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India is an interesting country. If I were from an earlier time, I think “queer” would be a great word for it. The woman who tends the garden outside my window makes about 70 Rs./day. I’ve so far averaged to be spending about 100-120 Rs./day, and I think I’m spending a lot until I notice a wallet stuffed to the gills with 500 and 1000 Rs. notes. (Note to the reader: 1 rupee (Rs) is about 2 cents). The place I’m staying at would be likely costing me 500-1000 Rs/night, or more if I were to be paying all my own way. It makes me feel funny to think about not just that I’m making more than someone, but just how crazy well-off I am.

Alex told me to “live like a pimp.” I probably will… once I’m not in neighborhoods where I’m stepping over cow dung in the street while children play on a pile of trash piled up so high against their house they can roll a wheel up to the roof. On the flip side, I can get a samosa and an orange Fanta for 26 rupees. If you’re paying attention to the titles of my previous posts, the Fanta is 20 Rs., thus leaving a very tasty samosa for 6 Rs. (12 cents, for those keeping score). Final verdict: In the slums, I’m going to take advantage of my relative wealth while not being an ass about it. They need the rupees more than I would like a Fanta, so everyone wins there. Once I get out to the better off bar district, I can do as Alex requests

Leaving by the main, south entrance to the institute takes me out onto a busy street lined with barbed-wire concrete walls for miles. However, this morning I discovered The Back Entrance, to the north. Walking out there, I managed to discover the fore mentioned street poo and the children with the trash heap. I also discovered a busy many blocks of little shops, including the one I got my Fanta and samosa from. There’s also a few Airtel and Vodafone shops there I’ll probably get a cheap (1200 Rs) pay-as-I-go phone to use around town.

The IIS campus (a.k.a. “The Tata Institute” to local cabbies) is almost something out of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The crew beams down to a planet, where everyone speaks decent-enough to flawless English, and everything’s the same as Back Home, But Different. Where they bother with landscaping, it’s lovely. Where they don’t, it’s native jungle that hasn’t been cleared away (their “quad” is a thick forest with some walking paths through it). All the women here are wearing saris. All the women. Sometimes it feels like a restored university in the Fallout universe- almost everything’s rusty, and there are Random Concrete Things just off the beaten path through the forest that suggest there might have been a building or something large there. There are other walking paths that trail off into nothing, with a set of broken-down stone stairs set into a small hillside… simply in the middle of nowhere. It’s as if the institute simply picked its battles with time and budget… and Time here is not one to be trifled with lightly.