A Conundrum

As I look back on it, I was not mentally prepared (or financially really, but that is another matter) for a field study. The wise thing to do, would have been to stay in Provo and just work. Not take classes, just work as much as I could to save money and prepare for the fall semester. I was not ready to just show up somewhere, establish my life, learn how to conduct research and then conduct it, as well as balancing an intense load of academic course work. Just going to India essentially randomly and trying to establish a life in and of itself was a titanic project. Because I was not ready, because I did not really know what I was doing, all in all, I would have to say that mostly I failed in the explicit goals of my project. That isn't to say that the summer was a failure, per se, or that I did not learn anything. It was incredibly difficult and a very stretching situation. But as to balancing course work and figuring out how to conduct research, success was elusive.

So really, it would have been better in many ways that I had not gone. I am not going to have some amazing paper to show off to future employers or grad schools. In fact trying to describe exactly what I did and why it was worth while itself is a difficult task. Trying to do this semester with the extra things I did not quite finish in the field and trying to pull together a summer that was so full and so empty emotionally, psychologically, and academically is something that is still beyond me (even as due dates sprint at me). Had I not gone I would not feel so unbalanced now. Had I not gone, I would not have been so distracted and so busy this semester. Had I not gone, I would not have near the stress I have had to deal with this past semester trying to work through and conceive of my coursework and my project.

But I promised a conundrum and here it is: had I not gone, I would not be ready to go again. Arguably there are better ways to receive this introduction. I could have waited for a program in which I would be someone's assistant. I could have looked for a program that was an already established project with established contacts and I just had to show up. I do not discount these things. Looking back, much of what I did was foolish and in many ways suffering as the result of being lazy in my preparation. However, the thing that I struggle with most in trying to communicate my failure is that I know now how to do my project. I know how to establish myself on my own in India. I know how to begin a project. I know how to structure it. I know the correct time of year to go. I even have a few contacts that could lead to other contacts. I do not suggest that I have created the foundation to just go next summer and create some field-changing study, but I know now how to start.

So what do I do in this case? How do I create a narrative that makes sense out of this experience? I have suffered much for this field study and most of what I suffered will not yield anything productive. I have no contacts in higher education. This is not my "in" to a prestigious program somewhere. In fact I honestly believe putting myself into a program I was not prepared for and thus being overwhelmed, taking on more than I should have will most likely result in lower marks which will probably hurt my chances of getting into a decent graduate program. But I would not be able to do what I know feel so much more capable of without this experience. Do I regret the problems I have created for myself or do I rejoice in my gained experience? Is it a case of x steps forward, y steps back? Is it better to say I am stable and dependable, send me on a stable and dependable program even though I am inexperienced? Or is it better to say I have no proof, but you can drop me off anywhere and I will try?

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what the correct answer is. What is done is done. I cannot take back this crazy summer and get back the time I spent this semester worrying over it and working on it. I cannot squeeze back in a productive summer of quiet work and preparatory reading.

Because the thing is there really isn't a way to prepare for international experience. It is international. The point is it is a different culture. If you do it by careful installation, if you try to maintain as much of your previous life as before, you will never succeed. You will always be met with petty irritations and annoyances. There will always be days when the air conditioner/heater doesn't work like the one in America even though you paid extra for it and it would be so easy for the natives to make it work. There will always be days when the people are acting completely irrational in the face of your carefully explained, science-backed rational ideas, explanations, and implorings.

But I guess you just have to be aware that the cost of jumping in with both feet can be incredibly high.

The hardest part about studying reading in India

is that I cannot say what I really think about Chetan Bhagat because so many people I talk to love his books. So let me rant here. He is a miserable author. His writing is remedial. His plots suck. He is racist. His opinions of the West are not empowering to India, they are engendering nationalist sentiment that are only going to hold normal Indians back while allowing the rich Indian elite, (e.g. investment bankers like Chetan Bhag) to continue sell out India to the West (zing!). His books are big cartloads of do as I say not as I do kind of stuff. They are written as movies and Bhagat spends all his time now trying to get his books made into movies and delivering speeches to support his affluent Mumbai lifestyle. Let's be honest, he writes crappy movie scripts. Like high school level stuff. It's high school level scripts except instead of emo drama, they are full of platitudes about how you can be whoever you want to be. Note that there have a been a string of murders related to labor riots in Haryana over the last month or so, with some speculating that the violence started after some castist remarks. Okay, I am stopping now. I just wish Bhagat would too.

Okay that is not the hardest part, but every time I see someone reading Bhagat or someone gushes about how much they like Bhagat...I have to almost literally bite my tongue.

I think the most surprising thing to me, which in retrospect should not have been, that I have concluded from my research is that Indians, with regards to reading, are really not that much different than Americans. I have never studied American reading, but from remembering what I have observed from talking to friends and acquaintances in the U.S., reading reports about books and e-books, and from inspecting people's bookshelves or lack of them in their homes (disclaimer: if you let me in your house I have thoroughly inspected any book collections I could find. This isn't probably, I have. I am a shameless book snoop) it is basically the same thing.

There are some differences. Americans do read more overall, but the quality of the literature is the same. Chetan Bhagat is on par with Stephanie Meyers and any cheap romance or mystery writer. Dan Brown, Michael Chrichton, Stephen King, and Sue Grafton are perhaps of slightly better quality than the big writers of cheap fiction that Indians read in English at least, they are formulaic, over-hyped, and while perhaps important parts of English literature to study and remember, their books individually are fairly forgettable. Why am I talking about this. Oh, Americans may read more due to the wider availability of books, literacy, and the cheapness of books, but the reading and the purpose of the reading is essentially the same.

The thing that surprises me is the lack of correlation between why people read and what they choose to read. Even in the field of English books, there is a general preference for Indian authors. In fact, outside of those who legitimately read (not that everyone else does not really read; what I mean by that is people who actually do enjoy reading for a hobby and devote at least some time to for sheer pleasure), I do not think anyone mentioned a preference for Western authors. It makes sense in my mind that if you are going to favor your own nation's authors that you would then also choose books with strong messages or try to read the "classics" (whatever that might mean). I guess this is really not that surprising. I don't imagine that the "'merica" kind of people would really be capable of digesting or understanding much more than twilight or fifty shades (oh I so went there). Except the difference is the Indians do not take pride in stupidity or ignorance like the American set do. They hold traditional ideas and opinions sometimes, but they do not knowingly seek after ignorance like some Americans do.

I guess I expected that if there were a preference for Indian authors, the reading would also be to some degree political as well. But mostly I haven't really noticed it to be.

Another interesting trend is that the other popular genre for reading, motivational/business lit, it is all about the ideas. It doesn't matter if you are Rajan Tata or Bill Gates. If you have good ideas and people feel that they work, the book is popular. The most popular, or at least the most frequently mentioned seem to be Indians, or else Indians living abroad, however no one seems to discriminate against books written by Westerners in the slightest. The seven habits are frequently mentioned as good books. It seems like with literature, Indians are conscious of preserving a native tradition, but when it comes to business and success, it is a free-for-all.

I am still developing these ideas. Over the next two weeks I am setting things up to get some hopefully really good more one on one kind of stuff. Since I have generally lacked (and still lack) a target population that I could focus on getting access too, I have just been working with what comes up in conversation, what I observe, and what I overhear. Finally college is back in session, so I am going to take advantage of that. Also I have gotten much more comfortable with the people in my PG and also I have made headway in some of the clubs I have been attending. It is to the point where it isn't exactly the societal penetration I was imagining, but it will work for my project.

