Bonus Post: Photos

Our group communicates via a group thread on WhatsApp. Typically we'll share photos from the previous day with each other. Because I've been writing the blog in the evening, I don't have access to these photos until after the post has gone up. By now, we've collected a sizeable common album. The photos—from other people's phones—also include more images of me. I'll add some of the photos from my colleagues below without captions, mostly because the details have started to blur, and they represent generalized impressions of our group visit to India.

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Saturday, March 16: Downtime

The first two items on today's itinerary were breakfast and lunch. Last night, seeing the sparse schedule, colleagues hatched plans to visit Hindu temples and jewelry markets in the morning, but, as our flight's departure time receded, so did the ambitious plans. I woke up around 7:45 am and opened the curtains to reveal a view of Hyderabad, population 9 million. I fought the inclination to unpack my clothes and headed for the hotel gym and then ate breakfast. View of the city from the hotel room Taking advantage of the free time and the already warming day, I strolled around the hotel grounds. I found a shady chair and read the local newspaper. Back in my room, I turned the bathroom sink into a makeshift washing machine and freshened up some of my clothes. We will be here until Thursday, leaving sufficient time for drying. By the time I had unpacked, wrung out the clothes, and checked messages, it was time for lunch. As usual, the hotel offers an abundant buffet of delici...

Tuesday, March 12: Last Day in Mumbai

Today's schedule resembled yesterday's but with two different institutions. In the morning, we visited Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Right away, the campus felt familiar to what we recognize as a university. We walked onto a shady campus with a fruit-tree-lined pathway. Parents sat on benches with their children, waiting for their admissions interviews. Because we arrived early, our guide comandeered three students walking by into giving us a tour. Master's students (and a stray dog) give us a tour of TISS. TISS, as it's called, is a "deemed" university, meaning it has government funding for faculty salaries but is being encouraged to generate more of its own revenue. Their focus is on social work, psychology, and urban development. One student we talked to, for instance, was writing her thesis on the effects of residential squatters in urban areas. Several of the faculty members there had traveled to the U.S. on Fulbrights and came to greet u...

Thursday, March 14: Liberal Arts in India

The point of the Seminar is not necessarily to identify a specific partner for an institutional exchange. Still, we can't help but pick favorites. The two campuses we visited today both stood out as particularly congenial places for students from the United States to study. That they are located in Pune, a city I had never heard of before this trip, speaks to my provincialism. If top-notch colleges can be located in remote corners of the United States, then why wouldn't I find impressive Indian campuses in Pune? The FLAME campus has a unified, modern aesthetic. The universities' improbable names contributed to my surprise at their quality. FLAME University is an acronym for Foundation for Liberal Arts and Management Education. Both FLAME and Symbiosis International, which we visited in the afternoon, are examples of private institutions funded by philanthropic founders. In the case of FLAME, a Jain family made wealthy from the financial industry gave the money to sta...

Fulbright IEA Seminar India 2019

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