everyday delights

This may come as a surprise, but I’m actually in India on a university exchange, and have indeed been attending actual lectures! I realized I’ve been neglecting that realm a bit, even though the lectures I’ve had thus far have been every bit as interesting as our weekend escapades. So, if you’re interested in hearing a bit about Indian academia, read on…

As the 16 year-old-Alison stands aghast, I’m discovering my rural roots are stronger than I thought. My favorite course by far is called Agricultural Economics, and we’re currently discussing the causes and effects of colonialism in regards to underdevelopment of India’s agriculture and the conflict of two different schools of thought: rural and urban bias. The class is an elective course for Econ MAs, so all of the other Indian students were really excited to take it and tell me the professor is the best in the department (hailing from MIT, as they put it). He anticipates taking us to some rural villages as well; I think I lucked out here...

I’ve also been attending guest lectures whenever possible, put on by various departments. (There are seminars every week here, which is something I read about before coming here and was anticipating taking advantage of). I attended a couple of tasty ones this week, as part of a seminar put of by the Philosophy department. I call them tasty, because it’s the best way to describe my disposition towards listening to guest speakers and interesting lectures outside my field of study; it’s like eating a special dessert—both are some of my favorite activities. J

Anyway, the lectures were on the validity of testimony as a source of knowledge, and the keynote address was given by a professor from Hawaii who earned his PhD from and taught at Oxford in England. I was actually able to chat with him for a bit after a paper presentation and we started to discuss the evasiveness of the Indian agrarian suicides in the media. This was extremely ironic, as I did a little research into the topic this fall when I was writing another paper on Polish agriculture. Furthermore, it seems to be the perfect subject matter for a research project in my Agricultural Economics course. So if anyone reading this has any information on the suicides or their coverage in the media please send it my way! (AliJ_23@hotmail.com)

My other courses—International Relations, Thought and Culture of India and Theory of Yoga—are extremely interesting as well. Workloads are notably lighter than back home—the courses have 3 exams max, with one thrown out(!!). Predictably, though, the lectures here take much more energy; you can’t let your mind wander for a second, because their accents are so thick that you only catch 50% of the words anyway. In one of my courses, the notes written on the board are completely illegible (a hybrid of Telugu/English I think??) as well. It’s a workout though—a good exercise in mind control! Luckily the Econ and Yoga courses are the only ones where all of the material is new though.

The other students are extremely nice—I hope I can manage to actually befriend some. It’s difficult, as the ladies hostels and the international house are on opposite ends of the campus. I’m thinking about joining a sports team though, if I can find the time!