[February 3, 1999 @ B57 Inn in Delhi, next door to Pradeep’s Delhi residence]

[19:38]     This morning and early afternoon, 10:30-13:00, we (Sucheta, Pradeep and I) had an excellent presentation in the auditorium of the Motibagh School to about 300 girls and about 5 boys from the neighbouring school, with Sucheta doing the introduction, I the main slideshow and Pradeep some kind of epilogue.  Both theirs were done in Hindi, but I did catch one or two key words such as “China”, “1949” (the year my family escaped from China right before the total Communist take-over), “mining” (my field work) and “physics” (my university education).  Pradeep later told me that what he said was, “Anthony here is a Chinese Canadian who is rebelling against an old tradition, and I urge you as Indians to do the same.” – something like that.  Not bad.

     After the slideshow, we set up the Gigantic Tiger Cub in the football field, where another 2,000 kids formed lines to go inside.  At one point, Sucheta counted 150 kids in the cub, which is half-standing-room-only.  You really can stuff more people into the same space in India.

[23:06]     In spite of this morning’s presentation’s being again another huge and highly photogenic success, there was still the same short-coming – no media.  I have requested both Pradeep and Sucheta to please call those media I have sent packages to.  A big fat ZERO up to this point. 

     When I finally confronted Pradeep on the lack of media, he said that he will invited all the media to the Tiger Walk.  I replied that we can and should get media to cover the schools, as well as the Tiger Walk.  I have no idea if media was present at the Sri Ram and Frank Anthony Schools. 

     Craig, who is flying back to Washington DC tonight after three weeks with Pradeep, took umpteen photos of the event, and groaned when he heard what Pradeep said, saying to me in private, “This is one of the biggest missed media opportunities I’ve ever seen.”  He, however, will put our Gigantic Tiger Cub and the hoards of bright-eyed Indian school kids into his new brochure to show how his new Wild India Tour would benefit the tiger – a good move on Craig’s part, which should also suit Pradeep just fine in terms of using Tiger Trust to promote Dynamic Tours.