Robin Murphy AIS Class of 1970 robin.murphy6@verizon.net

More photos of the school | More photos of India. All photos by Robin Murphy.

January 28, 2007

I traveled to India and Russia in early January to film some of the projects with which my organization (World Resources Institute) is involved. I had not been to India since 1972 when I had summer break from college and went to visit my folks in Bombay (and had a brief stop in Delhi).

I checked in with Sid Wahid beforehand to see if we could connect in Delhi. Turned out he was in Boston visiting his family. We had a chance to get caught up by phone and he sounds great, as always. He is the founding chancellor of a new university in Kashmir. Sid said that I would probably find an India that is exactly the same while also entirely different. He was right.

I had a free morning in Delhi on January 12 before an afternoon flight to Poona. So I got a rickshaw (they run on 'clean natural gas' now instead of the traditional half-gallon of oil mixed with a pint of gasoline) over to Chanakyapuri. The area is almost unrecognizable. While the embassy area still has serene architecture and quiet lanes, everything is hidden behind high walls. I actually had to ask someone for walking directions to find AIS.

The school is now behind a high stone wall and has tight security.

AIS is also behind a stone compound wall and has a serious security entrance, complete with guards, glass booths and turnstiles. I had eMailed the school director before I left on this trip but he never replied. So the guards asked if I had an appointment. Could Mr. Swamy still be there? Tarlochand? No and no.

The stern guards put me through to their boss, who indulged my prodigal student story, and asked who I knew way back then. Kind of a word-association quiz, and a clever way to verify a genuine alum. So I started right in - Elwell, Perelli, Newberry, Jackie Singh…...and I began to sense real progress by the time I got to Mitroo, Mehrotra and Raj Kumar Chopra. I handed the phone back to the guards, and their mood shifted considerably - bobbing sideways nods, smiles, and general tail-wagging - the gate clicked open and I was back.

School staff Mr. Thomas and Mr. Kamal escorted Robin during his vist.

I was escorted to see the security guy - Mr. Thomas. He could not have been more gracious, and sympathized with my sentimental pilgrimage. He and his staffer Mr. Kamal took me around and thankfully waived the no-photos policy. Despite some morning mist, I got a good sampling of how AIS looks today.

The campus has undergone many changes and alterations but the basic Joseph Stein look is still there. The elementary school round building is gone, replaced by a large cube. I was told that the remaining two round buildings - our middle and high schools - will likely be torn down this year. When you look at them closely, you can see they are falling apart. What a shame - I wonder if any thought has been given to restoring them.

The campus is lush and green.

The rest of the campus that has been built since the 60s is pretty well matched to the original design - the stone facings, the filigree sandstone screens, curving stone walls, the exposed rocks (although the smoking rocks appear to have been completely excavated and - apparently - eliminated). For some reason, student lockers are perched on the outside second-floor perimeters of the round buildings. Students were around (and probably sized me up as the Methuselah that they will never, ever become). The campus is very lush and green, and of course trees that were saplings then (like the one by the biology room and the 'old' smoking rocks) are now huge.

I walked up to our embassy on Shanti Path, agape at the high walls. The front of the embassy has an encampment of police, and a haphazard assortment of walls and barriers. Even the distinctive roof line that seemed to hover over the building has been altered to accommodate little look-out structures and other junk. That beautiful, sleek building that once radiated openness and airiness today looks humiliated and scarred. If this is the best we can do to respond to today's threats, it's pathetic. At a glance, it would appear that "they" are indeed winning.

I walked back to the Marine House and baseball field to get a taxi from the stand (yes, it's still there). On the way, I took a picture of the taxis and the high wall, with curved iron spikes on top. Mistake. Within seconds, Delhi police and embassy security converged from all directions. They were deaf to my lame explanations. It took them half an hour - and succeeding levels of higher ranking officials materializing from nowhere - to figure out how to delete the two offending photos (including the taxi stand for Pete's sake). They we re just doing their job, and I shook hands with them all once they figured I was a harmless nostalgic. One of them simply said (with a sideways wag of the head), "Things are very different now." Amen.

Although returning to AIS was a tre- mendous experience, it was a bit on the empty side and not a little sad.

Of course it was good to be there. But it really brought home that it is not the place, but the time and the people that mattered. My account may read like an architecture review, but that's what's left - the buildings. Thank God for our reunions (Jai KC!) and the way each of us keeps our own memories of that time as intact as possible, with AIS and India etched on our hard drives, so to speak. And although returning to AIS was a tremendous experience, it was to be honest a bit on the empty side and not a little sad. I did have several pangs that surprisingly brought tears to my eyes. Trite as it is, you really can't go home again. I also visited our neighborhood in Nizamuddin, and it seemed run-down and even unfamiliar. I did get photos of my house, Ann Briggs' and the Rizzie's places, Mike Bennett's house and Chez Davis-Rissler-Sundari. Perhaps it was the jet-lag, or that it was dusk, but again, I felt like a stranger in a vaguely familiar place.

The best part of the trip was simply being in India. For our filming, we went to many places around Delhi, including the teeming slums in the southwest where over 100,000 people incredibly manage to scrape by. Getting around Delhi was the usual torrent of traffic - lanes and lights completely ignored - the smell of diesel and dust, honk, honk, honk, honk. Some of the city very recognizable, while other parts, especially the high-rise areas, look like any generic city.

A family in Maharashtra shows emblematic Indian hospitality by inviting Robin to lunch.

We were interviewing a remarkable woman named Anita Ahuja, who with her husband, has started a business making fashionable bags and shoes that sell in Europe. The raw material for the bags are the billions of plastic bags that litter Delhi, choking cows and drains. Anita's organization - ConservIndia - employs hundreds of rag pickers to collect the bags, many more poor women to sort them by color, and then uses a laminating technique to transform the plastic into handbag material. The handbags are sold in Europe for a good profit, and al the money goes back to her non-profit to scale up even further. An environmental, economic, human and social solution all rolled into one. Brilliant.

We then went to a small village in Maharashtra to document the success of a village that has conserved its watershed for its own use. I'll attach some of the photos I took.

This was the most rewarding part - the sights and smells and sounds and familiar gestures - all of it took me about 5 seconds to adapt to again after 35 years. That was exhilarating - and pure bliss to ride in a rickshaw and for a few milliseconds, even feel like a teenager. And as Sid said, it is utterly changed and exactly the same.

More photos of the school | More photos of India. All photos by Robin Murphy.

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