Reflections on Things at Hand: Slovakia

Sadly, one of the biggest victims of the camera theft in Barcelona, besides a couple hundred extra pictures from China and the pictures of Barcelona itself, were all of my pictures from Slovakia. I passed through Slovakia a couple times during the summer odyssey. I flew into Bratislava on the way back from China, before catching a train up to Ruzomberok for a conference, and then catching another train on to Austria, before passing back through Bratislava on the way to catching a flight to Madrid. On the way to Spain I had a day to walk around downtown Bratislava, which I absolutely loved. Folks who complain about the expense of visiting Europe should consider Slovakia - much less expensive than neighboring Czech Republic, Austria or Hungary, but very beautiful - with loads of history. On the initial trip to Slovakia I was scheduled to speak at the Catholic University of Ruzomberok at a conference. I can state without any reservation that I have never, ever been treated so well at any conference. They were extraordinary - from answering all of my questions to picking me up at the train station to feeding me royally to taking all of the main speakers on a whirlwind tour of Slovakia after the conference to taking a detour on a late night, rainy trip to the train station so that I could say that I had visited Poland. Absolutely amazing. It's one of the places that I am considering for my sabbatical, and I can't imagine a more pleasant group of folks to spend a few months with. Ruzomberok itself is a fairly sleepy town, although it had just opened up a western coffee shop as well as a more western nightclub (both owned and run by one of the students at the university). The guy who ran the nightclub was great - he'd talk to you for a few moments and then order you a drink. You might then say that you wanted to drink something else, but he'd just shake his head and "your" drink would arrive - and, he was right, it was fantastic. The Catholic University of Ruzomberok is first-rate. Again, sadly, all the pictures are gone, with the exception of ones that my friend Janka sent me. On the last night (which I had photographed extensively) we were up in the mountains and ate at this little mom and pop restaurant - just an amazing group of folks (including a Dickens scholar who was kind enough to allow me to pester him endlessly about Dickensian subjects). It was one of those moments when you just realized that there would be few times in your life when you would be that completely satisfied. Here are some pictures that my friend Janka (she's the one in the hat) - along with pictures of Kathleen (an ex-pat from the US - the one standing behind me while I look like I'm meditating) and my good friend Katarina (in the black t-shirt). The last year has been pretty brutal, and that's one of those moments that recharged my batteries - I don't think I've had so much fun since the world was young.

Reflections on Things at Hand: CMC Vellore

I think that some people have an almost mystic connection to a place, and apparently for Scudders it is India. Of all the places I've ever visited it is by far my favorite, for any number of reasons. I'm a historian - and who has a more rich and varied history than India? Plus, there is a definite spiritual side to my nature that finds common ground with the deep spirituality of India. I don't try and gloss over all that is wrong with India - and lord know there is enough wrong there. I always think of India has a place that can make you cry twice within a block, the first time in wonderment and the second time in anguish. However, I think it is somehow deeper than that. There is a branch of my family that has been going to India for almost two year hundred years as doctors and missionaries, which is what led my father and I to make the epic train journey from Mumbai to Vellore in early July 2004. We wanted to visit the Christian Medical College and Hospital in Vellore (usually just referred to as CMC Vellore) in Tamil Nadu in southern Indiana. The hospital was founded by Ida S. Scudder, a very distant relative, around a hundred years ago. Apparently the story is that she was visiting her father, a missionary, and was unable to help out three women facing difficult labor (they could get no male medical assistance because of societal norms and at the time Ida had no training). Ida was horrified when all three of the women died, and she went home and graduated from medical school at Cornell. She then returned to India and set up a one bedroom clinic, and then kept expanding into the Christian Medical College was founded. It has since become a very well-respected hospital and medical school. My dad and I knew about the school and contacted them, and they were very excited to have us visit - even going so far as to have a special ceremony for us (even though we explained that we were from the other side of the family did not routinely produce doctors [although my dad is a physician] and missionaries). We took the train down and spent the night at a guest cottage associated with the hospital (and had the surprising comfort meal of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and vanilla ice cream with fresh mango). The next day we had a tour of the hospital, but, unfortunately, we cut the trip short so that we could make a wild trip across India to make it to the Taj Mahal for the 4th of July (another posting in and of itself). My father and I, and my half-sister Annie, would really like to make it back to Vellore for a more extensive tour, including their community work out in the villages. My father was really impressed with the facilities, and it led to an interesting discussion about how medical tourism is becoming a more popular option.

