BAU part I: Academic campus

I'm staying at the BAU guesthouse, which is in a walled campus with residential facilities for many staff and students, large field trials, and a small village where, I think, live the domestic employees for the residences and kitchens, as well as technical support staff for the field trials. 

To get from the guesthouse to the building I'm working in I walk out the gates, across some train tracks and a main road.  The train tracks have the usual boom gates, but it is perfectly acceptable, even expected, to walk across the tracks at any time that a train isn’t actually present.  The boom gates seem more about keeping the tracks clear of large obstacles (cars, motorcycles) and ensuring the train isn’t impeded than keeping people safe.  It’s also true that the gates are lowered very early: it’s easily a three or four minute wait after they’re down before the train arrives; and then an even longer wait while the train - they are all very long - passes.  I do (because I am impatient) walk across the tracks while the gates are down, but I feel surprisingly rebellious doing it, particularly when the train is visible – those safety messages are more ingrained than I realised!  People in cars or on bikes often switch off their engines, walk around and chat at the crossings while they wait for the train to pass and the gates to rise.

BAU main building and drive

  

Once across the train tracks and road I walk in through the academic campus gates, up the main drive and around the principal building to a smaller research building.  The university was founded about 2008; it had been an agricultural college for over a century before that; the main building dates from the early C20th. 

New building at BAU: marble staircase in place!

There is a lot of construction underway: the VC has a vision and is expanding the campus facilities greatly.  One building, which is intended to mirror the grandeur of the original agricultural college building, has progressed from when I last saw it in September.  Unusually, the marble steps which will form part of the front entrance have been installed while the building itself is still an unsealed shell behind.

The building in which KB and I are working

  

I'm working in a new building; my colleague, KB, has very kindly shared her office with me.  KB has a lot of lab work and isn’t in her office very much, but the building has a cleaner who seems fascinated by me.  She often comes up to me to tell me things I suspect I don’t much want to hear (that I should go off for lunch right at that minute; that she has many children (and thus needs baksheesh); that I am generally In Her Way); fortunately my lack of Hindi means we are completely unable to communicate.  She’ll also often just pop into KB’s office, pull up a chair and stare at me.  This is as disconcerting as it sounds.  Today apparently at least some of the novelty had worn off: I bored her to sleep!

I gave a seminar this afternoon to introduce myself and my work to the faculty.  As part of my official welcome I received flowers (they do flowers well here) and a lovely wrap: it’s very large (maybe 3.5 x 1.5m) cream silk with gold bands woven near the edges.  It’s lovely and warm, drapes well, and I feel like I'm channelling Lawrence of Arabia in it J

The dreamers of the day are dangerous men...