UD nonetheless admits that whether it’s plagiarism, cell line mixups, data fabrication, or ye olde duplication of blots, bands, and plots — and even when it’s all Harvardy and all (UD has never been able to get it up for obscure regional public school research misconduct) — the thrill is gone. En effet, the president of the world’s most over-endowed university can burst plagiarizing out of a cake… four of its senior scientists can collapse drunk from data forgery… And (drum roll…) …

Shrug. All these high-level bogus scientific results! Put four hundred random signatories on your study; stick parts of it in this lab and that one and that one; practically explode under the pressure of the next round of funding, institutional and investor pressure (where the fuck’s the cure for enlarged prostate we’ve been pitching Pfizer), and competition with Luc Montagnier at Institut Pasteur, and whaddaya expect.

It’s the Pharmitary Industrial Complex. Its rewards are too ungraspably large – for you, your lab, your school, your colleagues – to pass up, even if the shit you’re passing off as legit sets back progress on cures. With just ein bisschen alteration of this or that data point… just a touch of treachery… you can set off a super-excited round of Special News Reports that will reach even the grateful ear of a King! The first recipient of the King Charles Enlarged Prostate Grant is … Harvard!!

The flight home began in Delhi, continued through Rome, staggered on through NYC, and then finally ended in DC — hours and hours of flying, security, customs, security again, security again, passport control, long, luggage-laden terminal hikes, etc.

On the plane to NY, UD admitted that her feet (never her best feature) were giving out, and Mr UD ordered the chair.

Although certifiably old, UD ain’t the wheelchair type, has never been pushed around in one… I mean, after all, she had just done a creditable job (though only creditable) of maintaining a relentless month-long physical pace in Venice, Florence, and Rajesthan.

But ok all of that took a toll and as she exited the plane she was happy to see the chair, along with the nice woman in charge of (who knew?) wheeling her to the very front of every single hellish airport line. Although fundamentally since birth insanely privileged (visit India if you want to know how global inequality goes), UD has never occupied the First Class, Business Lounge, Priority Seating, Preferred Client world at all, so being whisked ahead of the crowd felt weird, wonderful, and guilt-generating (do my feet really hurt so much that… ?).

Au fond, it was obvious to your blogeuse, in the event, that she did need this help, and though the general solicitude (“Anything else? Can I check your blood pressure?” asked a Rome-JFK crew member. “Are you comfortable?” asked the woman pushing me.) made her feel uncomfortable, she also began to glimpse a world in which people don’t idiotically, stoically, refuse various forms of assistance.

At Samode Palace, as an absolutely insane Indian wedding gears up.

There’s so much, and I know so little.

Even if I knew somewhat more, I’d venture little, because there’s so much to know.

The main impression is the impossible city streets, whose cows motorbikes kiosks trucks pedestrians ruts and speedbumps our driver honks/slices through at an impossible speed. There are no traffic lights, no stop or speed signs. Small children on bikes carry in one hand whirls of cotton candy for sale. The other hand steers through the chaos. Piles of old tires, and piles of old garbage, line the road; half-built houses and mounds of stone lie with them. Everyone seems to be trying to mend the world one burdensome inch at a time – transferring this stone to that place, herding three goats some steps along the road, flicking a shop’s scarves to make them a little more noticeable. The view is at once frenzied and sisyphean.

… at our hotel in Fort Nagaur.

[New French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal] started [as Education Minister] last summer by declaring that “the abaya can no longer be worn in schools.”

His order, which applies to public middle and high schools, banished the loosefitting full-length robe worn by some Muslim students and ignited another storm over French identity. In line with the French commitment to “laïcité,” or roughly secularism, “You should not be able to distinguish or identify the students’ religion by looking at them,” Mr. Attal said.

I told this crowd of Indian students to flash the peace sign. They did that AND gave out a big group cheer.

In Jaisalmer. India continues making me love her.

… a swimming hole.

Blue City, Jodhpur.

… but UD had had enough climbing, so she sat in a dusty nook and watched this woman lug stones on her head. In seconds, she and two other women put down their work and excitedly gazed at UD and came over and talked to her, though she and the women shared not one word in any language.

Americans are attractive exotics round these parts, and UD was several times at the fort stopped by families who asked if they could take her picture. Whole families crammed into the picture, arms around UD…

Who is UD, she thought, as exuberant, curious people rushed her, that Indians art mindful of her?

To the three ladies’ manifest questionings, UD passed her hand against her forehead: I stopped walking because I am tired. Yes, yes, they signaled, and then talked with me some more. Eventually I closed my eyes and leaned against the pillar, and they went back to work.

A man seeing me with my eyes closed approached. “Are you ok?” “Just waiting for my husband; thank you for asking,” and he smiled the sweetest smile.

The acoustics were good, and one of the ladies was singing; so UD sang. She sang Ella Fitzgerald’s version of Mister Paganini; she sang Sarah Vaughan’s version of Speak Low. She sang – natch – Music For A While. The ladies seemed to like all of this, though it sounded not at all like their songs.

On our balcony.

… who look like they’ve stepped out of the pages of Vogue.

An understandable error! Most people cannot comprehend/believe that one university’s endowment is over fifty billion dollars; and Harvard will be at one hundred billion before you know it, which will be that much harder to assimilate as a reality.

Even a New York Times opinion writer (plus, UD assumes, a bunch of editors who reviewed her column) finds herself rendering a reasonably large endowment as an amount in the hundreds of millions, rather than as an amount exceeding the GDP of 120 nations.

Here’s a simple trick to help you remember: Just repeat aloud ten times FIFTY BILL FIFTY BILL with a stress on the b.

… on all of whose surfaces appear the very greatest art the world has ever known.

*******************

La Kid and Mr UD gesticulate down the street from the museum.