Ah! And I still have a draft of that entry I never finished. I need more time! I need more time for reflection and observation. I cannot draw conclusions of any kind after one short and crazy summer. Field Studies are not near long enough. I need at least a year to confidently say anything. This is crazy!..."I just met you. And this is crazy. But I've only been here three months and I'm analyzing your culture and drawing sweeping, misinformed, possibly racist and insulting conclusions, maybe." Aiyo. And I bet that (I was thinking SWEARS!) Dr. Nuckolls will just love how things turned out. Next time. You have not heard the last of me, Dr. Nuckolls, you hear that? *shakes fist* This isn't the end!

Okay, for serious this time

Alright, sorry, I am back in Delhi for good, I think. I was off in Himachal Pradesh doing some cultural activity stuff. I made some promises to go to some festivals and see some temples, so I was sort of obligated to return. Plus I have a sort of adoptive family there and it is like cultural experience city out there, so I figured in the long run it would actually be more productive for my FS work. I have basically all the cultural experience stuff done. Not that I won't continue to do cultural experience stuff, but the official ones that I have to tick off the course list are mostly done now thanks to Himachal Pradesh.

Worry not about my blogging skills. I have regular access to internet and have been seriously pondering some blog entries, so I hope going forward I will be actually posting regularly for once.

As far as my project project goes, things are proving to be a little more difficult than I initially anticipated. My project in and of itself is not really the difficult part. Honestly it is almost too easy in what I am trying to do. All I need to do is talk to people and observe society here so I can analyze literature in a cultural context. Sounds super easy, right? I mean, it is, the difficulty I did not anticipate is that contrary to being an advantage, not having some specific community I am trying to access or a job to do, really interfacing with people is kind of difficult. Also, filling the days is also difficult. Honestly I haven't spent a day where I have really tried missionary style, walking around and talking to people, but from the limited random approaches I have done...that is not very effective at all. And I am not terribly surprised. Even though my topic is really not all that intimate or anything, I don't blame anyone from not really wanting to talk to the random foreigner who is only talking to them because they happen to be nearby.

The other problem with randomly approaching people besides the fact that it lacks even the possibility for establishing rapport, is the people who really speak English, who are more likely to read at all, whether in English or otherwise, don't really wander around the streets of Delhi. They are all at home in the posh, harder to access neighborhoods or in malls/recreation areas or at work. Basically, the people I need to work with are all cloistered away behind a wall of money. I don't know if I should just go out on a limb and start frequenting malls or bars or restaurants or something. I suppose I could afford buying some appetizer or cheap drink a few times each week, but that would be cutting it close. And I don't know how kosher that is really for BYU research. The problem is that still does not solve the rapport problem.

By explaining this I do not really mean to complain. Things are going well. Through the few friends I have, my random room mates here, and my Himachal Pradesh contacts, I have actually made some pretty interesting observations and had some admittedly brief, but informative conversations about reading. I just feel like my project would be much more successful if instead of giving myself the freedom to explore randomly, I had some organization I was volunteering with or a school I was taking classes at or anything like that. I mean, honestly, with what I am doing, I can do it even if I was just going out to tourist sites everyday. All I need is some people to talk to, and actually Indian tourists are some of the easiest to approach because they also exist in the foreigner space. (I need to post about that, actually) But it would be much easier if I was going to some boring office everyday so I could get to know coworkers or fellow commuters or just having a routine where I could become friendly with people just through repeated daily collisions. I have a few book clubs I am trying to meet with. That is my latest project. I am not really sure how that is going to go, but we will see.

This has been a great learning experience though. In trying to find housing, in formulating how to work with people, in rethinking my project and having to redefine it based on the reality that faces me in the field, this has been a great experience. What I worry about now is translating that into some worthy end product.

I think that has been my biggest concern lately. I know that over the next month and a half or so that I have left, I will be able to talk to plenty of people to accomplish my purpose of getting a rough sketch of the state or reading in India. But due to limitations in my experience, my resources, and just the amount of time I have, I will not be able to produce some iron clad, scholarly report with copious data and charts. Which isn't necessarily a problem, except I don't want to write some stupid personal reflection on reading in India or something that makes it look like I am just on vacation and as an after thought threw together a ten page paper for some credit.

In my discussions before I left with Professor Eastley, he brought up the excellent idea of relating the things I found with either an analysis of India's literary past or a commentary of sorts of India's current self perception. These ideas really helped the initial definition of my project and have been great for this sort of in-field identity crisis I have been having with my project.

From where I am now, I have been thinking about putting together some sort of essay (along the lines of essayists, not like, just writing an essay like a paper or something) or some sort of literary/cultural criticism piece. I just still struggle with how to present what I have observed. I do not doubt the veracity of what I have observed and concluded so far, but, how do you present such subjective information in a scholarly way? I could record some official interviews and have direct quotes of Raj Whoever saying he does not have time for books in his busy life. I could actually make detailed specific collections of data of everyone I meet and categorize their responses. But none of this is at all representative. I just happened to run into so and so and any collection of who I talk to is going to be small. I do not feel comfortable saying something about India in general and then backing it up with what I observed from a small handful of contacts that I slowly gained over one short summer. I feel like the result would be either disingenuous or juvenile.

But I do not want to pull back and rely too much on my course reading. I have a lot of great reading. It has helped me in rethinking my project and deciding how to go forward, but I worry about the analysis of the literature becoming the center of my project and displacing my experiences and findings in India, which is the whole point of going through the expense of coming here. I am sure I will find a happy balance in the end. They are not mutually exclusive, I just need to find the best way to blend them together.

I just wish filling the days with identifiable productivity wasn't proving so difficult.

Status

Okay so this isn't going so well lately. I am getting back on the horse, I promise. Tomorrow afternoon I am going to draw up a to do list of absolutely everything to the smallest detail that must happen before the semester is over and then I am going to draw up a list of topics to blog about. Come hell or high water I will write a blog post every day, two or three times a day ideally. This isn't just to make this blog functional. This is entirely to just get me writing and producing again. I think have about worked myself through the road block I hit with my project and I am ready to jump back into action again. I don't have quite the sources I would like, but I have enough for what I need to do. So maybe I will be blogging about random India things like religion or food or something or maybe it will be aspects of my project I am exploring, ideas on methodology, etc. It will be a grab bag. It will probably be hard and there will be times when I absolutely do not want to write, but I will do it. It will work out in the end.

In other news I have no idea what the heck I should do for my other class during the summer. If I don't take another English class I will probably have to graduate in April instead of December because I don't really think I am capable of taking four English classes in one semester. Having three is hell, four would be awful. Maybe it will work out. I will have to check what will double count. If two of the classes I think  will double count will double count then everything will be okay, but if not, I will have a possible small problem. Although if I don't have to take two English classes that could cause another problem in that I will need to really brainstorm what subject even to do the other one in. Is it wrong that I want it to be something awesome? Like I mean, go out and explore ruins awesome or something. My one class will be reading/writing, so maybe I can rig something up like that.

Sudden Idea

As I was finishing my last post, I had an idea. This may be impossible, I am just thinking this out here in this post. I wonder if there is a way to have my research be completely open. I wonder if there is a way to make a website or a blog or a facebook page or something like that where my research on reading in India can be actively interacted with and contributed to by people in India or Indians in other places.

I understand that there are hurtles to overcome for something like this. There is the sensitive topic of illiteracy, the diversity of languages, English fluency. I don't even know if doing it in English is the correct choice for this kind of thing in India.

