The Big Wigs

Sometimes I really take for granted the opportunities that being overseas poses.

I definitely had one of those moments today. I've been in Kolkata on vacation the past two days and feeling pretty lazy. My big accomplishment for the week has been getting a hold of a pair of cute strappy platform shoes for about two US dollars. I keep questioning whether I'm getting anything "done" on my Fulbright fellowship. All of a sudden, a good family friend of ours says he's going to see his friend Amartya Sen--Nobel Laureate in Economics and overall development Guru--speak today. I jumped at the opportunity and spent all day in anticipation, dressed in my stretchy business pants and all.

We were in a huge hall which held over 1,000 people, all of whom had come to see Amartya Sen speak even though there were seven other speakers on the panel. Amartya Sen is a Kolkata native, and as much a point of pride to the Bengali people as poet Rabindranath Tagore or film maker Satyajit Roy (look them up). Anyway, after an interesting two hour discussion on health, education, and empolyment in India, they had about 45 minutes for questions. They screened the hundreds of written questions and took about six total. When they limited the questions to the three topics above, I was a bit disappointed. I knew my question about the status of women in Bangladesh wouldn't make the cut.

When the worn out, 70-year-old Dr. Sen took the last question, my ears perked up in familiarity. They were asking MY QUESTION to wrap up the program. I was shocked. Amartya Sen said he was "delighted" to get the question, as Bangladesh was near to his heart. He had just come from Dhaka a few days ago after a visit and seminar there. After 15 minutes of writing down his every word in response to my topic, he then thanked me BY NAME for asking the question. No one in the audience knew who I was, but I blushed pretty thoroughly anyway. I've been reading Dr. Sen's work since early college. He is to development what John Nash was to mathematics, or Tiger Woods is to golf.

I'm floating on cloud nine right now, and I think I've just gotten a bit reinspired to continue absorbing economic approaches to development. I've been a bit jaded about it lately, but if a mind like Dr. Sen's can come from an economic background, it gives me some hope.