It's been a while since my last blog post, mainly owing to busy-ness of work and as Phil and I have just returned from a trip to the UK. It felt a little strange returning to the UK after four months away - the streets of London seemed immaculate and very quiet compared to Mumbai (even in rush hour!) - but we thoroughly enjoyed catching up friends and attending a wedding in Glasgow.
It seemed to rain a lot in Glasgow, particularly when we were walking up a Munro (Ben Lomand), and looking up the UK rainfall stats confirmed for me that the average annual rainfall in Glasgow (1200mm approx) is twice that of London (600mm approx). It's interesting to compare, however, that Mumbai can receive close to 1200mm (900mm to 1000mm at least) in one month of heavy monsoon rain...The fact that it's significantly hotter in Mumbai means though that you dry off much more quickly!
We flew back to India on Tuesday this week, our second wedding anniversary, for which Phil parted with some of this BA miles to upgrade us to First class, a big treat for us both. We therefore had an excellent day (although our wedding anniversary was 4.5 hours short of a full day!) and felt relatively fresh upon returning to the city.
It seemed to rain a lot in Glasgow, particularly when we were walking up a Munro (Ben Lomand), and looking up the UK rainfall stats confirmed for me that the average annual rainfall in Glasgow (1200mm approx) is twice that of London (600mm approx). It's interesting to compare, however, that Mumbai can receive close to 1200mm (900mm to 1000mm at least) in one month of heavy monsoon rain...The fact that it's significantly hotter in Mumbai means though that you dry off much more quickly!
We flew back to India on Tuesday this week, our second wedding anniversary, for which Phil parted with some of this BA miles to upgrade us to First class, a big treat for us both. We therefore had an excellent day (although our wedding anniversary was 4.5 hours short of a full day!) and felt relatively fresh upon returning to the city.
Preparing for take-off
During lunch...the air hostess kindly left the bottle on the table for Phil
A dash of cheese - hard and expensive to buy in Mumbai!
Moving on to the title of this blog post, on Friday afternoon we had an excursion down to the tip of South Mumbai, to the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research ("TIFR") in Colaba. Phil has now visited this institution several times with work and, on a previous visit, the topic of our more unusual hobby, bell ringing, came up in conversation. Philip explained the connection between mathematics and bell ringing and was invited to deliver a host a one hour colloquium on the subject, to an audience of leading mathematicians and scientists, and volunteered that I would present with him. Needless to say I was not consulted about this beforehand and was disgruntled to find that I'd been described as a group theorist (having now forgotten most of what I learnt in my degree), but it sounded fun and something different, so I was happy to go ahead.
We spent the previous two evenings drafting the presentation (I admit that Phil did the bulk of the work) which includes sections on the engineering of bells hung for change ringing, basics of change ringing, examples of applications in group theory, a challenge for the audience (with a prize) and the background of the bells hung at the Afghan Church, located just around the corner in Colaba.
In addition, we took along our handbells to include some live demonstrations of change ringing within the presentation. This was where our major challenge arose - we wanted to demonstrate ringing on more than four bells, yet we are the only handbells ringers that we know of living in Mumbai.
Having not yet mastered ringing more than two bells each, we initiated a new Indian ringer - our driver Sagar! We first tried ringing handbells with him a few weeks ago when it was clear that he had good coordination and, after a few practice sessions, Sagar can now ring Plain Hunt on 6 on the tenors, so played a key part in our presentation. After some initial confusion and a restart, we rang 12 changes which closely resembled Plain Hunt. I'm not quite sure what Sagar thinks about his new driverly duty, but he certainly likes the bells and loved the opportunity to perform in front of an audience of 150 people in TIFR. He will never have had an experience like this before so including him made the presentation more special.
Post-talk photo shoot
The people at TIFR made us all feel extremely welcome and the level of interest and attendance at the talk was brilliant. We had tea and biscuits afterwards where many people had questions about ringing; the talk certainly seemed to be a success. Phil's hoping that some of the audience will take up his challenge - to compose a bobs-only peal of Erin Triples (!) - for the 25000 rupee prize offered by us in the presentation.
On top of that, we were lucky to have the opportunity to walk around the TIFR campus, which covers a large area of prime land in South Mumbai, included a stretch of coastline looking out to the Arabian Sea. Taking a stroll and watching the sunset was relaxing; those who live and work at TIFR are very fortunate to have so much space and tranquillity in this hectic city.
Sunset looking out to sea from TIFR (taking with a slightly smudgy camera)
Lawns in the TIFR grounds
Sagar, our kind host Sudipta, Phil and me
We hit rush hour Mumbai traffic heading home and therefore chose to stop for dinner (veg Gujarati food) on the way home. We treated Sagar to dinner, following his handbell success, which he seemed to enjoy. He is usually insistent that no Indian food can possibly be as good as his mother's cooking, but did admit, upon tasting, that the food we chose was pretty good.
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