The Boy In The Bubble

Made it.  Landed around 8:30 and finally met the heavenly Sharada Nayak.  Just as she said she would, she was waiting to whisk us away to our lodgings at 59 Golf Links.   Unsolicited help with our luggage firmly rejected--don't mess with our cabbie.    40 minute drive through Delhi traffic--we're fully awake now.  In bed by 12:30 and up at 2:30--jet lag rocks and sleeping is for wimps.  Out and about at sunrise--Dell, you nailed it.  

Met with Sunil Kumar and Sharada at noon to go over housing arrangements for the students and discuss Sunil's agenda for Delhi--students and parents, the housing is excellent and the program is brilliant and exhausting.  I'm thinking if we live we'll have a lot of fun.

I'm feeling a bit like Jim Carrey in "The Truman Show."  Is this "real" or have we found ourselves in a ginormous bubble, part of a well scripted but highly implausible plot, directed by a mad genius with  a cast of oh, maybe a billion brilliantly ward-robed actors (good dialogue coaches--great accents) and with absolutely incredible special effects.  Cue the blast furnace-how do they do that?  Cue the soundtrack--love the constant car horns-and add the smells--the large retinue of dogs (and their doggy deposits placed randomly here and there and here) is especially clever and none, we assume, will be injured during this production.  Oh yeah, add a surprise and cue the mid-afternoon downpour that lasts an hour and backs up all the drains, pouring sewage onto streets and into basements--must have gotten that idea from Portland.   

We haven't quite figured out where this story is going, but after the first 24 hours, we're completely hooked--very clever stuff--not at all predictable.  For the time being TLC and I have decided to play along and pretend we don't know what they're up to and just see where it goes.

Off to Varanasi (Banaras) tomorrow to meet with Nita Kumar and discuss the month of October.  Now to bed--with Paul Simon on the soundtrack  "medicine is magical and magical is art and the boy in the bubble and the baby with the baboon heart and. . . "