My first lecture!

Along with the other stuff, they brought cereal for breakfast the past couple of days, some kind of choco-somethings that I avoid back home. I had a few the first day just to have some of the steamed milk. But the second day I ignored the cereal and just drank the milk. It was soooo good. The only other place I’ll get it is in my tea, but I crave more!

Good friend Dr. Nirmal is finally back from his conference in China. He’s turning into quite the international celebrity, the fellow everyone turns to in the world of ecocriticism! Sounds like he had a very successful time there—they even named him as one of the Organising Committee members. Good to have him back, and he’s already invited me home for dinner tomorrow night. It will be delightful to have (be?) company—well, not to eat alone in the guest house dining room. Now that my paper is done, I can give myself permission to leave my monastic cell now and then, on my own recognizance, of course. With a little luck, Nirmal can give me some feedback on my paper. It’s the first time I’ve dabbled in ecocriticism, and I’m terrified I might embarrass myself. If anyone can tell me if I’m on the right track, Nirmal is the man.

Well, if it wasn’t true before, it is now. I gave my first lecture this morning, so I must truly be an official MCC faculty member. I’m figuring out where the faculty hangouts are, in the faculty lounge and the philosophy office, and I’m getting more invitations to just come and hang if I’m lonely—I even got one from the principal. I will have to take him up on that some day, though I’m not going to hog his time beyond “Hi” and his asking how my stay is going. But who knows? He might relish the distraction.

So I think I managed to find a lecture topic of interest to philosophy students—Music and Expression. As I told them right up front, I was going to ask a lot of questions but provide very few answers. If philosophy students can’t deal with that, they’re in the wrong area of study! What can or can’t music express, how have musicians answered that question throughout history, and so on. And after playing an example without any background information and asking what the music expressed (March to the Gallows from Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique—a setup, of course), I asked them to tell me what they heard. And as expected, while they used similar words and adjectives to describe the music, no one could have guessed the detailed programme Berlioz had in mind. The result would have been no different with my students back home. And from there on to concepts in linguistics, music as a language, comparisons between musical and written/verbal languages, music and meaning, physiological studies, and studies of the brain. It was well received, and students had many very thoughtful questions, and conversation continued into the hall afterward. A good start!

In the next few days Gabriel will have my lecture schedule fixed through the end of the first semester (in October, remember!). That will make it much easier to map out my time, squeeze in a few walks or even short trips off campus.

When I got back to the guest house after tea, I was surprised—first by a kolam with each section filled in with brightly colored flower petals (see my Flickr Photostream below), and second by a large group of students gathered for some function in the dining room. The were very well dressed, and some of the women were wearing the traditional white saris from Kerala. Turns out some Public Administration students from Kerala were hosting a celebration of Onam, one of the major festivals there…and I was invited to be an honored guest! So there were songs and games, the lighting of the flame (they asked me to light one wick), a speech by Dr. Benjamin, head of the PA department, snacks, a short video about the festival, and so on. And since they were also celebrating Teacher’s Day (national or regional? I’m not sure which), I even received a small gift along with the other faculty members present (either someone didn’t show, or they whipped it up in a hurry—unless someone let them know ahead of time I’d be showing up at some point). Little and big surprises around every turn here. If there’s a theme for my visit so far, it would have to be “Surprised by Hospitality.” Having been here on four previous visits and thinking I know what to expect does nothing to change the element of surprise…and gratitude!