July 7, 2021: The rains did not hold back today

July 7, 2021: The rains did not hold back today. Today was the first day of classes. For a decade, until 2020, I would be at Delhi’s T3 airport on July 7 greeting wide-eyed eager students from Wake Forest as they would embark on the five-week class with my family which I fondly called “Invisible India.” To take them into the heart of middle-class India – CR Park in Delhi, Salt Lake in Calcutta. Throw them into CA Market and have them pick out the live chicken for dinner, converting one student to eternal vegetarianism when the person realized “where chicken actually came from.” Live animals. But those happy days were snatched from me and many others. Today’s class on Communication and Technology started on Zoom. And I realized something that I had suspected all along – students would rather be online than in class. The academic industry hype is to claim that students want to be in the classroom. Maybe not. They want to leave home after high school in America and get the “college experience” which may not include going to a face to face class but involves actually learning things and earning the University “badge.” Interesting times will be upon us soon when in America the classes will start “normally” in the autumn. I pondered this as I started teaching this summer in a very different way from the experience of the class I so enjoyed teaching in India. It was a warm day everywhere except for the rain that made news in Calcutta. The lockdown has loosened as of today. A COVID-19 fatigue has set in, yet there is unevenness in all of this. A bondhu in Europe is grappling with the intricacies of flying to India from Portugal. Vaccination in India is still going through some hiccups. Americans are quite content with the condition armed with the vaccine. In the meantime, travel in India is busy. The airports appear busy, although there is a need to show test certificates at many points as one travels in India. Traffic in Calcutta is similar to LA. Bumper to bumper. The restaurant I ate at was busy and the lines for vaccination at the private clinic was long. All while monsoon returned with thundering glory as the sky over Calcutta was split with the electric storm as darkness fell on the city in the middle of the day. After a long time, had the experience of driving through waterlogged streets, there is a rare pleasure in that. A bondhu asked me if I could actually see anything when I was driving, especially with my eyes. In a strange way, I am so familiar with these streets, I know the exact turns and even where the potholes are hidden under the water. I drove like a pro. The rain continued through the evening as I fell into the gentle slumber that only nomads experience as time and space gets restructured by the technology of the airplane. Current day time travel, its as Pink Floyd once said, “Can't keep my mind from the circling sky Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit” learning to fly.