Ramjas College: Failure to Communicate

Greetings, everywhere-friends and family.

I've been quite busy when I got back from Paris (and was sick for a while), so sorry for the lack of updates. (I figured after the last two book-length ones, I'd give you a break as well.) I was going through pictures on my Canon today, though, and I discovered that I had a story there that never made it to my computer!

The last day of classes at Ramjas college was officially March 23. I went there (alone, as my roommate decided to sleep in) for my political theory class, and there was exactly one other boy in the classroom. After about five minutes, I turned to him and said, "We're not having class today, are we." More statement than question. Boy: "Political theory? No, not today." And he goes back to looking at his notebook.

I do a double-take. "Not today? Do we have it some other day? Rahul-sir [what the Indian students call him] told me in an email last week that today was the last class, and that he wasn't canceling any more classes." (After showing up to an empty classroom the week before, I sent a terse email to my professor asking if he could kindly inform me in advance when he was not going to show up.) "No, there's no class today, but tomorrow we will take class. That is the last one," the boy responds.

Great. 

The next morning, my roommate and I trek up to Ramjas for class, and we're greeted by an empty campus, since it's the equivalent of reading period back home. I documented this day until my batteries died in my camera. This is the hallway outside our classroom:

And this is the door to the classroom where we were supposed to be:


Something seemed a little off to me. I had a hunch that something was up. To test my superior detective skills, I peered in through the (very dirty) window, and this is what I saw:


Usually, in order for the classroom setting to be beneficial, the situation requires at least one student and one teacher. My suspicion was confirmed: this classroom contained neither inside its walls with peeling paint. Rachel and I were not pleased. The janitor sweeping the floor looked like he thought we were crazy.

Either the boy from the day before neglected to mention some minor detail along the lines of change of time or location, or he lied to me. Or class was cancelled again and I wasn't informed again.

Whatever the case may be, I'm not entirely sure what day was my last day of class at Ramjas. I've gone a couple times to meet teachers before, but that's because the month of April is an "independent study", which means writing a paper that is the sole basis of my grade for each of those classes.

Anyway, we walked downstairs and looked down another hallway of the (only) academic building. It was lovely and deserted, too. At least it looks pretty and tropical, though!


This is the sidewalk in front of that building. If you turn left at the end, you're at the main gate, and if you turn right, you can walk to the canteen and the hostels.


Instead of having classes, the students we saw on campus were putting up all of these signs:

I waited until a boy finished dusting this before taking a picture. (Yes, he was dusting a poster board that had just been put up.)

On the walk back to the metro station, we go through the main drag of the North Campus of Delhi University, which is a cluster of little colleges like Ramjas. But the walls along that stretch are prime advertising space, and this obviously environmentally-conscious student group decided it was necessary to wallpaper several panels of this wall with flyers for an event hosted by the National Campaign for Combating Terrorism. The best part about this phenomenon (which is not unique to this one event) is that usually these hundreds of flyers are put up at most 24 hours before the event. Usually, it's the same day.

However, spring is in Delhi, which means that pretty flowers whose names I don't know make walking around more enjoyable and pleasing to the eye. My favorite part of the flora during this walk is a giant conglomeration of trees and vines that spills over the wall creating a canopy above the sidewalk. When the vines all burst into bloom with different colored blossoms, it got even better.


Spring is over in Delhi now. Currently, it's plain old hot. It's supposed to be in the low 100s for the rest of the week. I don't call that spring.

We had a fantastic thunderstorm (with intensely appreciated rain) last week. I stood up on the terrace watching the storm one late afternoon, and it was so refreshing. It wasn't supposed to happen, though; Delhi isn't supposed to get rain like that until the middle of May. Hooray climate change in action.

***

In other news, I wrote two fifteen-page papers in eight days. Aside from taking time away from playing in the sun, it was actually quite reassuring that my brain still functions in an academic manner and that I was finally able to find the resources I needed in order to complete the research. (I'll save that story for another day - how impossible it is to find books in this city.)

I'm starting to get all anxious that I only have three weeks left in India (three weeks minus one day now, actually). I've decided that I'm going to make time in my schedule to do at least one fun and preferably new thing every day between now and when I leave, since I don't think I'll get to go on anymore trips outside of Delhi. (Some adventures will be to places I've already been but that I feel are necessary to revisit. Some will be to places I kept saying I was going to visit but never ended up actually doing.)

Today is Baisakhi, the beginning of the solar year. It's a Punjabi harvest festival and also a holy day for Sikhs. This will be my new and exciting event for the day; the taxi is picking me up in an hour to go to the India Habitat Centre for a Baisakhi celebration. I imagine it will be something along the lines of the Lohri festival way back in January, but with more bhangra! :)