Countdown: 4 days. I'm scared out of my pants.

Not really.

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Two other people I talked to recently are a sister of a good friend in a past life, and a Timpany (school) classmate.

The sister is a nice person who did her bachelors and a masters in the US and now works at Pratham in New Delhi. She is one of those rare people who have the commitment to take up social work right from the beginning as a life calling, and also bring to it intellectual strength, sense of proportion and fun and a mainstream network. I think she is also lucky in having been brought up in a very healthy empowering family that made some of this possible. We talked about her work at Pratham and general issues about this kind of work and where she is going and where I am going etc. I hope to keep in touch.

The Timpany person did architecture instead of engineering and joined the government in India (gasp!) and now works as a reasonably senior poo-bah in the NHAI (National Highway Authority of India). A government job is pretty cool in some ways -- you don't have to struggle to negotiate with government bureaus like I do for example, if you are in government. Also if you're reasonably high up, the perks like the bungalows and stuff are pretty cool. And basically the challenge of creating or implementing good policy is great. However I guess mostly you just get bogged down in petty political crap, and you're lucky (and strong) if you don't get infected by the culture of corruption.