Friday

Friday morning we had an all-school assembly in the gym. Students from all grades attended; the Junior School on the side bleachers and the Senior School on the main ones. Guests were on chairs on the floor.

Abhra greeting some of the alumni

Senior School behind guests

Honoring 15-year plus staff members

Abe and Bethany with Eleanor rapping Shadows

After the assembly was over, our volunteers took the visiting alumni for tours of the school. One group went to the dorms on the lower level, but others did not. We headed out Tehri Road to the Hanifl Centre for lunch. Even the older ones made it very well. (It's about a kilometer and slightly uphill.)

It was pleasant to sit around the grounds at Hanifl eating our box lunches.

The class of 1951 were celebrating their 60th anniversary of graduation.

After lunch Krishnan Kutty, Director of the Hanifl Centre, talked about outdoor and environmental education and how important it is.

Thursday Evening

Following the WOSA Centennial Registration, everyone gathered in the Quad for the Welcome Dinner hosted by Principal Eleanor Nicholson. The current Woodstock staff were invited to come and interact with the alumni visitors. It was very festive, if a bit chilly.

Dr. Eleanor Nicholson welcoming one and all.

Pandit Ajit Singh performing on the Vichitra Veena with his tabla player from Mussoorie International School. Dan the chela (student).

In two weeks the fall school musical, "Brigadoon," will be performed in Parker Hall. We were treated to a 15-minute sneak preview.

Lillian Skinner Singh, class of 1939, cut the 100-year cake.

WOSA Centennial Begins

Wednesday evening was the real beginning of the WOSA Centennial celebrations, but I was here in Mussoorie prepping, so don't have any photos from the Bollywood dinner. There were about 50-60 people in attendance.

Thursday afternoon we had set registration from 5:00 to 7:00, but we expected a lot of people to come early. So about 2:00 we set up our tables just inside the Woodstock gate. Two people from the business office joined us to take in any money and process credit cards. We took a mug shot of each person as they arrived and got their name tags. (And yes, they started coming in before 3:00.)

The Quad was being prepared with golden streamers overhead and the class flags hung from the balconies. It was interesting watching them string up the streamers. First they strung wires across at about six feet, added the streamers, then raised the whole apparatus up and out of the way. It was breezy most of the time, so the fluttering gold was very attractive. Some of the students were eating their lunch outside in the sunshine when I took this picture from our balcony.

A special banner was made and hung on the pushta just inside the main school gate.

Here I am with my two volunteers, Lois and Beth. Both were former students and now adult friends, so it was great they could both be here to help out.

Here's the registration table with the main gate in the background. Lois checked them in, the two men from the business office took payment (if they hadn't paid in advance), and Mary Ina (another volunteer) gave them their name tags. We had a student photographer called Fuse (his full Thai name is quite unpronouncable) who took a photo of each person.

Beth was at the last table where they had to answer a few questions and pick up their packet of schedules and nice Woodstock water bottle. While we were there it got dark and cool. The sunset and the winterline were right behind us.

Next:  dinner and entertainment in the Quad

Improvements

Over time, I have posted quite a few pictures of pushta-building going on around the hillside. Especially following the monsoon, a lot of repair work needs to be done. And in some areas the old pushta has simply disintegrated.

Just below Landour Community Hospital, there has been major ongoing work for several years. Part of the new pushta is finished and looks good. The next section, to the left, will probably remove the shack that is hanging precariously above the road.

At the corner on the road between the hospital and Springview, they have finished the work we watched last year. The new path is quite pukka; we went up it last weekend to visit a volunteer doctor and his wife.

Not related to pushtas, but here is a photo of some gorgeous begonias right outside the Media Centre, the 1993 building above the Flagpole area.

Happy Birthday

Today (October 18) is my mother's 90th birthday. We had a celebration party for her in August, when many family members could be there.

Here is a picture taken early this year of my mother with my sister Kate, who worked in the dorms at Woodstock from 1978 to 1981.

Final Readings from Writers

The last session at this year's Mussoorie Writers' Roundtable consisted of three authors reading from their works. All three had spoken at sessions earlier, so were becoming familiar.

Bryan Powles, chair of the English department at Woodstock, introduced the speakers. The first was David Davidar, who had spoken the previous day on the need for editors. As he worked for Penguin for many years, he knows a lot about publishing. He read from his latest book, "Ithaca," which was inspired by a poem by Cavafy. You can read it here. The novel is about publishing (no surprise), centering around a small company in London, which he calls Litmus. The parts he read introduced the main characters. It sounds like a good read, especially for lovers of books.