But if I could get a group on goodreads or provide a place where I could interact with people or get people to interact on the topic of reading, that would be amazing. I know we have talked about how if you post your results/notes, then people change their answers, but I wonder if the topic being something like reading would allow it to be more freely open, less constrained than it would be if I were discussing marriage or religion or something. I mean, you cannot predict how things will be perceived, I guess.

I don't entirely know the best way to put something together like this. The respondents would mostly just be college students/young adults as they are probably the only ones who would go to internet cafes for something like this. It also would skew the responses to the more affluent because they would be the most internet literate.

I will have to think more about this idea. It may just complicate things. I really like the idea of my project not being all hush hush, though. I don't think the topic really requires it or even needs it.

Visiting Cards

As we have been talking about ethics and stuff in class, I have been thinking about the ethics involved in my project. I feel like as long as I remain super sensitive to people around me and always ask questions if I am doing anything wrong when appropriate, I feel like I can mitigate most of the potential problems of my topic and methods. I mean, I still want to sit down with a few people and brainstorm with them to come up with ways in which my project might cause problems. The big part semi-ethical hurdle in my project is getting my research, results, my project back to the people that have helped and will help me accomplish it. I am still pondering this idea, but one thing I already planned to do that now will take on a new purpose is getting my own visiting cards. I am super excited.

This is a visiting card:

It may look like a simple business card, but in Indian culture this takes on a completely new meaning. Everyone has visiting cards. You give them out to people you meet who you want to do business with or stay in contact with. It is a way to either make business contacts or to give to someone who can see that you are important, that you are successful. It kind of is like a mini profile in many cases. Like this one. I got it from this blog. They do graphic design, so they are technically showing off their talent, but this sample is a good one for visiting cards, in addition to their graphic design capabilities. You notice that in this example it has the name of the person, M. Ali Bhatti, their position, proprietor, the name of their company, Bhatti + Bhatti, and what they do. It also has their address. When the fictional Mr. Bhatti meets someone, he will give them this card.

As soon as I get to India, one of the first things I hope to do is locate a printer and have five hundred or a thousand visiting cards made up. Mine will probably be a lot simpler than Mr. Bhatti's, but they will serve the same purpose. Basically I plan to just have my name, my e-mail address, my blog address, and maybe my facebook or google+ page (depending on if I can bring myself to support those) listed on the card. That way I can give it to anyone who works with me, who I meet who I hope to work with, or who I just want to stay in contact with. For giving back my finished research project, I still will try to collect people's information and notify them when it is finished/let them know the progress. Visiting cards will give me a double layer of protection. Rather than going through the awkward motions of having to find pens and paper scraps that will get lost, the visiting card is official, clean, and easy to read and provide a way for everyone I meet to at least have the chance of following along with my project. Internet access is still going to be a problem, which I as a lone undergraduate student cannot overcome, but there are internet cafe's and things like that. At least this will be some way to make sure that I do not come off as some invading American taking advantage of India for my undergraduate gain. It is so unbelievably important to me that my project in every way possible give back to India. I hope to gain a lot from this, but a major goal of my topic is to in some way to contribute to the understanding and culture of reading in India in ways that will benefit India continuing to establish a solid place in the global world.

Language

Recently I have kind of been gearing up my efforts at really learning Hindi. I don't think I will accomplish all that much while I am here as I do not really have anyone to talk with. I hope this summer I will be able to practice speaking a lot. Anyhow, today in class, actually after class one of my classmates who is actually from India asked me to look over one of his assignments for a writing class. He actually writes very well. He is an extremely intelligent person. His vocabulary and accent are excellent. You can kind of hear it, but it is more an afterthought than anything else. Lately in class we have been working on translating stories from a children's Mahabharat. (As an aside, I do not know why in English they call these books the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. In my Hindi class and most Indian sources I have worked with, they are referred to as the Ramayan and the Mahabharat. For comparison in pronunciation it is like rah-mah-yah-nah and mah-hah-bu-rah-tah versus ruh-mai-yan and ma-ha-bar-ut, well, that was actually kind of butchered, but I think I get my point across? For clarification that is how I refer to them in my head.) We are translating these which has been a very interesting experience. However when I was looking over my friends assignment, I realized the most of the problems were just translating his Indian English into American English. This is where the experience gets difficult for me to describe. It wasn't that he was writing things like "We to the store are going. You are coming with?" or something terribly broken like that. It was just a different way of writing, dare I say a different way of viewing things? He used a lot of big vocabulary, he phrased things in a very round about way, he used a lot of references to idioms and foreign phrases. From what I have seen in India, this is a fairly common way of writing in English. But the thing that blows my mind is that it was so different, but not necessarily wrong or weird. There was no problem with spelling or grammar, it was just in the diction, I guess. This idea has set my mind on fire tonight. How can there be this thing that is so similar, but so very different? Any American who ran into his writing without any context would be left scratching their head. They might even struggle to understand what he is trying to say. I do not have a name for this translation that is not really translation. It amazes me that people can speak the same language and yet a completely different language, even using the same vocabulary. This different mindset has me fascinated. I want to learn as much as I can at this different way of conceptualizing ideas and expressing knowledge. To me it represents more than a difference in colloquialisms. British English writing does not have the same foreign feel that Indian English sometimes does. I think it gets down to a different way of conceptualizing people and the world. I don't know if this relates back into m-time or p-time or not. Maybe this is just another sign of this idea. Most of the literature I have read does not write in this very Indian way. I am going to keep my eyes open for more examples of this before I head to India so I can start formulating some theories on it. I also now have a new mini project to work on in country: become more fluent in this kind of English so that I can better situate myself as a useful intermediary between my culture and that of India.

Separate Journeys

I am still trying to get my stride back, but while I do that, I have been reading a collection of short stories called Separate Journeys. Each story is written by a female Indian author from a different part of the country. The stories have been interesting, although not for exactly the reason I at first anticipated. The introduction to this book makes a big point out of the fact that each of the authors comes from a distinct background with different literary and cultural attributes as a result. My perception of Indian literature is rapidly expanding. It seems like, so far at from what I have observed, English is a fundamental part of Indian writing, but it is also just another language among many languages. Most of the major languages have a huge body of literature. I find that idea fascinating. Regardless of what I ultimately end up doing specifically for my project, I am going to devote a certain amount of time to try to hunt down the sources of these books. One of the stories suggested that there was a massive pool of Kannada literature, except while I was there in India I never saw anywhere that sold books except for in English, with maybe a single book case devoted to the most common regional language. I mean, I was not actively looking, but I feel like if these were such prolific writing communities, there would be more evidence of it. Maybe I just am not looking in the right places. The posh malls cater to the rich, obviously, and so it isn't surprising that the majority of their books are in English. The thing is, I only ever noticed two kinds of book stores while I was in India. There are the super posh ones and then the small, warehouse like black market book stores. Well, black market is kind of harsh, I guess, because they do sell legitimate copies of books. But they also sell a lot of pdf print off kind of books where I am pretty sure neither publisher nor author sees any royalties from them.

So when I get to New Delhi, I am going to have to be on the look out for other outlets for books. I am going to have to ask around, but the things I have thought of so far are: book stores, "black market" street book stores (obviously), book fairs (like the Sunday book sale I mentioned in an earlier entry that existed in Hyderabad. I feel bad, but in pursuit of my project I am willing to go out on a Sunday and buy books, if it comes to that), book carts, book stalls, yard sales?, literature events, college stores, national libraries, and local libraries. Perhaps talking to publishing houses might also help to see which book seller people they sell their books to might uncover some leads.

