Free Lecture at Gresham College.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009
London

The city limped slowly back to life today after the three-day weekend and by 10 am. it was business as usual on High Holborn--and I mean that literally. So many shops that had stayed closed through three long days opened their shutters noisily this morning and got on with their week.

I spent the morning, after an early breakfast (cereal--yes!! after ages with a cup of strawberry yogurt) transcribing an interview I did with Ashley Jacob. It went really quickly as his responses had been brief. With an hour on my hands, I sat to write a commissioned essay for a new forthcoming anthology on The Anglo-Indian Woman to be published by my friend and mentor Blair Williams of New Jersey. It also progressed rapidly. Ideas came fast and furious and I put them down quickly, editing as I went along. So engrossed was I in my task that I did not realize it was already 12 .15 and I just about had the time for a quick shower before I set of for Gresham College that is just across the street from my building.

It was only this past Sunday when I went to mass that I picked up a booklet in St. Etheldreda's Church listing a series of Free Public Lectures run by Gresham College and given by leading experts in a variety of fields. I so wish I had found out about this earlier as the location is so convenient to reach and the topics so fascinating, There was, for instance, a whole series of talks on American politics and, in particular, on the significance of some recent presidents to the history of the nation. I know I would have dearly loved to attend those.

Well, this afternoon at 1 pm, the lecturer was Tom Korner of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and his talk was intriguingly entitled "Mathematics and Smallpox". I arrived at Gresham College's St. Barnard's Hall about five minutes before it began. This gave me the opportunity to scrutinize my surroundings and take in the lofty timbered ceiling, the oil painted portraits on the wall--Thomas Gresham's portrait was nearest my seat--and the air of intellectual antiquity that the space exuded. Ah, it did feel good to be in the presence of so many eggheads--about a hundred in all, all math whizzes I would bet...which ought to have made me feel completely out of place!

Except that I did not. In fact, I felt fully in my element. Tim Korner's lecture was obviously prepared a long long time ago and was being quite cleverly recycled--having become rather apropos in the frenzy surrounding the global outbreak of swine flu! It was delivered through a series of OUP projections--now how long ago did that device become defunct??!! Time he got acquainted with Powerpoint, I thought to myself as he began to describe the pattern of occurrence and symptoms of smallpox with reference to Dickens' Bleak House and the unnamed disease that Esther Summerson has (which rendered her temporarily blind and scarred for life).

Korner's lecture focused on mathematical theories of probability and their effectiveness in predicting outbreaks of the disease as well as the efficacy of inoculations in curtailing them. I found it deeply interestingly despite the fact that I knew little about mathematics and less about smallpox at the beginning of it! The talk lasted exactly 50 minutes which left 10 minutes for questions. Within an hour, I was out of there and in five minutes, I was back home--now how fabulous is that?

Back at my laptop, I continued writing my article, all the while keeping an eye on the word count. By about 5 pm, I was pleased with the first draft and decided to email it to Blair for his initial feedback. During the next couple of days, I shall fine tune it and will, hopefully, have it ready before Chriselle gets here. God knows I will not have a second to breathe once she is here with me as we want to squeeze so much into our very limited time together.

At 5pm, I decided to set out for some fresh air, this time to the Senate House Library where I had to return a book I had borrowed (Alison Blunt's Domicile and Diaspora--a book about Anglo-Indian women in their domestic milieu) and used the opportunity to get to my office at NYU to print a number of documents on which I have been working this past week as well as photocopy some parts of Blunt's book. I also needed to pick up a stack of papers left for me for grading on 'Topics in Contemporary British Politics and Culture' and I needed to empty out the shelves of books in my office as I would now like to start shipping my books back home to the States. When I vacate this flat at the end of the month and move to my new place in Farringdon, I want to take just two suitcases with me filled only with the clothes I will need for the months of June and July.

Ticking all these items off my To-Do List once I got to our Bedford Square campus took me more than 2 hours. So it was only after 8pm, that I left my office to return home with my strolley filled with all my books, files and other paraphernalia that I have accumulated in 8 months' use of that basement office space! It left me time to check email again, then have my dinner (a piece of fried cod and a small salad) while watching a special on the Gold channel--a series of extracts from the TV show Blackadder that all my new English friends have been telling me I should make certain I watch. Did you know that there is a group on Facebook that calls itself "The Everything I Know about British History I learned from Blackadder Group"? I discovered that some of my favorite British actors are a part of the cast (Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and, of course, Rowan Atkinson, for instance). I also discovered that one of my favorite British writers--Richard Curtis--was involved with the script from the very beginning. How marvelous, I thought. I really ought to buy the series and take it back to the States with me to watch at my leisure at home.

It was about 10.30 before I dragged myself to my bathroom to brush and floss my teeth, write this blog and get ready for bed because I suddenly found myself feeling sleepy and rather exhausted--and this though I had decided not to continue on the Julbilee Walk but to give my feet a day's rest !!!

As they would say in Brooklyn, 'Go figure'!