The second reader was Palash Mehrotra, who happens to be the son of Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, who spoke in the first section. He read from his book of short stories, "Eunuch Park." These stories have a variety of settings. The one he read, "Nick of Time," was about Indian students at Oxford University and was quite humorous.

Raj Kamal Jha read from his latest book, "Fireproof." It is set during the 2002 Gujarat riots, which were sparked by a burning of a train and resulted in Hindu-Muslim rioting and more than 1000 deaths. It is written from the point of view of a man who finds an unfinished child's workbook after the riots and tries to find the child to finish the work. It is set in a terrible time and situation but the writing is very affective.

Friday night out

This was a really busy week and I realize that I only posted three times. So I decided to go off schedule and post on Saturday. We usually get out to the bazaar for dinner on Wednesday or Thursday evening, but this week we didn't make it until Friday.

Dan had a squash match (which ended up not actually happening...) so I walked in by myself. I stopped to buy a couple of felt-tip pens and they were Rs. 2 each! (That is about 4 cents.) I hope they'll work long enough to make name tags at the Delhi event next week.

My Kindle has stopped working, so I stopped at the Tilak Memorial Library which I joined a couple of years ago. I paid up my dues since April (Rs. 125 -- just over $2.55 for the past five months). And I found a book -- good thing I had a flashlight, as the English bookcases (glass-fronted) are quite dark.

I went on up the Kulri hill to the Cambridge Book Shop, where I got another book that looked interesting. When I came out, Dan was standing on the street talking with Mr. Mishra, whom he had just met. Mr. Mishra is retired and spending his time working for the good of senior citizens in Uttarakhand. Dan had come in on the scooter as he got a late start. It made for a quick trip home after dinner.

There is a new restaurant next to the bookshop called Moti Mahal. It is part of a large chain in many Indian cities. (But not related to the original Moti Mahal in Daryaganj, Old Delhi, that we used to like to go to.) It was completely empty while we were there (7:00 to 8:30). Our food was obviously freshly cooked, as it took an hour. The inside wall of the entrance area is completely covered with stones.

 

There was a small TV showing a cricket match, so Dan was happy. I was glad I had my library book, which I was able to start right away while we waited. For starters we had paneer tikka, large cubes of Indian cottage cheese roasted in a tandoor, with pieces of onion, tomato and green pepper. Delicious, and there is some left for today.

Our main dishes were stuffed potatos and chicken karai. The potatoes were stuffed, cooked in the tandoor, and then sliced. You can see the pile of sauteed onions as well as some capsicum (green pepper).

The chicken karai had a nice gravy -- again, lots of onions, tomatoes and peppers. It went well with the tandoori roti. (We've grown to prefer the tandoori roti to naan, which is so heavy. The roti are whole-wheat chappatis, but cooked in the tandoor, so hot and light.)

 

The bill came with the usual tray of toothpicks, saunf (fennel seeds), and sugar. You take some saunf onto your palm, add some sugar, and chew it up. It is common for the sugar to be large crystals like these. The fennel really cleans out your mouth after an Indian meal.

Science and Spirituality

The first speaker on Thursday morning was Alan Lightman. I mentioned that he read from his book "Mr. g," on Wednesday afternoon. He talked about science as part of our cultural heritage. It produces new ideas and artists them jump on them. Scientists are interesting people with a different worldview from artists. He talked about how to have good nonfiction scientific writing:  just like fiction, it needs clarity, emotional pacing, and meaningful language. Use good metaphors and numerical analogies (comparing the nucleus of an atom to a grain of sand and the Taj Mahal).

Scientific information is often incorporated into fiction. He suggested a limit of no more than 150 words on technical topics before returning to the main story. He read a passage from "The English Patient" where the bomb disposal expert is defusing a live bomb. There is a lot of technical information in the passage but it is written in a way that doesn't detract from the story the author is telling.

Bill Aitken is a very interesting man. He hitch-hiked from Scotland to India in 1959 and stayed. His most popular book is "Footloose in the Himalaya." He also wrote "The Nanda Devi Affair." He said that English is a very limited language when it comes to spirituality, which is the inmost part of ours selves.

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, who read the poems of Kabir on Wednesday, believes that spirituality and established religion are very separate things. He talked about several different poets and how they approach spiritual topics in their poetry.

More about Writers

It is a very busy week here (my excuse for missing a couple of days). We are in the final throes of preparation for the WOSA Centennial celebration which begins next Wednesday. You'll hear more about that later. I have two more posts about the writers' talks, but today I have a few pictures for you.

On Thursday we were at the Hanifl Centre for Environmental Studies and Outdoor Education. It is a beautiful facility on the site of Ashton Court, one of the Mennonite properties that was deeded over to the school. Many students attended on Thursday (all the seniors plus some others, I believe). This shows them sitting outside waiting for the program to begin inside.