I am finding that in my research I am struggling to find sources talking about Indian readership. There isn't much, but there is plenty for a field study project that involves literary criticism. However, while enlightening and something that would be productive to read in preparation for my time in India and discussing literature with people, it doesn't really help me ground my project in the current research about reading in India. I mostly have been hitting the databases I use as an English major, which is probably part of the problem. The study of English is interested in why people read, but usually is more abstract/attempting to be universal, which isn't terribly helpful. I think I will have to talk to a few of my anthropologist friends to see if there are any databases that they recommend particularly (Rachel, here's lookin' at you kid, among others). Perhaps they will have more of what I need.

Anyhow, I talk like I have completely narrowed it down, but I haven't quite yet. Emma Roberts is out. As much as I would love to do that, I do not think I have the temperament to go run around the country and accomplish things. I am not good at being spontaneous like you would need to be in order to make that work. Besides, I really do not think a summer is enough time to make that work. I think the Urdu poetry thing might be out as well. I am in love with the idea, but I don't know if I could quite tie it together in something meaningful. Okay, I think I could, but I guess I am not sure that I could learn Urdu well enough in time in order to actually work in translation, which is what I would have to do. And it wouldn't be text book Urdu, it would be artistic, high Urdu written in handwriting from two hundred years ago, not printed, with all the irregularities and complexities that go along with it. I think it would be fun, but I would probably end up writing a paper about the experience of how hard it is to translate and interpret poetry, not really write something meaningful about the poetry. The remaining three ideas are kind of iterations of each other. Some are too broad, some might be too narrow, I will have to work them out. I may just end up creating a hybrid out of them or something. I think locating some actual resources about what and why people are reading will be helpful to giving me some really healthy perspective on what direction I should go. Although I guess thinking about the topics, I am going to need literary history, not just literary anthropology. Blerg. I don't know where to get that.

Hate

So I am in the middle of the days reading, and one thing that occurred to me that I have kind of thought about, but haven't seriously considered and that I am not realizing I should probably very seriously consider is preparing myself for hate. That is a strong word, but I think in my excitement to get back to India, I am not preparing myself mentally for the very real and very likely possibility that this summer will not be all sunshine and roses. I know it won't. Last summer in India I was living with seven to sixteen other Americans (they came and went) and so was somewhat insulated away from Indian culture. I mean, I love love love Indian culture. I love the food, I love the people, I love the religions, I love the heat and the humidity, I love the languages, I love so many things about freaking awesome India! But as I was reading about field notes and diaries, I realize that I really do need to take serious consideration to preparing myself for when I am reacquainted with or discover new things about India that drive me crazy. I guess I am not exactly sure how to prepare myself to hate India (again, strong words, not as strong as I mean, but I hope you understand what I am talking about) other than perhaps just allow myself to be open to the idea. I don't mean that I plan to be apprehensive or distant, but just that I am aware that this can and probably will happen to some degree so that when it happens I am prepared to react appropriately.

Okay, I really have apprehensions about admitting that I have read this book and even more apprehensions in admitting that in some ways it has influenced my life, since in general I think it is honestly kind of a stupid book, but Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love actually had what I thought was one good point. Overall I think it is full of exactly the kinds of things that stupid Americans do and perpetuates the idea that all the rest of the world exists as a playground for Americans and that we bless them by gracing them with our divine American presences. Anyhow, end rant. In the middle of the book in the India section she is at the Ashram misinterpreting Hinduism, but there is one moment that I really, really liked. It is the part where she practices...I don't know if it has a name, I will call it mosquito meditation. The book builds up to this moment, so she is working on these ideas beforehand, but it comes to ahead here. Basically what she is doing is meditating with all these distractions and pain. When she does this she kind of goes through this mental exercise where she acknowledges the annoyance or distraction, confesses she cannot do anything about it, and then sets it aside. In her mind she describes it something like "Cramped knees, I know you are hurting, but I cannot do anything about that right now, I have to keep meditating, it will be okay. I acknowledge you, but there is nothing I can do" and then sets it aside. This idea of acknowledging and embracing pain and difficulty has actually been very helpful in my life and it is what I hope to use to help me deal with any difficulties I encounter in India. India is always an exercise in patience, at least for Westerners. I hope I can just accept and embrace the terrible traffic caused by unwise decisions by Delhi's drivers, admit that it drives me crazy, and then set it aside and just move forward. A lot of dealing with difficult people or misunderstandings or differing world views will probably just come down to whether or not I can accept them with patience. I don't know how long I will be able to maintain this zen thing, but it is on my list of things I hope to be able to do while I am there. India is a lot more about existing than in America. Sometimes you just need to stop and accept/enjoy the moment even though it is hot or you have a headache or you just want to be home or you are late. There isn't anything you can do about it anyways, so let it be and see, perhaps for the first time, what is around you.

Reading in India

So while I was thinking and writing about my five competing project questions, I realized that I may be thinking about this incorrectly. I do not think what I am about to write about will actually directly affect my project. I am committed to studying literature-esque things, but I realized that actually trying to approach literature from such a blunt perspective may be the wrong approach in some ways. I was thinking about the things I have been reading and I would like to look into when I was thinking about a book I got, The Adventures of Amir Hamza. It was originally a Persian epic, but it kind of found new life and grew in its Urdu incarnation in the Mughal courts. According to William Dalrymple, the last full version published in Urdu was something like forty volumes. Okay, I am getting sidetracked with fun random facts. The main point is, The Dastaan-i-Amir Hamza for most of its existence has been an oral text. Now I am not saying that I should just scrap books and look at oral literature, folk stories, and gossip, but I think it represents an important paradigm shift that I need to understand before I will be prepared to go to India to actually study things. India has an almost frighteningly immense literary heritage. Mostly unknown to the west there is a canon of sorts of classical Indian writings from the last two and a half thousand years on everything from religion to literature to criticism. The way these things have been transmitted and recorded is in many ways different from how things were done in the West.

I think an important thing to consider for many of my proto-projects is how do Indians feel about knowledge, stories, and literature as topics. I will need a firm understanding of the place they have in Indian society and how they relate to the Indian world view before I will really be able to make sense of any information about literature I collect in the field. It is a question on how they view literature. Most Indian languages have no word for chef. Being a cook is not really a very prestigious career and so the only way to say it in most language is just to say someone who prepares food. Mostly lower caste people prepared food traditionally. Thus there could be something important in the place of the author in Indian society. I suppose another angle to consider is the place of sages like Valmiki who are respected.

Another point brought up in class was that of literacy. Understanding who cannot read could be as important as who can read and what they read. I am very interested in this topic, except I am pretty sure it would make any project I tack it onto way to large to be possible. I might spin it out into a sixth possible project question. Although really it is time to choose, not come up with more. It would be interesting to know what the illiterate feel about reading, their motivations to want to learn to read, why they don't want to read, or what has prevented or is preventing them from being able to read. I wonder what stories and myths they know and how it affects their world view.

Anyhow, overall I think I still know what I want to do. Before I leave I will need to do a bunch of research on this concept of literature and oral tradition and everything to inform my project. I do not know how much these concepts will change my project, but they will definitely inform how I put it together going forward. I will have to contemplate these ideas a lot more.

The History of Indian English Literature

The final topic I have been considering, is the development of English literature in India. Basically its history, where it came from, where it is, and maybe where it is going, if it is possible to tell that.

