Hello all, Hope you don’t mind this joint mail. But with having so much to tell and so limited net access, this is the best that can be. anasuyadi said that accepting this job would be like an adventure to me and her words were that of a prophet. A lot of people told me it is only a 1 hr flight from Kolkata to Silchar. But few told that I would have to take a two-hour journey through a long and winding road to reach the town and another one and half hour nausea inducing journey to reach the university. One of the professors in the economics department opined that the British people built these roads with vengeance to unsettle our poor Indian stomachs. Honestly, this journey is unbelievable. First you go through the city, which by the way is unbelievably dusty. Just to prove how dusty it is, people sigh and tell how "clean" Agartala and Kolkata (???!!!) is. The roads and in even more wretched condition : not a single road that is not broken,open drainage, no foot path and let’s not get into the condition of traffic. And people keep telling me with a wise smile "wait till you see the rainy season". Last year boat was the only means of transport for most of the time from March through October. Anyway, after going through the city, you enter the villages, then the paddy fields, forests, tea gardens, burning ghats and go through some unbelievably dangerous unfinished bridges on the way. In the meantime you are going up the hill often with stiff mountain on one side and sharp gorge on the other. For the first few days I just sneezed my way up and puked my way down and lost weight and hair rapidly. And my colleagues keep telling me that it was worse. Things have ‘drastically improved’ in the last year. Let me also enlighten you about the modes of transport (when it does not rain i.e.). You have choices between a bus that is so crowded that you will be crushed and a Sumo which will carry14 passengers inside and equal number on top. On the second day itself my Sumo stopped in front of the third of those bridges, there was some commotion. On coming down, I found out that the bridge is broken. The conductor sweetly asked me to go down up to the river (which would be about two-story building downwards) and cross the river and come up on the other side and there will be Sumos on the other side. I must have looked terribly puzzled, so he assured me that the "water is not even knee deep". "this was not in my job description" I thought, " that I will have to swim and trek my may to workplace". Just about that time I met one of my students he said that’s a reasonably regular occurrence. Nothing to worry about, just no classes today and the days to follow. Lets go into the University campus now. It is in a word "breath-taking", both literally and figuratively. Literally because, yes, it is the most beautiful university I have seen — red single storied structures for departments placed on hillocks and vales with one or two bigger buildings for library, administrative blocks etc. it has 100 acres of forest in its compound as well. (However, the university area could use more trees, I have heard they have cut down too many here.) The university is figuratively breath taking as going from one department to another, or from a department to the library and sometimes even to the loo would require climbing up and down uncountable steps and you will end up out of breath*. Among good things my department’s got a brand new computer, no net connection though. As for the rest, the registrar told me to prepare myself for "shocks" and all I can say is that the shock treatment is on. But I am holding on.Hope the rest of you are doing fine .