A formal portrait of the writers plus the organizers. Left to right:  Lalitha Krishnan, assistant to Steve Alter, curator of the Winterline Foundation for the Arts; Mehrotra senior; Lightman (leaning down); DeSouza; Mehrotra junior; Aitken (front); Davidar; Jha; Steve.

I like this one even better; I took it as they were gathering and waiting for the photographer. You can see how much they enjoyed interacting with each other.

Cambridge Book Shop set up both days; Wednesday in the Quad and Thursday at Hanifl.

Poetry and Prose Under the Lyre Tree

Wednesday afternoon following tea, three authors read from their writings under the Lyre Tree. They were introduced by David Anderson, Senior School Head, who compared prose and poetry to walking and dancing, an enchanting image.

Eunice DeSouza is a poet who lives in Mumbai. She read from her recent collection, "Necklace of Skulls." Her poems were short and very humorous. Her topics ranged from parakeets in her flat to her Catholic mother.

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra was the only repeat reader from last year. He has translated the "Songs of Kabir," a well-known 15th-century Indian poet. The New York Times reviewed it last May. He is an excellent reader and is a poet in his own right as well as editor of a number of books. A quote that stayed with me:  "The mind is a knot that is difficult to untie."

The third reader was Alan Lightman. He is the author of the well-known book "Einstein's Dreams," an imagining of Einstein's many dreams about the nature time as he worked on his theory of relativity. Mr. Lightman is both an astrophysicist and a writer, and teaches writing to scientists at MIT in Boston. He read from his new novel (to be published in early 2012), "Mr. g." He believes and is an excellent example of the idea that rational and intuitive thought can co-exist. "Mr. g" explores the creation of the universe in unlimited possibilities -- and in a humorous way.

Mussoorie Writers Roundtable

Last year at this time I enjoyed attending the sessions of the Mussoorie Writers Festival, focusing on writing and nature, especially mountains. This year the festival was scaled back to a roundtable, with only four sessions given by seven authors. The full programme and bios of the authors can be found here.

On Wednesday morning the Quad was full of teachers and parents. It was the end of Quarter Break and parents could meet with their children's teachers to discuss their reports. In the afternoon a number of the classes were given permission to attend the opening session of the Writers Festival in Parker Hall.

The first session was titled "The Craft of Writing." Three authors spoke.

Raj Kamal Jha is the Managing Editor of the Indian Express newspaper in Delhi. His novels include "The Blue Bedspread," "If You Are Afraid of Heights," and "Fireproof." His talk focused on the difference between writing and editing. He is an editor during the day and writes novels at night. One of his main points that resonated with me was that there is a constant denial of the other side, whatever that may be. Editors force us to ask questions and look at the other side. We should all search for the editor within and force ourselves to listen to others.

Palash Krishna Mehrotra is the author of a book of short stories, "Eunuch Park." His talk was about the difference between fiction and nonfiction. He had some interesting opinions, including that fiction comes out of the writer's own experiences, researching doesn't belong in fiction, novels should not try to correct social wrongs, and you shouldn't burden fiction with facts.

David Davidar is author of the well-known "House of Blue Mangoes," "The Solitude of Emperors," and the newly-published "Ithaca." He worked for many years for Penguin Publishing in India, Canada, and International. He is an editor as well as a writer. He talked a bit about the digital revolution, which he compared to Gutenberg's invention of the printing press. In the beginning story-tellers were the only method of sharing stories; the printing press made a gap between author and reader. Now ebooks are closing that gap. Books are being published without editors to impose quality on them.

Steve Alter is the curator of the Winterline Foundation for the Arts at Woodstock School, the sponsor of the festival. He is a well-known author of ten books, fiction and nonfiction. He is responsible for starting up the Mussoorie Writers Festival about five years ago, and it has become an almost annual event.

Connections

One of the most enjoyable things about our relationship with Woodstock School is the myriad of connections with people of all kinds all over the world. We have met people from many different countries and backgrounds.

I thought I'd tell you about a few of the one-step removed experiences I've had. This was sparked by a casual conversation with a visiting author at dinner the other night. Somehow Elvis came up while we were talking and it turned out that he had met Elvis in person when he was a teenager. Even though I'm not a rabid Elvis fan (I do enjoy his early songs which take me back to my own teen years), the discussion of his experience was interesting.

One of our current staff members is closely related to Dame Judith Anderson, the famous actress. I know her best through her portrayal of Mrs. Danvers in the movie Rebecca. A glimpse into a life shared with Hollywood notables of the 1950s!

