May 22: Observations

In many ways, being in India has allowed me to become a better listener and observer. In a foreign land, one’s senses are heightened to accommodate the repertoire of different sights and sounds around.

In the morning, it is already bright by 6.15 am and the air is relatively still with a hint of breeze in the absence of the intense morning heat when the clouds part after 8 am. When you walk out of the dormitory to catch the shuttle bus to work, you will hear the automatic sprinklers hum as they water the lush greenery of trees, shrubs, and plants that has become a distinct feature of the STC landscape. In some areas, you will even be greeted with a sea of red, yellow and pink flowers seating on beds of well-groomed bushes. A fresh aroma of nature permeates in the air. It is really wonderful in the morning.

The weather here can be rather extreme and unpredictable. Near the highway, the traffic kicks up a constant cloud of coarse sand and the penetrating heat makes it difficult to be outside in the open. However, the brief rains for the past 2 days brought some respite from the heat and temperatures have dropped from as high as 42 Degrees Celsius to slightly over 30.

In the night, the air remains still and dry from 7 to around 11 pm. On some days when the temperature drops further to the mid-20s, it becomes a pleasure to walk around the STC with the cool breeze and the uniform canopy of trees providing much shade to students making their way to the dormitory from the main learning centres. There’s also the usual chirping of the cicadas and just the other day, I saw fireflies coming out to play near a mangrove tree at a corner of the STC.

The best time to take a stroll however would be after midnight because the campus will be virtually empty and just by being around amidst all this nature provides space for the mind to think and reflect. Once in a while, you can hear the usual rowdiness of the South African employees (nice and friendly bunch of people) at the canteen having their suppers consisting of Maggie noddles and fried eggs on toast with milk. On other days, you see couples speaking in hush tones and strolling slowly from the canteen back to the main reception block or to more secluded spots around the dormitory.

I’ve also started to catch up on my much-awaited readings. Apart from the few articles that I can access on The Straits Times website, there’re feeds from The Economist and TIME in my email, as well as local news from newspapers like the Hindu Times. And there’s also Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat and Joseph Stigliz’s Making Globalisation Work (both focus on the theme of development and outsourcing and make good work-related readings), as well as Benazir Bhutto’s autobiography Daughter of the East, a heart-wrenching anecdote of her life that mirrors the turbulent life of Pakistan and its people.

I would love to provide some excerpts and key pointers from these books. More to come when there’s more time.