Wednesday, August 22, 2018
Last Day of Conference at NYU-Shanghai, Shopping in Underground Mall and Indian Dinner near the French Concession:
Another comfortable night was followed by another humongous brekkie in the company of other delegates with whom I had made friends. Then, the short walk to the campus of NYU, a morning’s session of panel presentations—all of which were interesting and widely varied and lunch was served: it was Cajun this time and I had shrimp etoufee in the company of delegates whose papers are a sheer joy to discuss.
My colleague and friend at NYU in New York, Tim, had done a cyber introduction between me and his friend Diane Geng, now in-charge of course scheduling at NYU-Shanghai, as he thought the two of us would enjoy meeting. Accordingly, Diane invited me to her office at 1.00 pm and we spent the next 20 minutes together having a most enjoyable chat. Like Tansen, she too suggested that I get to Shanghai to give a course on South Asian Studies during J-Term and I have to say that the idea had begun to appeal more and more to me. It was a real pleasure meeting her and I am so glad that Tim brought us together.
Then, I left the conference to meet Llew in our hotel from whose Receptionists we took directions to get to the underground mall near the Museum of Science and Technology where the merchandise is apparently well priced. We reached there after a 20 minute walk and much deliberation about exactly where it might be located. Once there, we were in an underground maze of kiosks that resembled those at Bandra’s Elco Arcade. There were silk ties that Llew was keen on buying and silk scarves that I wanted to see. After much fun haggling, we left with some goodies that excited the two of us and I made my way back to campus for the last session of the conference.
Overall, it had been a most exciting time and I was absolutely pleased by the reception to my research, the interesting scholars that I met from varied parts of the world whose work resembled mine and yet differed enormously and the environment of scholarly inquiry that has been fostered by the Luce Grant that NYU received to be shared by three campuses—New York, Shanghai and Abu Dhabi. It was announced that the next conference will be in Abu Dhabi in April of next year (when I shall still technically be a Fulbright Fellow in India), but I am keen to attend it and hope I will have some new research to showcase based on the work I hope to produce on Bombay. Let us see...
Dinner in an Indian Restaurant:
With just half an hour at our disposal to get ready for dinner on the town, we packed our bags quickly and met in the lobby of our hotel to board the coach that had been arranged to take us near the French Concession, a very happening part of Shanghai with shops and restaurants galore. We drove through well-lit streets filled with humanity and arrived at our destination to make our way, under the leadership of our Director, Tansen Sen, to Lotus Land, an Indian restaurant, tucked away in a narrow street filled with shops that were filled with teeny-boppers. Shanghai is all about youth—indeed China seems only to have young people in it—where are the aged?—with deep pockets and consumerism is rampant.
Our meal was grand—it felt great, to be honest, to eat familiar food whose names we actually knew. Not that we disliked Chinese food—indeed we’d eaten some really great food and had been very pleased by our choices. Tansen did the ordering and we feasted on a mixed grill of tandoori delicacies and then a variety of curries (shrimp, lamb, chicken) with dal and vegetarian options that we ate with rotis and naan. Service was superb as Tansen is well recognized in these parts. When he feels homesick for an Indian meal, he says, he comes here. We were a very companionable lot as we sat around and ate and drank (G&Ts, beer and wine) and chatted about the success of the conference. Indeed the hospitality of the folks at NYU-Shanghai knew no bounds and we had been treated like royalty. Llew was so pleased to have been a part of so many of the activities that were part of this conference.
We took the subway back to our hotel together with NYU grad student Alex who was a pleasure to get to know. He is working on Banking in the Middle East and had given a very enlightening paper on the hundi system that has operated as a means of legal transaction in the Middle East for decades. As we had a very early start the next morning, Llew and I packed the last bits and bobs of our belongings, caught up on TV with the vast amount of news that is being generated in the US as the noose tightens around Trump’s cronies, and went to bed.
Until tomorrow...
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