Ideas and Conversations

Morning, September 21--beat the alarm up, need to get some ideas down



I'm still a little sick--probably the fruit I ate. This always happens, I've been told, to newcomers. Just puts a kink in the workout schedule. Feel much better than I did this weekend.



I've been having a lot of conversations with people and wanted to summarize the content--some of this will be for my doctorate which I hope to start in the summer--but much of this is just processing and trying to understand all that has experienced. I invite comments especially for where I may have made generalizations that are inaccurate. My perspective is limited, but I am trying to understand this new place.

• The need for education: education is a means transcend problems of poverty, especially in the rural areas. If the population is better educated than this will help build a more equitable society and ease some of the problems experienced in India today. A couple people have wondered what will happen once the population becomes more prosperous and comfortable, though--will the tolerance and more group oriented mindset be diminished?


• The Indian education system: most people have talked with me about how Indian schools make for wonderful engineers, but not necessarily great creators or innovators. They go on to say that a lot of time and energy is spent on rote memorization and drilling for exams. One man, an engineer by training, stated that he could easily tell you the formulas and calculations to solve a problem, but not how they work or why they work. Some have gone so far to say that once this is addressed, then India will be the dominant economy. If this is combined with a more affluent and educated society, there may be fewer Indian professionals seeking employment outside of India.


• Religion: This is a tricky one to get my head around. Temples surround us as well as emblems and symbols of faith. While religion is not far from people's minds or reality--my students commenting that their belief that form matters more in poetry than emotion comes from their grounding in the couplets found in sacred texts, pigment on the body every day , acceptance of a new place (how do you feel about Chennai I asked a breakfast companion, "It is a city of God, and since God made it who am I to judge--it is and I accept it."--I had just met this person a moment ago)--there is also a frank secularism among some students and a tremendous amount of tolerance. This city has large temples, mosques and a basilica crammed into--despite what the population figure might indicate--not a very large place. In the autobiography of Adbul Kamal--the former president of India and father of their rocketry program--he discussed how a new teacher in his childhood separated him from his best friend in class because he was a Muslim and his friend was a Hindu. The father of the friend was the priest at the local temple and confronted the teacher, castigating him for spreading intolerance. I've been told more than once as well that it is not the religion of an individual that matters but the content of their character--this being linked to the primacy of relationships and some of the day-to-day hardships. You accept the person because you share in the difficulties and rely upon each other. If they are a good person, they are a good person--you participate in each other's festivals because they enrich your life, bring community together and they are part of your friend.

Need some sleep. Still recovering. I am learning a lot.