In doing this I would need to take a survey of Indian literature from its inception to the present. I think the most important and difficult part of this would be finding the origins. I would like to get down to the very details. When were Indians first using English? And then from those beginnings in clerical notes or whatever it was, trace it all the way back up to the present where there is now everything from user manuals to novels to comics produced in India, by Indians, for Indians in English. I would need to know significant trends and movements, the major authors and influences, the major impetuses for Indians to write in English, and maybe public opinion about English all along the way.

I think libraries, schools, universities, book stores, publishers, and government offices would be my primary sources for information. I do not know how much normal people would be of help in this case, but they might be. It is probably not possible to simply go through everything. I would need to have people that know about these things to contact and work with. I also would need to have a plan of major sources and things that I would need to hit to really learn anything.

The purpose of this would be to put together a coherent sort of history, I guess, of Indian writing in English. I do not think I would have time to do much detail, so it would probably end up being sort of a brief introduction to the topic. Tracing the Origins of Indian writing in English would relate back to its current place in post-colonial literature. By looking at where it has come from, where it is, and where it is going, I would hope to gain insight into how it fits into the paradigm of post-colonilial literature and how it fits into contemporary Indian culture. Perhaps they are related in some way.

I think the main concerns I have with this is that it is such a huge topic and there isn't really a good way to narrow it down. I could choose a specific segment of history to focus on, but anything but the most recent time periods would not really help in looking at how Indian literature fits in with post-colonialism. Also, there is the problem of finding all the sources and knowing them well enough to write them into a history. I assume this is a huge amount of documents. The history of English in India goes back at least a few hundred years. I do not know if I could track down everything I need. I am not exactly sure where to look for it. I get the feeling that I am not going to find what I need in the United States, but in India, at this point, I am not exactly sure where to start looking for something like that. I feel like I would run out of time before I made any significant headway.

Anyhow, that I guess concludes my five question analyses for now. I am tired so they kept getting shorter. I feel bad about that, but I just want to get them done. I feel kind of paralyzed in my research right now because these topics don't exactly jive perfectly. Writing them out has actually really helped me kind of get a feel for what I actually want to do while I am in India and what would conceivably even be possible. I am kind of burned out on writing for the moment, but remind me to write about an epiphany I had about reading while I was thinking about and writing these. I do not know if it will actually end up relevant, but it has suddenly changed how I look at my project. Also, I need to update the Intent and logs pages on my blog. I want to get them with something in them.

18th and 19th Century Urdu Poetry

The Mughal Empire, while initially militaristic, at some point in its history, fairly quickly actually if I remember correctly, turned into a center of learning and culture. The Mughal court in Delhi was a huge center for Urdu poetry and literature. There were tons of poets and the royal court sponsored poetry readings and festivals for its celebration. The last Mughal Emperor, and probably some of the other ones, actually were decent poets in their own right, in many ways mirroring the court of Queen Elizabeth in England. Many of the best poets were given status as nobles and were respected in society. There is a huge body of Urdu poetry from this time period as they developed new styles of writing and experimented.

I really would like to go to Delhi and see what I can find of this lost tradition. I know that in the mutiny papers from the 1857 rebellion, there is some of the Urdu poetry. I should think that the central archive has copies of these works. I am not sure if the universities have anything or not.

The goal of doing this would be to go through and perform some analysis and critical examination of Urdu literature during the late Mughal period when literature was at its height, basically the hundred years between the mid 1700's ending with the 1857 rebellion. I would want to look at as many of the originals as possible, and barring that, the poetry presented in the original Urdu, printed in Urdu. This would cover everything from what was written, to how it was written, to how it was presented. Essentially your standard literary analysis. I would need to be in India and actually specifically in New Delhi/Delhi because that is where all of this went down and where I assume most of the originals still are.

This project does have a few minor concerns and one huge concern. The biggest problem is that the English, bless their hearts, destroyed a huge chunk of Urdu literature when they sacked Delhi in 1857. Entire libraries of priceless manuscripts were destroyed or burned or stolen. Even the work of living poets was lost. Considering the manuscript culture of the time, in many cases the texts destroyed were the only existent copies. Thus I am not even sure exactly how much of the Urdu literature I want to study actually still exists since the English performed a sort of cultural cleansing on it. Some other problems are tracking them down. Some of them might be museum pieces, which would make things difficult, either through not being able to see them, having to analyze them through glass, only being able to see one page through glass, or the simple difficulty of trying to access to each of the museums they are in, if they are even in local museums. Another problem is I can't read Urdu, at least not yet. Urdu is essentially identical to Hindi, so that wouldn't be a problem per se, but I would have to learn how to read Urdu, since I don't think relying on a translator is practical or ideal. That basically defeats the whole purpose of traveling to Delhi  in the first place. Another similar problem, is even if I learn to read and write Urdu, I do not know if hand written manuscripts would be legible to me. They could be too ornate or too messy for me to really accomplish much.

English vs. Native Languages

I would like to look at the status of English language Indian writing as compared to the status of Indian writing in native languages such as Hindi, Urdu, Telugu, Tamil, etc. This relates back to post-colonialism, I guess. The idea would be to place English writing in the context of the writing going on in other languages.

I would look at the amount of writing in each language, how often they are translated into one another, where they are sold, what are the demographics for each, do certain languages cater to certain classes of people. I would also want to look at things like themes and ideas. Is there certain things they write about? If English writing is considered post-colonial because it deals with the issues of getting back to the original culture and de-colonizing, what if native language writing is dealing with the same themes? Is it post-colonial? If it is in a native language, say Hindi, (sorry Tamil, no bias, I swear) and it is effectively completely controlled by solely Indians, can it be considered post-colonial? What literary forms occur in native languages? Indians (and most countries for that matter) often express a desire to resist westernization. How much has western ideas infiltrated native writing? How closely tied to the rest of the western world is English literature? How closely connected to the past literary tradition is literature in native languages? Does Indian writing in English often follow genres and forms usually found or created in native Indian languages?

Basically I would be looking at the literature, not the people. I would need to see what is available for sale, what is in libraries, what people own, what is taught in schools. I guess all of this would be impacted first by finding out prevalences. If there really isn't much of a certain language or something, that would be highly indicative. Information from publishers and authors would be helpful. Even though this is all literature analysis, essentially, I would have to be in India since native Indian language texts really do not make it far beyond the borders of India.

The goal of all of this would be to be able to put together a sort of ethnography? study? report? (I don't know what you would call it) on literature as a whole within India. This would then allow a more even perspective of English literature in India. Through this I would be able to answer questions about whether English is a weird upstart, whether it is a significant literature movement, if it is ,as Salman Rushdie claims, an Indian literary language, and whether or not it meshes more with Indian literature as a whole, or with post-colonial literature.

This topic does have some problems in that this would require the study not only of works in English, but in other languages. And not just one other language, but a bunch of different languages. It would be impossible for me to learn the languages enough to do this sort of thing. I could probably get Hindi where it needs to be in time, possibly Urdu if I had to. (since I essentially just need to figure out the dag blasted alphabet) However I would have to rely of people and/or translators for books in other languages. I am concerned on how possible that would be. This could be too huge of a topic. It might be better to focus on something like English literature versus Hindi literature. I am also not sure if it is possible to look at this from so many different angles at once. It might be necessary considering time and skill constraints to simply look at publishing rates and readership or else just themes and movements or something. I still also have to deal with the sheer mass of each body of literature which each might make a study of even either of them by themselves impossible.

