Travels with Tavish

Pre-monsoon rainstorm We began the day on 5/25 with a drive to IIT-Kharagpur, the oldest Indian Institute of Technology and the alma mater of Professor Ganguly. During a rest stop a few hours into the drive, it started to rain. Then it continued to rain even harder. A 15-foot walk outside was required to get to the restroom—I was soaked after completing the round-trip journey. The winds had picked up at this point as well. Sheltered under the tin and ceramic roof of the large restaurant, we watched and listened as ceramic tiles flew off the roof and crashed on the ground near parked cars. Our bus had moved away from the building to avoid falling branches. In the roof above where we were standing, two holes about the size of small dinner plates were ripped open in the tin. Dust was swirling around the whole enclosure and getting in our eyes. A window shattered in the kitchen and the cooking fires briefly blew out of control. The whole pre-monsoon rainstorm was over in about ...

For dinner on Sunday 5/22, I went to a street food restaurant down the road from the hotel with Udit, Rose, and a couple other students. We tried the dhai puri, pav bhaji, and the Manchurian noodles. Puri is a fried crispy spherical shell of dough into which different foods and spices are placed. Dhai means “curd,” so the dhai puri had a yogurt-like sauce with many spices. The taste is hard to describe because there are between 10 and 15 items added on top of the puri shell that together encompass all tastes and textures. A plate of 6 cost 70 rupees. The pav bhaji was my favorite dish at this restaurant. It is made of potato mashed and mixed with many spices. The end result is a soupy red mixture served with a buttered roll. The pav bhaji was made right in front of me on a large hot plate. The first ingredient was a lot of butter, then some onions and other flavorings. The potato was added, the mixture cooked for a while, then finally put into the tray; another sizeable portion o...

We began the day on Friday 5/20 with an academic panel discussion with four professors from IIT-Bombay. The first speaker talked about the state of inequality as it relates to access to electricity in India. Next we heard a detailed lecture about the climate science of the Indian Summer Monsoon. This was followed by an interesting talk about urban planning and finally a brief discussion of the Solar Cell research being undertaken at IIT-Bombay; this final talk was given by Professor Auroop Ganguly’s brother, Swaroop Ganguly. After eating a quick lunch at the hotel due to time constraints, we attempted to go the the Sanjay Gandhi National Park to see the Mithi River in its pristine state. The Mithi River runs 15km from the national park through the heart of Mumbai. The state of its well-being has been neglected by the Indian government for too long—it is heavily polluted for much of its course. Untreated sewage and trash litter the river as it runs through the Dharavi slum. Mumb...