8) Visiting Sangita's school was another story. It is a Christian school run by the "Assembly of God Church" organization based in the US. The management is all family & the Headmistress was a Bengali Christian lady who rarely spoke her mother tongue, it was all English. She was delighted to see Sangita and the whole school faculty poured into her office.

During my days there was not much mention of sex-education in India, apparently days have changed and teen-sex is a problem now. Indian school boards have asked that contraception be taught, but in the trenches Indian conservative attitude prevails, as a result kids are getting somewhat of a mixed message. The biology teacher who has been entrusted with this is single and most likely a virgin, and thus may never have had any experience, so the headmistress has no confidence in her sex-education skills.

Anyway the headmistress wanted me to talk to kids about sex education as I was an American returned Indian guy who could present a good mix. She even offered me a fee to host an open session with students, which I politely declined (fee part).

Next morning Sangita and I were in front of like 100s of kids of all ages, and then having to talk to some of them and answer their questions. Most students were shy to discuss anything beyond career choices, which I gladly gave them advice on.

9) The same day we went to visit the city of Rabindranath Tagore, Indian Nobel laureate in Literature (1930s). He is greatly respected here, unlike how we treat US winners (Al Gore).

We hung around the campus (founded by Tagore) and got to see memorabilia from his days. We ate lunch at the campus cafeteria for 50 cents, but this is not your regular US College dining facility :) I told Sangita's relatives that they should spearhead a major cleaning drive and get rid of all the trash that is lying around and beautify this place even more. I found a few tourists and lots of coeds hanging around.

That's all for now. We are back in Calcutta after our Durgapur trip and heading out to see the Royal Bengal Tiger in the Sunder ban estuary (where river Ganges and other major ones meet the Indian Ocean and home of the huge Mangrove forests).

If you do not get any email from us ever again you can be happy that the Tiger has won the battle against man :)