Emma Roberts

Last semester, I had to do a project in my romanticism class in which I had to find an obscure British poet and then research the background and important context on one of their poems. I ended up choosing Emma Roberts for her connection to India. She lived in India for over a decade, if I remember. Maybe I am remembering wrong. Anyhow, she lived there for at least a few years on two separate trips. At the time she was a fairly well known writer in England. She published several books of her travel writing that initially appeared in magazines. While I was researching her though, I found that there were basically no resources available about her. There was some biography and the oldest documents all referenced her journals and letters. However I was never able to find the original journals and letters, only references to them in old books. Actually, only in one old book. She died in India, so my question is, is there some trace or evidence of Emma Roberts left in India?

Basically I would be going back to snoop around in the national archive as well as in the cities she lived in to see if some of her documents are holed up somewhere forgotten or if they are in a university library or something like that.

I don't quite know if I would limit myself to Emma Roberts or not. What I am most interested in seeing is not so much her writing of the time, since most that was sent to England anyways, but what she thought of India in her personal writings. Thus I have thought about expanding it to include the writings of any British women living in India from around 1800 through 1947. I want to know what they thought about conditions there, the people, how they felt about being there, and what they did everyday.

To do this I would have to first somehow find a list of people that were there, hopefully with some idea of who might have left some sort of record that could still possibly be there. In India I would have to find a network of people who might know, get access to the national archive (which would require prior permission, of course), and visit necessary libraries, cemeteries, government buildings, etc. This would require some travel, which I am not stoked about, since it would add difficulty, but as things are, I would probably have to visit places like Kolkata, Mumbai, and Simla in addition to Delhi.

Through this I would hope to be able to put together a coherent picture of colonial India through they eyes of British women as an alternative history rather than the one often told from the perspective the male British military commanders and government officers or the native populace whether complacent or insurgent. Actually looking at it all from the perspective of the native female would be super fascinating, but I do not know if any such record exists. I will do some research, but I only know of one really influential female who would have written down stuff, the Begum Sumroo. I do not know if there are any like her.

Some concerns I have with this topic are the amount of work it would require, the barrier of history, and time constraints. I do not feel like the topic is horrendously broad, however I am obviously not going to be able to just travel to important cities and do a few house visits. Since no one has really done much like this before, (at least that I have found, I am still researching) it is unlikely that these records are in one convenient location or even gathered at all. I do not know if there is even enough time to track down this many records. Trying to follow one person could be more time intensive than a single summer could allow. I think my biggest concern is simply how much time has passed. Huge political upheavals like the 1857 uprising and India gaining its independence involved a large movement of the British. I am sure there are more periods of upheaval, but any of these inevitably result in the loss of documents. If the people I am researching are not important, their journals and documents may have just been thrown away or destroyed from lack of care. I also am not even sure where to begin looking for that kind of thing. I think most of it, (if it still exists) if it has not been collected by the government then it is probably either knowingly or unknowingly in private collections. It may be impossible from the start to get the records. I guess identifying important historical structures might help, however doing a historical survey of even a single city is probably beyond my skill and more than could be done in three months.

Why Indians Read and Write

So I decided to kind of work my way through each of my possible topics here. I really would like to narrow it down so I can better focus my research. Reading a bunch of novels and background stuff is great for the trip, but it doesn't do much for my project.

In studying what Indians read and write, I want to look at where literature is in India today. When I have lived in India, I have never really ever noticed anyone reading anything other than a newspaper. Most homes I have visited had textbooks and possibly some religious books, but not always. As far as I could tell and from the few people I asked in passing, it really seemed like most Indians did not do much reading for pleasure or self-motivated instruction. Granted, I do not have many rich friends in India. Maybe they are the ones who read more. There are many book stores, both legitimate as well as black market. Supposedly in a part of Hyderabad there is a book sale every Sunday. There are books, I just cannot seem to find the readers. Or the writers for that matter.

Another aspect that I am interested is in how Indian literature in English relates to post-colonial literature. I have been doing some background reading into the state of post-colonial literature and how it works. From here in the West, there is not much exposure to Indian literature, and so they fit nicely into the paradigm of post-colonialism. However, there are hints in some things I have read, and in my assessment of Indian culture that there is more to Indian literature than just trying to navigate out of a colonized mindset. I want to go see what is on the ground in India. What are they writing and reading thematically? How often is the influence of the British mentioned? The robustness of Indian culture that is independent in so many ways to the West suggests that perhaps Indian literature is also more independent than the West gives it credit for.

In India with this project idea I would get to know people, interview them about what they read, what books and authors they are familiar with, how they feel about Western and Indian literature. I would visit book stores and publishing houses to see what trends are happening, where the publishing market is going, where the authors are coming from, and what their goals are. I would find whatever authors are available and see if I can meet with them about their writing, why they write, and who they are writing for, and also what they hope to accomplish by writing. I would also meet with university professors, officials, and k-12 (well, the Indian equivalent, since it isn't quite the same, I should post about that actually) teachers and administrators about what they teach in the classroom and how they feel about what Indian students should be learning.

I guess the ultimate goal of this would be a kind of ethnography of reading (thank you Ashley giving me the label). I want to get a snapshot of reading in India. This would orient me to where India is in the world of literature. Maybe they should still be babied in post-colonialism. But maybe there is enough there and enough independence that it is essentially bigoted to lump them in with every other colony from anywhere in the world. I think a big part of this is, while post-colonial scholars do note that countries like Canada and the United States are colonies themselves, there is definitely a different tone to the United States' literature's label as "post-colonial" and India's literature's label as "post-colonial." I use these terms a lot, but I think I need to stop and define the difference between post-colonial and "post-colonial," if there is a difference even.

Some concerns: The more I think about this topic the more I feel crushed under its size. It is a simultaneous feeling of it crushing me under its weight as well as the feeling of trying to catch fog in a jar. It just is ephemeral and floats away and spreads and I cannot really grasp it. I feel like this could actually be like five different projects focusing on each of these. I feel I could probably combine some of these ideas, but I worry about it being too broad and general to really mean anything. The label of ethnography also makes me nervous. To me an ethnography is something huge that takes place over at least eight months to a decade that involves a ton of research and an eventual big report or book. I understand that is not the expectation of a field study, but I worry that what I can accomplish in three months will be too small. Everyone is important and part of the data, but knowing what a few people think that is not really conclusive across a culture in any way is kind of wasteful to me. The experience regardless will be good, but I do not want to start a project I feel is futile from the start. I am not an anthropology major, so I don't know that having a failure experience with ethnography exactly fits in with what I want to do with my life. Also I do not know that it will in any way help the discussion of literature in India, which is part of what I want to accomplish. I think my primary opposition to this idea is that I really do not feel capable at all at conducting an ethnography. I do not know that I have the skill set to do this. I do not know if I can reign in the topic enough to make it both viable and interesting to me. But this idea is what brought me to a field study in the first place, and it is one of the most legitimate reasons to actual visit the country.

Darshan

I do not really know a whole lot about this topic yet. I have a book about it, but I haven't started it yet. All I do know is that it is an important part of Hindu worship. It is basically the concept of seeing god and being seen by god. This is why idols and temples are so important. You go to the temple or do puja to your idols at home so that you can present yourself before god to see and be seen. I am not exactly sure how this fits into the religion, but I will.