Reflections on Things at Hand: Paan

OK, so how can one talk about India without talking about paan - I mean, come on, there are only thousands and thousands of paan stands in Mumbai alone. Like a lot of things, both good and bad, I was introduced to paan by my wonderful friend Raj, and we never went anywhere that did not include a trip to a paan stand, and there always seemed to be one open no matter how late we were out. Raj was much more like to go for the more traditional paan, which was a betel leaf wrapped around an areca nut, and also a little tobacco thrown in. Raj swore that it was good for you, although he'd start sweating almost as soon as he popped it into his mouth. You'd leave it in your cheeks, much as you would with chewing tobacco. There were several varieties of paan, and also variations between the more amateurish efforts of clumsy paan merchants and the more skilled products from true paanwalas. My friend Al, being more manly than me, will get the more hard core paan - and even that has varieties based on the amount of tobacco involved (I can just see he and Raj now). To my eternal shame, I never advanced beyond "sweet" paan, which was the betel leaf flavored with, again, depending upon the vision of the different panawala, sugar or candied fruit or fennel seeds or coconut. It's not entirely a healthy habit, of course, as anyone who has seen the betel stained teeth and suffered through the endless spitting can attest. Still, it is undeniably Indian (although common in other parts of southeast Asia) and thus it holds a romantic appeal to me.

Reflections on Things at Hand: McDonalds in India

OK, so, as I've pointed out, I never actually go to McDonalds here in the States, but almost always make one trip to a McDonalds in every country when I'm overseas - I don't know whether its just general perversity or a desire to get a reminder of home. And, as I've stated before, a Big Mac meal always costs the same, whether it is in forints or shillings or dirhams or yuan. The biggest difference being that the $4.50 is much dearer in the other country, and is actually almost a status symbol as compared to a cheap lunch out. I'd heard that the beef in McDonalds sandwiches is a lot worse overseas, but I've never really noticed that - a Big Mac is a Big Mac is a Big Mac, which may or may not be a compliment, I suppose. Obviously, its a little different in India because you can't have beef in your Big Mac (just like you can't have pork in your Cincinnati style chili at the Chili House in Amman). Here's a nice sign from a McDonalds in India, which expresses the creativity of a beef-less burger.

Reflections on Things at Hand: Lunch in John's Office

One of the things I most looked forward to every day in India was lunch, and not simply because I love to eat. It was a meal that routinely and quietly reaffirmed that I was a member of the family. Sometimes we'd go out for lunch - and quite often Raj and I would be driving downtown to meet with businesses to set up internship opportunities for students or visiting local high schools to promote our Champlain College campus - but usually we'd just have lunch in John's office. I'd first walk across the street to the little shop (which was a shop only in the most technical use of the term - it was about five feet by five feet - and the owner sat on a stool behind the counter) to grab a Sprite - he was always very happy to see me. Back in John's office we'd spread out newspapers on his desk, and the local canteen on campus would send along food. The guy who ran the canteen was also the local neighborhood snake wrangler (so if someone found a cobra under their house they'd call him and he'd remove it) - he invited me to go with him to the annual snake festival at Pune (east of Mumbai), but, sadly, I had to fly out right before the event so I missed it. Don't make too much of the snake wrangler connection - the food was almost universally vegetarian, and as a Hindu he would avoid doing any harm to the snake. The lunch would usually consist of a few dishes which we ate with either rice or bread. The one constant was dhal (also spelled dahl and daal and dal), which is lentil-based and a staple of the Indian diet. My Indian friends would roll their eyes when the dhal showed up again, which meant that I got to eat almost all of it every day. I ate so many fantastic meals in India, but I may remember those everyday lunches in John's office most fondly.

Reflections on Things at Hand: My Dad's Birthday

As I discussed earlier, my father went with me for the first week and a half of the summer (2004) I spent teaching in India. He loved his time there, and has talked constantly of trying to get back - his daughter Annie really wants to recreate the train ride that we took across India. My Indian friends, naturally, treated him like royalty and could not have been kinder. While we were there he celebrated his birthday, and, of course, the Indians threw a party for him. The cake, no doubt arranged by dear friend Raj (a scoundrel with a heart of gold - more on Raj later), was supposed to have been a gift from Bollywood, the Indian film industry. A constant joke was that my dad would get hired off the street by some Bollywood agent to play a bad guy in a film (it does actually happen to visiting Americans occasionally). Hopefully we'll make it back there again. I've only been back once since that summer, and, obviously, I'm missing India.

