Lumened Blog A month in Delhi

"Is ISIS a real religion?" The question caught me off guard as I stood in front of a 6th grade classroom in the heart of New Delhi. It was a difficult question for anyone to answer and I wasn't sure how to respond. The students English was very good, but my American accent could prove difficult. I gave it my best shot. I described that a religion taken to an extreme could lead to fanaticism - that fanatics often focus on certain ideas within the religion to the exclusion of all others. I said that a religion could be composed by both fanatics and normal people but that the fanatics ideas probably didn't represent the majority. They listened calmly and when I was done they had follow up questions.This was the second of eleven classrooms I visited in my first week in Delhi. I had flown in the 22nd of November. My flight was supposed to be a day earlier, but the first snow in Chicago had grounded the plane. The goal for my time in Delhi was a simple one: oversee the testing and deployment of our Bright Orange Boxes in the participating Teach for India classrooms. To this end I had packed one suitcase of clothes and a second full of tools and spare parts.The night of my arrival was exciting to say the least. I was scammed into taking an illegitimate taxi and found myself in jeopardy of being stranded in the middle of Delhi without a working phone or money. With a little guile and great deal of gumption, I managed to reach the neighborhood where I was staying. Though the taxi driver (at this point very angry that he was unable to separate more cash from my person) did not take me all the way to my apartment. Instead, I managed to reach the relative safety of a wedding hall. After calling a friend to pick me up, I was promptly presented with a chair, a milkshake, and a beaming introduction from the groom. It was a happy ending to what I was told was a dangerous situation.My first week was spent visiting classrooms. I should take a minute to describe what it's like to traverse the city. Coming from rural New Hampshire, commuting in Delhi is unlike anything else I've experienced. Firstly, the functional chaos of the city's streets is difficult to describe. It's crowded with cars, buses, motorcycles, scooters, rickshaws and auto rickshaws. If you do not have your own transport one can use the state-of-the-art metro system that traverses a great deal of the city. During rush hour, a veritable sea of humanity can turn the metro into a claustrophobic nightmare with lines of people sixty deep, desperate to board at the risk of crushing their neighbor.The sprawling nature of the city didn't help. It took me two hours each way to commute to our office via the metro. Some of the schools in North Delhi could take three hours to reach. With the help of our diligent program managers, I managed to visit 13 classrooms in that first week. The experience was similar to last summer except I was trying to get through three times as many classrooms in half the time. Being a 6'8" foreigner garners an absurd amount of attention, a reality that would overshadow me through the entire month. The classrooms were the best version of this because the excitement from the kids was so thick and tangible that you could chew on it.Each visit started with a demo. I would start by describing the functionality and proper use of the box to the teacher. Then we would begin by playing a song through the speakersThe standout experience was when Jigyasa, one of our teachers, volunteered to play Let It Be from her flash drive. As soon as the song began, the entire class began to sing along with a remarkable level of unity. We only made it two minutes in before our program manger, Rachana, stopped the playback, insisting she was going to start crying if it continued.After demoing the audio prowess of the box, we played the latest video from their pen pals. This was always greeted by even more excitement. Even in the largest classrooms with over eighty students, every eye would be focused on the projection. Afterwards, many of the teachers would ask follow up questions and students would stand and face me before answering. Being the beginning of December, several of the videos were Christmas themed. Our US classrooms described the nativity scene, shared what they wanted for Christmas and did their best rendition of Santa Claus.The visit would always end with a question/answer section. I had to quickly figure out what my favorite food was (lobster), my favorite the thing about India (the students) and my favorite class I had visited (this one). Some of the questions were probing to say the least. What was the biggest challenge I had faced at LumenEd? What values are required to start a company? In one after school session I was asked by a 7th grader what she should be when she grew up - more specifically what kind of engineer she should be. After a few question we narrowed it down to mechanical engineer. The follow up question evoked a smile: what kind of engineering was required to make the bright orange box? I broke it down for her as best as I could. The conclusion: after I'm a mechanical engineer, I'm going to learn those other things too so I can build a box.The classroom visits were by the far the best part of my time in Delhi. That one hour in the classroom made up for the multiple hour commute. The reception of the BOB made up for the hundreds of hours of monotonous assembly and troubleshooting over the past four months. And now Delhi is defined for me in equal parts by smiles and insightful questions.- Thomas