I’ve arrived in Gujarat, a coastal state in northwestern India that borders Pakistan. I spent my first day at the conference yesterday, which was nice – but somehow it is hard for a medical conference to measure up after you’re used to the excitement of traveling the countryside, seeing ancient marvels and World Wonders.
This medical conference is very similar to medical conferences in the USA, except that it has a leisurely tea break of delicious chai with cookies in the afternoon, and the conferencegoers seem to have a different standard of etiquette with technology than what we are used to in the States. Every few minutes, some ringtone will peal out from part of the conference hall, which is not unlike conferences in the USA, except that here, people actually answer the phones and start having a conversation with whoever is calling them, during the conference, whereas at home people usually either try to clandestinely sneak out the door or just slouch in their seat looking heavily embarrassed.
Last night, we were taken out to a ‘faculty dinner’ that was held at some princely estate in the farmlands around Vadodara. We had been driving for about 45 minutes on the way to this place when some canny person noticed that we were driving through nothing but trees and appeared to be in the middle of nowhere, and asked the driver if he knew where we were going. He admitted that he did not, and what better time to learn that than 45 minutes down the road?
We eventually were able to end up at the right place, and it turned out that we would be eating outside in a grassy courtyard, or, more precisely, that the mosquitoes would be dining on us there. The evening began with a Hindu prayer ceremony, in which several elderly women in saris sat on an altar and lit candles and chanted loudly and wailingly for a very long time. It was charming but strange. We sat in a circle around the altar, and waiters brought us small appetizers. As they came by with the appetizers, they would tell us if the dish was vegetarian or not, only with their accents, it sounded like they were either saying ‘wedge’ or ‘non-wedge’. I was very excited every time a ‘wedge’ appetizer came by – they included chilly paneer, cheese omelet, cheese naan, and also something that the waiters called ‘Mexican dish’, which was like a miniature pizza topped with corn, except instead of a miniature pizza crust it had a miniature crunchy pie crust. I cannot do it justice with words. It looked sketchy and sounds even worse, but it was actually tasty.
After the lengthy prayers ended, a magic show began. Yes, a magic show with a real live magician wearing a top hat and suit. He had a table stacked with all sorts of props, and kept performing this lame trick where you pull a feather duster type thing through another object (like a hollow cylinder) and it changes color. He had numerous other tricks that were of equally dubious impressiveness, like throwing regular size cards into a box and pulling out big cards. My favorite trick was that he put this rabbit hand puppet on, and pretended the rabbit puppet was his baby, and made it pretend to drink a bottle of milk. Only it was one of those trick bottles, so that after it appears to be empty, you can turn it back rightside up and it appears full again. It was such a silly, bizarre trick. I kept applauding because I felt bad for the magician. Then one of the lights for the outside garden went out, and the magician was left in semi-darkness, and he stomped off with the air of: “I cannot work under these conditions!”
Dinner itself was fine and even included ice cream, and this very odd drink made of lychees and milk. We were out at dinner until extremely late.
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