I have had so much going on that I did not have much time to reflect and when I reflected, I had no time to write, and now when I think about what I was going to write, my mind draws a blank. It feels empty. But maybe that's not right... It's perhaps too full and cannot focus on any one thing in particular. I don't know...

On my last day, many students made me feel special. Some took pics with me... it was quite heartwarming. I feel like Chinese students tend to connect with a teacher in a far more personal or relational way, not the same as say a British student. It's like they are not receiving ideas or instructions transactionally but trying to connect to the person, especially the more engaged among them. Reminds me of how in our Indian system we used to have the idea of a 'guru'. A guru means a teacher/mentor but it's much more. You look up to a guru the way you look up to a parent. The English language doesn't seem to have a word to capture the depth of it.

Reminds me of something I wanted to write about a few weeks ago. It was a conversation during lunch. We were talking about the immense variety of food in the canteen and I was asked what the canteen food in my college was like. The question unravelled me. My mind couldn't come up with an answer on the spot. I groped for it and said what seemed very close: we rarely went to the canteen because there were many restaurants and places to eat outside. Later I went back to the question. The fact is I always want to give an honest answer but I feel like most people are not looking for that kind of honesty or detail when they are making casual talk. That is something I have to be conscious about. I had forgotten that most colleges in Mumbai including mine at the time ended at 1.00ish so I didn't need to have lunch outside. My house was barely 15 minutes away. So only on rare occasions did I have outside food and very rarely in the canteen... I didn't have much money to spend you see ;) It was just as well I went with the polite answer…