Chapter 2: Plant response to elevated CO2 - DRUM - University of ...

slowly over every specimen on display and insists on discussing it with me. By
the time we step out, we are tired and hungry. When we get lost in the lanes of
DC, he is the one to find the way, reading the maps I have been carrying, to the
Eastern market where we have enchiladas and spinach quesadillas. Varun
relishes the food. On the way back he is charmed by the Reeboks and Nikes on
sale and is drawn in by cheap AIWA stereos. We stop by a souvenir shop that
sells three teeshirts for ten dollars.
“One fifty rupees per tee shirt, not bad, huh?” he asks rhetorically,
calculating dollars into rupees. He picks up six tee shirts and bargains for
another one free. Despite being new here, I am surprised at his ease in this
country. He has picked up the way things operate here, as if for him it is a
software code waiting to be broken and deciphered. The vending machines, Mc
Donalds, train and bus schedules.
“Everything is so standardized here, so
organized,” he says often, surprised, the engineer in him pleased. We stand one
arm over each other’s shoulder waiting for a German tourist to take our
photographs.
As I watch him frame the Smithsonian building in his camera I wonder if I
am the only one still trying to adjust to a new place, a new country. Or I wonder
if we are both programmed differently. Like the bacteria in our body, some of
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