Reflections on Things at Hand: Indian Goodbyes

As anyone who knows me knows all too well, I will cry at the drop of a hat - it's a classic Scudder trait, although, thankfully, I'm not as bad as my brother (who probably breaks down when there are changes in postage rates because he feels bad for the old stamps which are now ignored). It's nothing I'm ashamed of, and, truthfully, we should really all show our emotions more readily than we do. That said, I try to avoid putting myself in the position of blubbering in front of a large crowd. It's one of the reasons why I squashed all attempts to have a going away party when I left Georgia Perimeter College in Atlanta to move north - I let my friends know that if I even thought they might be putting something together I wouldn't show up (so I had this rule that I would go out for one on one lunches only). Someday when I leave Champlain I plan on passing through as a ghost - one day there will simply be no one in my office. This did not deter my Indian friends - John Neelankavil, Raj Nambiar, Rashmi, and my lovely students - from persevering despite my best efforts. I made it clear that there would be no party and I would be making no speeches. And so after my last class of the summer all my students walked out of the classroom, and then the entire campus walked in thirty seconds later. There was cake and pizza and student speeches and dancing and gifts - and the required farewell speech from me, although I didn't get much more out than "namaste" before I started crying too hard to continue. When John and Raj drove me to the airport it was so obvious that they were intent on carrying on this fast-paced, almost machine gun fast, discussion just to keep me distracted, so that I wouldn't break down again - and I didn't, until they drove away.

Reflections on Things at Hand: Aurangzeb's Tomb

Yes, back to India - must still be working through some karmic homework. Here are a couple pictures from the weekend that I took the sleeper bus from Mumbai up to Aurangabad. The weekend was a whirlwind, including seeing the holy caves, which I've written about before. One of the quicker stops on the tour was a visit to the tomb of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, who was a fascinating character. He is the one who overthrew his father, Shah Jahan, partially because of all the financial resources that Shah Jahan was spending on the construction of the extraordinary tomb for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal - the Taj Mahal. Having already seen the Taj Mahal, it was strange to see the tomb of the man who was so opposed to the splendor of it. Augangzeb was an incredibly devout Muslim and he reversed a lot of the religious toleration that had marked the reigns of the earlier Mughal rulers, especially that of the extraordinary Akbar. In much the same way that a very strict protestant might have been opposed to the luxury of the Catholic Church at its height, Aurangzeb was also appalled by the artistic flowering of the earlier Mughal rulers - so many of the painting were white-washed, etc. For this reason Aurangzeb isn't portrayed in too positive of a light historically - although at the end of his life he realized that he had gone too far. His final writing reflect a man who had, in his own way, tried to follow Allah's light, but who regretted the severity of his actions. As you might have expected from such a man, the tomb was essentially nothing - really just a shrub planted on top of a small bit of ground. The tomb was watched over by two guardians, one a charming and wizened old gentleman - and the other his young and blind apprentice. The younger man had memorized his speech on Aurangzeb's reign, which he presented quite beautifully, although he felt that he English was not very good - and he was very shy about having his picture taken - but his older teacher talked him into it, and obviously loved having the visitor.

Reflections on Things at Hand: PDA Overseas

One of the things that you first pick up when you travel overseas is the fact that interpersonal relationships are, obviously, much more subtle than they are in the U.S. For example, in many parts of the world - both India and the Middle East are great examples - you would be much more likely to see men holding hands or women holding hands than a man and woman holding hands (even if they're married). I remember on one trip to Jordan I had stumbled over to a conference to sign-in (I wasn't supposed to be presenting until the next day, and just wanted to take care of the formalities and figure out where I was scheduled to present - and then head back to my room to sleep because I was exhausted) when suddenly I heard someone calling my name. It was a professor I had been swapping emails with for months, but whom I had never actually met. Apparently he had done some Internet research (oddly, if you do a Google image search I pop up way too often) and knew me. He was very excited to see me and insisted that we go listen to the introductory address. So, in classic Arabic fashion, he grabbed my hand and off we went, hand in hand, for the long walk to the conference venue - I was having visions of that painful picture of former president George W. Bush walking hand in hand with the Saudi ruler - although I had a little better understanding of the culture so it didn't bother me. It's often said that in the Middle East every young woman has three mobile phones - the official one that her parents gave her, the "unofficial" one that she has to chat with her friends, and then the completely unacceptable one that some guy gave her. It's sort of like the post-modern equivalent of passing a note in class with the essential question: "Do you like me? Check yes or no." The story is that guys will walk up and drop the mobile phone in the girl's backpack or purse, and if she accepts it they are dating or at least considering dating. I remember visiting Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat, Oman one time and everything at the university was separated by gender and everyone wore very traditional garb and the boys and girls just passed each other like ghosts - unless you were watching very closely, in which you could pick up the remarkably subtle signs of social exchange and flirting. There is an avenue at the University of Jordan which is referred to as Sinners Street, because that's where the students go to smoke and hold hands. It was not nearly as restrictive in India, especially in a big city like Mumbai, but real obvious displays of public affection were rare. Here's a picture I took at the park next to my old apartment - figured it was OK to post it since it's six years old (grin). I guess it struck me at the time because the kid had a Vikings jersey on - so in some ways very western, but still being very discreet in carving off space to be with his girlfriend.

