India update

I’ve been in India a few days now and the jet lag is mostly faded. It’s about right now (noon), when my body says it’s 3am! WTF are you doing awake? Much less working?! that I start to fade and I get a bit nauseated before I bounce back and out of it. I swear this was easier when I was younger.

I’ve spent the last few days reconnecting with Delhi in unexpected ways. My hotel this trip is in Green Park, a stone’s throw from where I spent two months in 2008. So yesterday I went to visit Evergreen sweet shop and sat under the freezing cold air conditioning with a cup of masala chai at the Cafe Coffee Day. Or the Barista. Or one of the other myriad essentially identical coffee shops in Delhi that serve super sugary American-style drinks and pastries. 

This is how you get sick, by the way. You go out, it starts raining, you sweat trying to get inside, so you’re wet from the rain and from sweating and then you sit under air conditioning that even a penguin would feel chilled by and voila, monsoon virus! Or something like that. I think that’s how it goes.

What else? I had lunch at a friend’s house, whose sister I know from graduate school, and got a hot-oil head massage, which did an awesome job of clearing the jet lag fog. Hmmm, perhaps I need another one of those. I’ve been trying to get some exercise and yesterday found myself in Deer Park, still in my kurta and leggings, having switched out my sandals for tennis shoes, speedwalking around the park before dark. I’ve become one of those ladies. (See, #oldandtired, I couldn’t even be bothered to change!)

At any rate, tomorrow (Thursday) is our BCURE policy dialogue on Economic Growth and Environmental Protection at the University of Chicago Center in Delhi. I’ll be tweeting about it and I’ll write more about it later, but BCURE is one of the big initiatives that EPoD has in India and Pakistan and is expanding (I think) to countries around the world. It’s a really cool program to partner with governments and civil society organizations on their data and program evaluation needs, connecting needs with creative minds. I’m excited to see how it works.

Author: ekfletch

I am an independent researcher on issues of gender, labor, violence, education, and children. View all posts by ekfletch