February 5, 1999, Friday, sunny, 6-20C

[21:45 @ B-57 Inn, Delhi]

     Over the last four days, it’s been one school slideshow presentation per day, all excellent in various ways and to various extents, but today’s presentation, given at Shri Ram Elementary School on Street D-3, Vasant Vihar, New Delhi, tops every other one so far in terms of connectedness with the students, their discipline, their attentiveness. 

     Sri Ram is one of the two “hidden” schools.  Apparently Pradeep changed his mind about this being a non-English speaking school and therefore it should be Sucheta who would give the slideshow.  This morning, he changed his mind and wanted me to give it instead.  Fine by me.  But in the beginning, seeing the age of the students (about 9 or 10), and the audience size (over 300) I gave an inner groan.  One thing I didn’t want was to shout in English while the kids chats among themselves in Hindi.  I thought about asking Sucheta to give the slideshow in Hindi as originally planned.  But after hearing the teachers talk to them in English, I decided to give them a try, and was astounded by the result.  The children were glued to my every word and gave me all sorts of great feedback.  The school was impressed enough to invite me back to talk to a more senior group in late March when I get back to Delhi.

     I have experienced Indian students enough to be able to say this.  They relate to me as if I were a star or even a minor god.  They gaze, they touch my hair, they look entranced when I lay my hand on they head, they crowd around me, they clamour for my autograph, they come in respectful groups to talk to me after my presentations.  Maybe my having come from a faraway place put a bit of a halo around my head.  Maybe my being on TV makes me in their eyes a little larger than life.  But one thing, through them I learned about myself, and about being human.  Most people would think that the more one is looked up to, the more proud one would become, and there is some truth to that, but according to my own experience, right now, it is also a humbling experience.  Why?  I have a lot to catch up to the image of me they have in created their minds. 

     But still, zero media.  Come on, Pradeep!  Speaking to the hundreds is a privilege; speaking to the millions is the must.

     Over the last two days, I’ve been concentrating on putting all the field journal entries to date into a single file for e-mail transmission to WCWC.  Finally, got it off this morning around 10:00 (Vancouver time 20:30) from Pradeep’s office.  Later I called WCWC at Raven’s Call when they were doing their retreat.  Talked to Andy, Andrea, Alice, Tim, Paul and Joe.  When Andrea was on, she said that Sue wanted to come on, but for some reason, she didn’t.  After Joe, he incited everyone to give me a roaring farewell.  Very heart warming indeed.  More than made my day.

     This evening, we (Pradeep, Sucheta and I) went to meet Pradeep’s friend Sanjit, whom I’ve met in a previous visit, with Poonam and another middle-aged woman, a lawyer named Angina (“AN-gin-a”) who is also a director of Tiger Trust and whom I also have met, also present.  The meeting was a semi-work session to prep for the Love-the-Tiger Walk. 

     Poonam said she would put me on the Times of India profile column, and some Indian TV interviews.   To facilitate that, she took about a dozen newspaper articles on my tiger campaign from my media folder.  She commented that she liked my “long, black, flowing mane”, saying that it is a “favourable element from a media view point”.  I joked that I was just thinking about having a crew cut.  Pradeep laughed.  Poonam, who has short hair herself, looked at my short-haired photos in my media folder and reasserted her preference of long hair on my head.  I’ve always detested the crew cut, especially on myself, which was forced on me by my elementary school and my father, whose orders in this department I began to defy as of the time Elvis and the Beatles came on the scene.  It has always puzzled me how some crew-cut “Christians” would have a long-haired Christ on their walls, but treat long-haired people like freaks.  But though I’ve heard slurs, I have never felt systematically discriminated against on account of my hair length or my race, in any country I’ve ever been to, except in the ex-British-crown-colony of Hong Kong where being Chinese, versus being British, makes one automatically a second class citizen.  And now, amazingly, as a foreigner, I’m being treated like a celebrity in yet another ex-British-crown colony.