An older friend, from the class of 1940, has written a book about his father who was a Methodist missionary in the 1920s. He and his wife worked in education and hygiene in a small town. He developed a simple septic system for the school houses and introduced it to Gandhi, who used it in his ashrams. I have a photo my friend gave me of his mother with Gandhi and his wife Kasturba. (His father took the photo.) The book is Gandhi's American Ally: How an Educational Missionary Joined The Mahatma's Struggle against Untouchability, available on Amazon.

I have run into Woodstock-related people at airports in the US and overseas. I know some alumni who like to wear a Woodstock School T-shirt when traveling in case they connect with someone else who is related to the school.

These are just a few instances of the world-wide reach of this place.

Misty Days

Usually once the monsoon is over and the rains have stopped, October is full of beautiful, sunny fall days, turning chilly in the evenings. This year the mist and clouds have hung on. Some days there are patches of sun, especially in the mornings, but overall it has been a bit depressing, as we can't see much off the hillside. But it is beautiful!

This view was taken to the east from Rokeby above the Chukker.

Towards Woodstock Villa on the way back from the bazaar

Several langurs in the misty trees off Zigzag path

This large bull langur was eating from a bush beside the path on my way down from Sisters' Bazaar. As I neared, I thought he would move away, but instead he just stared at me. I stepped back a few feet to wait a bit. Just then some people came up the path below and he jumped into a tree. I've learned not to trust solo male monkeys of any kind....

Bazaar Signs

Many visitors to India have made a point of photographing unusual signs (you can Google "india english signs" and find lots of them). Last week I took several in the bazaar that struck my fancy.

This tailoring shop specializes in "peeko" which is hemming of a dupatta, a long sheer scarf. (I just learned that from my office-mate Monica.)

Hotel Camel View might seem like a really odd name for a mountain hotel; there are no camels anywhere around. But there is a hill called "Camel's Back," and it must be visible from this hotel.

In India, jewellery means gold and precious gems. This place is advertising its imitation items.

An "English" wine shop sells foreign-style beer and liquor (not necessarily imported, although there might be some). A "regular" wine shop sells local hooch, which is not always safe. The licenses are good for one year.

Produce Shopping

Friday I walked into Kulri to see the dentist again. As last spring, I am having a crown put on while I am here. See here for my experience at the Oral Health Resort last May.

On the way home, I stopped to replenish our fresh food supply. Back in the 1970s we usually bought from the Sardarji, who had a shop near the Landour Chowk. Since then, he has moved toward the Clock Tower and carries a wide variety of goods, even French wine! (You have to ask for it.) His son now runs the shop a lot of the time, but I always like it when he is there.

I got some nice crisp Golden Delicious apples. They even had a sticker on them, similar to the ones we see in the US. These didn't have the code number on them, but I've seen some with the same numbers we use; it must be a worldwide system. The apples are sitting on our marble countertop in our kitchen.

I love guavas, but Dan doesn't. I get four at a time and stew them with a small amount of sugar. They are seedy but delicious. You can eat them raw but I like them stewed.

This is the first papaya I've gotten this year. The Sardarji assured me that it would be ready to eat on Sunday, so I'm cutting it up today. The two small lemons will add zest to the flavor.

Below the hospital is a small bazaar where the Tehri bus stand is located. There is a small restaurant/shop there called Sugar and Spice. They sell pillows covered in nice printed fabric and some clothing. They also have a bakery, so I got some flaxseed whole wheat bread. It isn't very tall, but it is very tasty. And they gave it to me in a small cloth bag. All this for Rs. 50, just over a dollar.

Dinner Out

Last night was our weekly dinner out in the bazaar. This time we went to the Tavern, an old favorite. We ran into another couple from the school and ate together. This gave me lots of food to photograph!

There is a new sign at the Tavern entrance. I'm not sure where the slogan "A belly full of fun" comes from...  The entire restaurant is on the second floor, above a row of shops.

Before the food comes, a tray of three accompaniments is on the table:  pickle (achar), onions in vinegar, coriander chutney.

The other couple were there before us. Ray's dinner came first:  chicken jalfrezi with roti.

Next came Julie's vegetable biriani with yogurt on the side.

Dan had chicken biriani, but it really looked just like the vegetable. There were pieces of chicken in it, but not particularly visible in the photo. I had the Florentine chicken sizzler. Two small pieces of chicken, breast meat attached to a bare wing bone (for a handle?), stuffed with a small amount of chopped spinach mixed with cheese. The very hot sizzling plate was covered with a large cabbage leaf. A pile of mixed vegetables was on the left and French fries on the right. The vegetables included peas, green beans, cabbage, and small pieces of cauliflower and broccoli.

The walk home felt good after all that food. It is beginning to get chilly in the evenings; my light shawl was very welcome.