Mount Everest, Housing Extension, and Performing Arts Festival: March 15 to 21

On 3/15, Cathy O’Dowd, the first woman to climb Mount Everest from both sides, came to campus as a guest speaker. She talked mostly about her first ascent of Everest in the mid-1990’s when she was part of the first South African team to ever climb the mountain. The main theme of her talk was the importance of a strong team and strategies for dealing with uncooperative team members or difficult situations that might arise during a project. One of the key steps that her climbing team from South Africa took was to include the porters in all their key decisions and treat them as equal members of the team; everyone carried loads and the porters were asked to share their inputs when there were difficult decisions to make. The porters get paid for how high they climb; to save money, many teams leave the porters at camp 4, the final camp before the summit, or sometimes even lower on the mountain. O’Dowd’s team assured their porters that they could climb to the summit, even if all of the South Africans were not able to make it. This inclusion and motivation were key to the team’s success as they faced bad weather and some frustrating team dynamics.

After the talk, O’Dowd was doing a book signing. I knew that I probably did not need another book to read—I am currently working through two—but I had enjoyed her talk so decided I should at least look at the book. The book was a paperback with a poor-quality cover photo; the colors were not vivid and the printing was a little off so that in places there were bits of two images. I soon discovered why the cover was of comparatively poor quality: the book had been printed in India and was being sold for a mere 300 Rupees. At this price, I decided I should buy the book. When is the last time you went to a speaker and bought a signed copy of their book after the event for less than $5? If the book had been the standard price of $15-25, there would have been very few sales, so the Indian printing company understandably compromised on cover quality to meet the necessary price point. This incident follows my ongoing observation that in India things work well and are cheap, whether or not they look nice, while in the US things look nice and are expensive, whether or not they add any value over the cheap Indian alternatives. This includes sidewalks, soap dispensers, painting, books, sandals, food quality, and a host of other items I interact with daily.

The next day, I went to the hall manager to ask about extending my housing on campus for another month. I had been directed to the hall manager by the academic office, whom I had visited the previous week to formally extend my project work. I had expected this hall manager meeting to involve a lengthy explanation of why my project was extended and a thorough investigation of my paperwork from the academic office. Instead, he instructed me to simply send an email to the academic office (whom I had already communicated with in person) stating that I would like to extend my current housing one month. I sent the email to the academic office and got a response to the effect of “Thank you for informing us of your housing extension,” as if I had not talked to them previously about this. This bureaucratic process was surprisingly easier than I had expected it to be. I am now more confused than I was before about who is in charge of campus housing. Regardless, I now have my room on campus until my visa ends in late May.

On the 17^th, Shilpa and I traveled to Pune with Professor Sardeshpande to visit a manufacturer that is going to help build test setups for our projects that we can run on campus at IIT Bombay. We first went to Professor Sardeshpande’s home where his wife, who works on solar concentrator experiments at a government lab in Pune, prepared us a delicious breakfast of poha, fried gram flour, chutney, and cantaloupe. Poha is quickly becoming one of my favorite breakfast foods; it is made of puffed rice, turmeric, onion, coriander, and peanuts. Poha is one of the less spicy Indian dishes; it tastes nice and is a great break from spicy food every once in a while. We also met Professor Sardeshpande’s 8-year-old son who beat us down the four floors from the apartment to the car by racing down the stairs while we rode the elevator and who tried to surprise his mother by hiding on the floor of the front seat before she got into the car. In general, my college life is void of interaction with children—it was nice to get a little reminder of how kids act, as it is easy to forget.

After our return to Mumbai via Blabla car, a carpool ride-sharing app, I went to my first rehearsal for the PAF (Performing Arts Festival). I learned a bit about my role and went back to sleep, as my script was not quite ready yet. There are three PAFs, each a drama-music-dance collaboration of students from six hostels. PAF is judged by a panel, who watch the show then inspect every inch of the set after the performance. By the time I joined the group for PAF#1, they had already been rehearsing for weeks. I would be playing two short roles, one as a foreigner named Peter Prasad that had made his home in India, and the other as “Tourist 2,” whose role is self-explanatory.

On Saturday night, I to PAF rehearsal in the evening and learned just what PAF is all about—staying up all night to rehearse for many days in a row. On this night, I was one of the first to leave at around 3:30am when we finished our run-through of the show. At around 1:00am, a cardboard box full of parathas and packed with newspaper had been delivered along with a sugary “juice” drink in a large pot to keep everyone full. In the US, this late-night food would be cheap pizza and two-liter sodas, not parathas and what is basically sugar-water. It was interesting to see the after-midnight food of choice for Indian students working into the wee hours of the night.

The next two days consisted of rehearsing all night and sleeping away most of the day; the next two nights of rehearsals ran from around 4:30pm-4:00am and 10:00pm-5:00am. The setup (lighting, sound, sets) for theatre shows are often running late and get completed at the last minute, but Indian performances seemed to take it to the next level. In addition to the 30 or so dancers, 10 actors (each with a voice-over), and 10 musicians, there were over 60 people on the production crew who were in charge of building the incredibly elaborate sets. Operations often run less efficiently when there is a huge group of people, and the PAF rehearsals were no exception. It seemed like there were always too many things going on to gather everyone together for a run-through or announcements.

Finally the day of the performance had come, and the stage was still many hours from being completed. We had planned to do a full run-through of the show in the afternoon before the 8:30pm performance, but there was no time, as the production crew was frantically finishing the decorations. The OAT (Open Air Theatre), which seats around 500 people, was close to full for the performance. I will attach a link to the video of the performance once it is uploaded to YouTube. It was thrilling to be on stage—the lights, the audience, the beautiful sets. I participated in a staged reading of a new musical in December 2015, but since that time have not been on stage, other than for band concerts. The other actors I was working with in my scenes were great, and we performed very well. My scenes flew by—I barely remember being on stage, just the moments before my lines began and the moment I was walking off stage. After climbing off the stage following my final scene, I got to go and watch the remainder of the performance from the audience. It came together nicely; everyone performed well, especially our dancers. The audience added the reactionary element to the show that we had never had during rehearsal. I joined the dancers and the rest of the actors out in front of the stage for the final dance. I am very glad that I was given the opportunity to perform in the PAF and am anxious to see the video once it is posted.

At the risk of further increasing my blog writing deficit, I will conclude this post here. More coming soon.