What makes me think about this is recently, (sort of, this was like a month long project) got some pictures of some Hindu deities. Currently I have Sarasvati, Vishnu, and Natarajan (Shiva, essentially) on my wall. At first I loved them. They complement my room so well. I mean, I still love them. Overtime I have slowly become aware of their eyes. It is hard not to look at them, especially in the eyes. You are drawn to them. I think I look at each of them accidentally several times throughout the day. Yesterday however, I sort of became aware of the fact that they are always looking at me. It kind of creeped me out. Every time I looked up from my book these three gods were staring right at me. It doesn't matter what angle you are at from them, they are always looking at you. I mean, I know they are not actually the idols. Erm, I mean, I am not converting here, but what I mean is, from a Hindu perspective, a god only comes and "lives" in an idol if the idol is created in the proper way. I am almost certain that the proper precautions, rites, and mantras have not been taken in the creation of these pictures, since they are published by some random American company.

Where am I going with this? It has been an interesting experience living under the eyes of gods for the past few weeks. I am so curious to learn more about how this relates back into Hinduism. I am slowly starting to piece the religion together. Random snippets I have been told or have looked up are starting to come together.

I find my religious thinking impacted more and more from what I read about Hinduism, Islam, Sufism, Indian flavors of Christianity, and to a smaller degree Jainism, Sikhism, and Buddhism. It has actually been fairly enlightening of how I perceive and interact with God in my own religion.

Edit: as per Rachel's suggestion I have uploaded a picture of the trio. Hopefully Brahma doesn't mind me substituting him out in favor of his estranged wife in my little trimurthi. Forgive the awkward angle/not really having everything in the frame. I need to get a wide angle lens. I also need to get money to get a wide angle lens, haha. Also, knowing what I am doing would help. This picture is grainy as hell up close, but the iso is only around 400. I am not sure what I need to change.

The Great Indian Love Story

I just pounded it out this afternoon. As soon as I started it, I knew it was not going to be a good book, but I am fascinated by the perspective. To best describe it, I would say if you ever want to convince someone never to go to India, especially New Delhi, give them this book to read. The entire thing was about drugs, alcohol, and lots and lots of adultery. It was basically a romance novel, but without all the explicit parts. The sex is all implied. Similar to The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay, this novel, novella really, is about the Indian perspective of love. I think that is why I kind of struggle to get my mind around it. On so many levels it is trying so hard to be just like every other trashy Western Romance novel, but if you really look at it, it is so incredibly Indian. No one writes such crazy, destabilized romances like Indians do. I do not like broad declarations about groups of people, but from what I have observed so far in what I have read, seen in movies, and witnessed first hand, Indians really struggle with the concept of love. It is either tame, devoted arranged marriage, or psychotic, usually tragic, romances. I mean, in many ways American romances are no different, but in India, it feels like you either have the equivalent of a Hindu Mormon Message or an Indian soap opera. I didn't hate The Great Indian Love Story as much as I thought I would. The characters were completely flat and predictable. I never liked them. A couple of them died (of course), but I never felt bad. The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay, while also not a terribly amazing book, is basically the same kind of story, but far better.

This is the second work of fiction in a row that I have read that features a female protagonist who grew up in India, went to school in the United States and then returned to a "foreign" India. It is kind of an interesting perspective. Now I wonder if this is some sort of sub genre of Indian fiction. The copy I have was actually meant to be sold in India, so I am curious as to what kind of people read this sort of book. It was all about rich people in Delhi having crazy parties and sleeping around. Is the desire for this kind of thing from Indian repression? Most of the Indian fiction I have read so far has been fairly literary. This is the first work I would describe as "trashy." I have purchased all of them so far, well, most of them, in the United States, so I am wondering if that has a filtering effect. Is most of the fiction that is popular in India trashy, easy fiction? I think I finished this book in less than four hours, more like three. It is not difficult at all. It is similar in that way to Chetan Bhagat, another terrible, terrible, yet immensely popular Indian author. I wish I had another year to read and ponder all this to put my project together.

Blog Intent?

I think I would like to think about that more and formulate my ideas before I write about that. Especially because I have to finish all my Hindi homework before class and I do not have much time. Yikes. So instead I will simply introduce my blog officially by explaining it, I guess. Wow that sounds exactly like saying I am going to state the intent of my blog. What I mean is like the title and layout and stuff. I mean, I didn't design the layout or anything. So the background? Blah! This is not going well at all. I sound not at all as suave and cool as I want to about this.

Plunging on ahead regardless, the title of my blog is अभी दिल्ली दूर है. Transliterated abhii Dillii duur hai. And translated "right now Delhi is far." It is an idiom (I think) in Hindi that means something along the lines of "there is a lot left to do"/"there is still a long way to go until we reach our goal." You would say if you were in the beginning/middle of a major project for a class or I guess speaking in a timely fashion, it is applicable for most of the politicians running in the Republican primaries currently. I am not exactly sure on its origin. Apparently some king/military commander said it. I keep finding different accounts of its origin. Anyhow, I chose it because I wanted something that wasn't just something like "my field study" or "I'm going to Indian b****es" etc. Plus I liked the sort of dual meaning since it is both literally and figuratively true. I also hope it helps to keep me focused, both on all that I need to do as well as keeping my mind/heart focused on the right place throughout this whole adventure.

Also, a note on spelling for my blog address. I went back and forth on what to call my blog. I eventually went with the sort of expanded official spelling of the words. I mean, that is how they are directly transliterated, but the more common way to spell it would be abhi dilli due hai. However in the end I wanted to put my weight behind the standardization of Hindi, since it is important that Hindi adopts a standard to make it more internationally viable. At least I think so. Plus I found out yesterday that abhidillidurhai is taken as a blog address, so it worked out well in the end.

The background is from a series of pictures taken by John Murray in 1858 after the British basically leveled Delhi. (hence the reason the capital of India is called New Delhi, the british destroyed the old one) Anyhow, having an obsessive personality, I love the obsessive quality of this picture. I love the color and the off angle and the sharp contrast and the old timeyness of it. It is a picture of the Jamma Masjid in Delhi, I think it is the largest, but if not, among the largest masjids in India. I suppose in a way choosing this photograph for a background sort of contradicts a lot of what I have written about how India can stand on its own, that it is ridiculous to consider it from a colonial perspective. However, I feel like this perspective of the masjid kind of embodies my current situation with regards to India. When I look at this picture I get a sort of feeling of chaos and detachment, if those words actually explain what I mean. In this picture the masjid seems like it suddenly appeared around a corner or something. Like "holy crap, what is that?!" It suggests power, skill, and knowledge, but it is concealed in that courtyard and far away. It is a mystery. Is the sky clouded over? Is it a vibrant blue? Is it darkened with smoke? It just looks like something you might find in an attic somewhere, a picture of something you didn't know existed that just kind of crouches in the back of your mind, gnawing on your subconscious until you finally go out and find whatever the heck it is. I don't know. Maybe I am not helping my case here, but this picture captures so well, for me at least, the obsessive curiosity India holds for me. I just can't seem to turn away from it. Plus I like the aesthetic quality of the picture, I suppose, if we want to go past all the pretentious analysis of a photograph.

But I have Hindi homework to do.

