Home at last

So I just finished my first class back at MIT after our trip to Sirsi. I will apologize right now that I am really jet lagged and on minimal sleep from staying up most of the night to try and catch up on psets, so my grammar has a tendency to go out the window in this state of mind. You may notice if you have been following the blog that their is a discrepancy of several days from when we left Sirsi to arriving back in Boston. We got an unexpected addition to our trip of about 4 days being somewhat stranded in Mumbai. Our flight out of Hubli was delayed long enough that we missed the connection in Mumbai. This also consequently meant that we no longer had valid boarding passes, which meant that we were not actually allowed inside the Departures terminal. We got to spend most of Saturday hanging out on the curb of the airport playing cards or trying to do homework, until it became clear that we would be spending a few days in Mumbai. We stayed at the VITS hotel until Tuesday morning and then finally made it back, with a very close call in London. Staying at the hotel was such a sharp contrast to the life we had experienced while in Hallusarige. I have never noticed how much food was wasted at an all you can eat breakfast buffet until seeing how one did not waste anything in the village ecosystem. The hotel was such a luxurious place with all of the conveniences one could ever want--but I am not sure it was a happier or more hospitable place. It also showed just how easy it is to disregard problems even when they are right in front of you. The view through many of the rooms we were in was that of the shanty town that essentially surrounded a good portion of the hotel. It may be easier to simply shut the curtains and pretend that problems like food insecurity don't exist and continue living as if they don't, but this can't go on indefinitely. At some point, we will all have to open up the curtains and accept that problems like this are a very real issue and that something must be done about them. We are all obliged to contribute something, no matter how seemingly insignificant we think it is, because it will truly make a difference. We all learned an enormous amount in Sirsi, and picked up a few extra lessons for free on the way back. We are all starting to settle back into our MIT lives--worrying about about bio tests, psets, differential equations, python and physics, but as we descend back into our world of numbers, I don't think any of us will forget the real face we saw of food security issues.

Logging off for the (truly) last time

David