The Setting (Mangalore Week one)

 

 

 

 

Mangalore was carved out of a tropical jungle on the coast of the Arabian Sea in the state of Karnataka in the southwest of India. It is backed by the Western Ghats a mountain range with one of the world’s magnificient biodiversity environments. Armed soldiers on the road in the passages through the Ghats manually move the metal road barriers after peering in our cars looking for smuggled monkeys, snakes, birds and maybe other items that make headlines. Mangalore is a port from the early trading days, when the monsoons cut the sailing times from Europe, around Africa, to India. They export coffee, cashews, and grow rice–lots of rice. They tell me that the Mangalore region is also getting a reputation as an educated community with a few high tech companies, the University and over a hundred colleges. Mangalore is between the beaches of Goa and the National Parks in Karala. It is not on the way to anything.

Professor Bhatta wrote that two research scholars (Shiju George and H.S. Ramananda) would recognize me at the airport because, on the internet, they had watched a TV show I did on “Calculus and the Art of Bicycle Racing”. But I was the only westerner on a full 737 from Mumbai to Mangalore, and I was about as difficult to identify as a zebra in a band of horses.

Shiju and Ramananda cajoled my two large bags into the trunk of the rented Ambassador—which looks like the elegant scion of a 1955 round-fendered Mercedes 220 and a 1955 Nash Rambler– but older. One bag, a wheeled hard-case measuring 26×26×10 inches-–exactly the airplane legal baggage 62 inch sum– holds a 60 cm titanium bicycle that I have ridden in over a 200 races. The smaller bag—a wheeled duffel—has books, papers, clothes, and with, I hope, enough miscellanea for a six month stay as a Fulbright Scholar with the Mathematics Department of Mangalore University.

Two years ago I was invited to the Centenary Meeting of the Indian Mathematical Society. For two months, I traveled, mainly in the north, at the invitations of conferences and Universities in India. When I left, I thought that if I were to come back, I would need three things: an opportunity to work on my mathematics, a primary base location with a room in which I felt comfortable, and my bicycle.

The 30 kilometer drive from the airport takes us over broken sections of good pavement, over cobbled roads, dirt sections and around construction crews. We also pass coconut and banana trees, and lush moist ferns, and hanging plants and banyan trees. We skirted puddles from the morning rains, all the while beeped our horn. I don’t see any bikes– not bikes carrying petroleum tanks, or caged chickens, or a family of three, or rickshaws or any of the millions (literally) of bicycles I saw in Delhi.

The monsoon rains usually last into September. I have heard stories of three feet of rain in 24 hours. The floods regularly disable cities. But on the coast the monsoon also cools the air below 100º. The monsoon came late again this year. Since July, the rainfall has been near average but the total is low: some areas, such as near Mumbai, are 40% below average; and the country might be down 25%, a decrease that usually precedes drought. (Added during the first week of October: After a dry August the rains came back in September, but it was too late. Most of the crops died in the field. The rains turned heavy in Karnataka, but still none fell in the north of India. The first days of October brought torrential rains in the north of the state with a death toll now over 200. There are pictures of people in chest deep water and others in trees. There are bridges torn away and towns isolated. There is no high ground in the northern plains of the state for people to escape or for the military helicopters to retrieve stranded people),

My room is minimal, but livable. It is over 300 sq feet. It has hot water; a ceiling fans (to disorient the mosquitoes), a western toilet; a metal cabinet stabilized by propping one leg on folded newspaper and with “Liquor not permitted” written on the door; and an entrance door with three bolts inside and a padlocking bolt outside; a half dozen barred windows screened with a mosquito netting that Velcros to the wall; and a pair of just-passably-narrow metal and glass French doors that open over lush tropical vegetation. There are lightbulbs in two of the four fixtures, there is a locking metal compartment in the cabinet, but it is locked and no one knows where the key is. There is a lounge with a TV and with sofas that provide a choice of setting high in the center part over the sprung coils or low on the sides where the springs are sprung. I go there most mornings and evenings to read “The Hindu” do a Sudoku and watch an English language broadcast from Japan. When desperate, I have watched Cricket.

Students haven’t arrived yet and during my first three days, I meet the other faculty members, ensconce in an office, and gradually widen the spiral of recognizable places. I still haven’t seen a westerner, an adult on a bicycle, anyone running, an adult man in shorts or in a tee-shirt or with a baseball cap; or for that matter, an elephant, a tiger or a cobra.

(All photos are local.  Most were taken on bike rides.)

 

 

 

 

 

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