Reflections on Things at Hand: Train Travel in India

Yes, once again, I'm back focused on India. Maybe I do need to make it back there again soon - the sabbatical notion is starting to appeal to me. Right now I'm looking at Budapest and then Abu Dhabi, but spending another semester teaching in India sounds wonderful. It occurred to me that I had never posted anything on the trip that my father and I made to the Taj Mahal (he visited me for the first week and a half during the summer I spent in India). However, to get to the Taj Mahal story we first have to take a train trip, in completely the opposite direction. I've been fortunate enough to take train trips, including sometimes overnight sleeper trains, in Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Italy, Australia, China, Egypt and India - and I've enjoyed everyone of them, although often for completely different reasons. Maybe it's the romantic in me, but I love train travel - even at its most rustic. In July 2004 my father and I had determined to visit the Taj Mahal, which is in Agra, but first we were scheduled to visit Vellore in southern India. We were going there to visit a famous hospital that had been founded by a distant relative of ours, Ida Scudder (and that's another posting in and of itself). So, to make it to Agra, we embarked on a trip that started in Mumbai (our great friends John Neelankavil and Raj Nambiar made sure we made the right trains - we had made the arrangements in advance, so our names were on the outside of the compartments) and worked its way south to Vellore, and, after visiting the hospital, taking an absolutely crazy taxi ride to Chennai, catching a flight to Delhi, and then another taxi to Agra (but more on that later). The train trip from Mumbai to Vellore took around twenty-six hours and, all things considered, was very pleasant. The restroom facilties were just about what you would have expected them to be - there's nothing quite like sitting on the toilet, looking between your legs, and seeing the tracks below you. We were in a second class compartment, which meant that there were four fold-down beds - we only shared the space with one other person, which wouldn't have been a problem except for the fact that he wanted to go to bed around six p.m. (and in the process of folding down his bed he trapped my dad's camera against the wall, and we were quite relieved that it "reappeared" the next day when we pulled up the beds (we assumed it had been stolen). One of my fondest memories was waking up the next morning and seeing the expression on my dad's face as he stared out the window at the endless Deccan plateau. We would see these women walking with water pitchers on their heads, and you could see nothing in front of them and nothing behind them, and you had to wonder how many hours a day were devoted to something as seemingly simple as supplying water - it was one of those simple moments where it really hit home how difficult their lives were. My other memory is the soup guy who came by hour on the hour for over a day, chanting in this sing-song voice, "soup today, tomato soup, soup today, tomato soup, soup today, tomato soup . . ."

Reflections on Things at Hand: Australia

First India, and now Australia. Why have so many images from my past come flooding back into my head lately? With India it makes sense because I'm never very far away from India - it is just in my heart. Or, to use a more classically Indian example, I'm sort of like the monkey hero Hanuman from the Ramayana. At the end of the story Hanuman pulls his skin off to show that the word Rama is etched into every bone - I think I must be that way with India. Australia is a little different I suppose in that these reflections may be a result of a series of emails I've been swapping with my good friend Sally Totman from Australia. She's been a big supporter of the Global Modules from the very beginning, and was also kind enough to ask me to write a foreward for book on Hollywood and US foreign policy. Sally teaches at Deakin University in Melbourne, but she grew up in Sydney and tends to view living in Melbourne as a punishment. I, on the contrary, absolutely loved Melbourne. It was one of those places, much like Sweden, where from the moment I got off the plane I knew I could just live there - and it was all I could do to get back onto the plane (and it wasn't simply because of the day plus trip back - which did give me the mother of all jet lag experiences - for over a week I would wake up every morning at 1:30 and be up all night, even if I had stayed up until midnight in my failed attempt to beat it). I've only been to Australia once, sadly, when I presented at a conference in Melbourne in December 2006. I found the Australians just lovely - fun and warm and just as friendly as you've been led to belief. One of the great truisms of international travel is just follow the Australians - you will always run into them because they travel constantly (which defeats the silly American excuse for not travelling because we are too far away from everything) and they always have fun. I love the Australian saying I heard on that trip - "she'll be right, mate" - meaning simply, don't worry about it, it will work out. It was strange being there during the Christmas season since it was high summer. Several of the Australians I talked to complained about how Hollywood had messed them up because of all the movies about Christmas and winter time. It was really neat to stand in line outside a department store in downtown Melbourne, much like in A Christmas Story, and watch the animated displays - including one for the Australian classic adventure of Wombat Divine. It is also a very multicultural society, and my hotel was right next to Chinatown, so I had a lot of great meals (had a really nice lunch at the Post-Mao Cafe). One of my favorite experiences was taking a train outside of town (another advantage - like the Europeans, a great public transportation system) to a much smaller town. I stood on the edge of a rocky beach, looking south, and tried to wrap my head around the thought that, after you leap-frogged Tasmania, the next stop was Antarctica.