address sent a moped to bring me to the venue!

A moped, for heaven’s sake! No private, air-conditioned car. No air-conditioned taxi. Not even

an auto rickshaw.

A moped!

Motorbikes are a different animal altogether. I’ve come to love riding on the back of

motorbikes. It’s a great way to get around and experience the real India. You’re so much closer

to the people on a motorbike. You can easily see and hear the full spectrum of what’s going on

around you, especially since the motorbikes in India invariably have low-powered engines. They

have little or no roar, such as is the case for the 600cc bikes in the United States.

So off I go, riding into the sunset on whatever conveyance is available, in response to any

request to share my knowledge and experience with whomever is willing to lend me an ear.