The last few days all sorts of things have happened. I've met some 30 fellows from a local NGO, in which young Indians, mostly from the US, come back to India to work on some project. These range from helping to build bathrooms to helping a small business to expand and become more professional to helping create other, non-work, spaces for young rural to urban migrants. I spent the day with this group on Sunday while they were having a workshop at Gujarat Vidyapeeth. Some of you know that Gujarat Vidyapeeth is the institution that gave me an affiliation in the end. It is the university that Gandhi started and was the first vice chancellor of. During the day I heard about the individual projects of these fellows, took a tour of the campus and learned to spin cotton (not very well, but still), with the help of three female students from the university. I might have stayed in the dorms of that university instead except that there were many rules and the amenities at IIM were unbeatable. I agreed with the current Vice Chancellor Iyengar yesterday, we met for the first time face to face, to stay at Gujarat Vidyapeeth the last week of March in order to get a feel for the life there and to give a talk. Living there involves wearing Khadi clothing (homespun cotton), waking at 5 for prayer and cleaning, eating breakfast, meditation...

After more than a week at IIM I have grown used to the place, the food and my routine within it. I think of it as though I am spending a lot of time here at the moment, but there will be weeks at a time when I am not here at all, but rather making trips to border areas between Gujarat and Rajasthan, where many of the migrants that work in Bt cottonseed pollination fields come from. I am still unsure of when I will be ready for that. I need first to meet with a contact that I have not been able to meet with since my return. He is the one that everyone else I speak to points me to. I also badly need a research assistant that can act as an interpreter, for I do not speak Rajasthani nor the tribal languages of south Rajasthan. But I think that these things will happen soon enough, and in the meantime I am planning a shorter trip to visit a nearby farm and to visit an agricultural university to speak with the head of the agricultural biotechnology department. I am also desperate to find someone willing to make a very important phone call for me. I tried calling this person that I have been very interested to speak with, with no luck. It is really difficult to make myself understood when I need to call someone else first and explain over the phone who I am, and who gave me this number, and what I am looking for -- in Gujarati! Hopefully tomorrow a Gujarati friend of mine - one of my teachers from the summer classes - will be willing to make the call on my behalf. We'll see.

I spent several hours yesterday at the Police Commissioner's office trying to complete my foreigner registration. While I was sitting in the waiting area the sweetest little girl with the biggest eyes I've ever seen started talking to me. Her shy older sister and brother added a question here and there. She told me they are Muslims from Pakistan also registering with the police. They asked me if I go to temple, where I am from, why I am here, what I do, what the exchange rate is between the US dollar and the Indian rupee, etc. Right before their mother came and they left the little girl gave me a little candy, waited until I had accepted it and put in my mouth and then asked me whether I liked it. So sweet. The encounter made me feel so much better about being at the scary police office. And when I looked around I realized that now that I have been there perhaps six times, it really isn't so bad.

A little while ago my room started to smell of smoke so I turned the fan on. But then it got really strong and I opened the door to see the entire hallway filled with smoke, and so I hurried up the stairs to the next floor and the way out, holding my breath the whole way. It looked like there was smoke coming out of every floor. But as I looked around everyone was acting normal. I went into the student activities office and asked what was going on. They told me that they were spraying to kill mosquitoes and I asked what on earth they were using that it smelled and looked like particularly fowl smoke: a kerosene based insecticide, which they spray every week. I was relieved that my building wasn't on fire, but I took a long stroll to avoid exposure to it. As I walked around I saw the guy with his huge plastic sprayer, with no mask or protective gear. I suppose I haven't yet been bitten tonight.