Cultural Blends

Okay, so I searched around and I think I found the reading I was supposed to do. I think it is the first chapter from the book Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation by Michael Agar. They have a preview on Google Books. It was missing four pages, but I think I got the gist of it. At least I hope. I can't access the field study blackboard, so if it is in there in a PDF or something convenient like that, I haven't been able to get to it. Oh well. Anyhow, so what did I think? He has some interesting ideas. I found that by the end my brain was kind of hurting from his use of the word culture. He used it about every other sentence and I started to feel like I actually didn't understand quite what he meant by culture. Like it was coming up as a blank spot. The word was suddenly undefined and that made it difficult to read. Actually that is kind of ironic, because I think that is what he was talking about, the misunderstanding of words even though the grammar and the fluency is there technically. I feel like the basic idea is that you can't really communicate unless you are fluent in culture. If I understand the word culture in that context. You can accept an invitation to come for tea, but if you do not understand the proper etiquette and process behind an invitation to come for tea, you are not really communicating with the person who invited you to tea, even though if someone asked each person what they understood, they would probably be able to answer. I found his ideas about Americans as number-ones or whatever term he used as very interesting and insightful. I know I have been in that boat before. I have worked hard to get out of it, but I do not know how far along that path I actually am. I sort of get a deja vu feeling from reading this chapter. Basically it is saying the same thing that the short article about what students don't learn abroad, just in more eloquent and round about terms. I guess the challenge then is to try to not be a number-one kind of person and to be open to the culture of other people, not just intellectually, but...intuitively? I don't quite know what word to put there. I think the hardest part about that is that so often you do it without thinking about it. Cultural perspectives are so deeply grained you don't think about it. When I go out to eat it always takes a few minutes before anyone suggests that it is okay to start eating before other people's food arrives. In India if you are the guest it would be awkward if you waited for the host to eat since actually quite often the host, if it is a hostess won't eat until after you leave. That isn't something I would ever have thought about and it isn't something that would ever have come up in normal conversation. No one explained that to me when they invited me for dinner, I learned it when I tried to wait for the host to eat. I am sure there are many more situations like that that I will figure out the hard way. I guess the trick is to try to be as perceptive as possible to pick them up as early as possible. Maybe I should just learn to ask a lot of questions? Of course that suggests knowing whether or not questions are culturally acceptable, or at least in what contexts/times. Although I do believe that part of doing what Agar suggests is learning to be a foreigner. I disagree with his maybe suggestion, if I am reading it correctly, that someone else's culture can become your own. That may be possible with European cultures that are somewhat similar to America, but I do not believe that a white person could ever really adopt African or Chinese or Indian culture. You can go a long way to picking up some of the culture, but you can never be part of it. Okay, well, let me just speak for India, which is what I know. In all my experience I have never seen it work, and in all my reading I have only ever heard of one person, a Frenchman, described as being truly accepted by the Indian people. However how much of that is reality and how much of that is optimistic history, I will never know.

And it is late late late! Tomorrow is going to suck. But it is finished! Sort of. Minus four pages. Also this analysis is not all that great because I read and analyzed everything after midnight. Not a recipe for success. No tags for you! Yet, anyways.

Class Tomorrow

I found the syllabus online, so I have a vague idea about the assignments I need to complete. Just I do not know where the reading assignment is. I am guessing it was a hand out they gave out in class. I have tried to get in contact with people, but they have not responded yet. That isn't really a problem. I know all the course facilitator people are all very advanced students and so are very busy. I am sure everything will work out. I have no idea what they mean by digital portfolio. Is it this blog thing? I am not really sure. I have this running though, in case it is. I also need to turn in an source annotation thing. I think I will just type something up about The Empire Writes Back, since I have already kind of been doing that. Reading over the syllabus has given me some perspective of where I need to be. It also has given me some ideas about my sources. Well, not so much ideas as it has helped me gauge what kinds of things I should be looking into for sources. Up to now I have kind of been reading willy-nilly. Everything has been related, but I wouldn't necessarily cite all of it in a project proposal. Also, seeing that a project proposal draft is due in mid February, I definitely need to write out some sketch-ish proposals this week. I wish I wasn't so dag blasted busy. This semester is going to be insanely busy. Hopefully that means it will be fun.

I think I am about through this cold or flu or whatever it is I have. It still is kind of chilling in my face right now, but it is not as bad as it was yesterday. I am just so dang tired. I am not sure if it would be more productive to just charge on ahead in the face of exhaustion or take it easy and play catch-up. I think for now I am going to try the charging route. College does not seem to really be designed with disease in mind.

I have been thinking about my project topic. I realized that part of what has making me slightly uneasy about all of this is that I have been too worried about the significance of my project. I mean, I never really intended/hoped that my project would be some amazing thing that would change everything. But I realize that I have been worried that it will just be dumb. And it might be, but after spending a few days thinking about it what I realized (I have used that word like twenty times in three sentences) is that really I have two goals from this project. I am not sure which is the primary goal, so in no particular order: I want to have the experience of putting together my own project and carrying it out. That is pretty straightforward. All I have to do is just do this field study, but I think even just the experience of seeing this to the end will be a major accomplishment. I mean even if it were just polling people on their favorite color, putting it all together and carrying it out in India is awesome and something I really want out of this experience. (It feels weird writing about that since it is like saying what I want to get out of school is the experience of going to school). The second is just to become even more familiar with Indian culture, hopefully transform my basic reading and writing skills into speaking skills in Hindi, and to establish connections with people and ideas in India. I feel like I am more prepared to really start to observe and absorb Indian cultural ideas. I really hope that this does not end up some superficial, touristy trip. I am not doing this to experience exotic India or to find spirituality or whatever. I want to experience and breathe in everyday people, vegetable shops, housewives doing laundry, students going to elementary school, people going to the local, small, boring temples, mosques, churches, and gurudwaras. (Although I have noticed that gurudwaras are never small or boring, at least that I have seen) So even if my project is a spectacular failure, I sincerely hope, I hope hope hope, that I will come away from this experience feeling like I am really starting to be fluent with India. I really would like this not to be my "college experience" that everyone talks about where they go backpack through Europe or whatever, but rather I would like it to be a turning point in my relationship with India where I am not desperately scrambling for excuses and funds to go back, but that it becomes a regular part of my life. I do not really care about being a world traveller. India is enough for me. I mean, there may be a few more scrambling trips, but I hope this will be a foundation for me as a useful connection to India and not just a tagalong.

Considering failure, I go back and forth about what I want to do for my project. Do I just want to do a general survey of literature? You know, like, interview some people, go to some book shops, maybe a school if I can find any that are open, and then write some vague, feel-good ten or fifteen page paper since I know I can definitely do that. Or should I try for something else? I have thought about trying to hunt down whatever I can find of poets who wrote in India like Emma Roberts. I don't know if the national archives in India have much from her or if I could find stuff on short trips to Simla or Kolkata. I have thought about looking into the origin of Indian readership in English/looking at what the contemporary reading climate is really like across different languages. I have read stuff about the vibrant literary tradition in native Indian languages, but as far as English is concerned, I haven't found a trace of it except in a few sort of, I don't know "feminist" or some sort of special interest multicultural publication, however those are few and far between. I just feel like if there actually is this huge literary canon hiding in Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi, Oriya (I give up on trying to be pc with Indian languages, it takes too long) I feel like there would be some ripple or something, some evidence of its existence. I have also thought about trying to study the Urdu literary renaissance (that isn't quite the word I am looking for, but it gives the general idea) of the late Mughal court. I would hopefully be able to look at some primary documents. I mean, I don't know how much there is. A great deal of some of the worlds best poetry in Urdu was, ahem, destroyed by the British in the siege of Delhi in 1857. (Thank you Shakespeare, your influence is truly felt by the Mosalman in India, he will never know how much he owes you...) I know Hindi grammar in general, which is basically the same as Urdu. I would just have to learn how to read and write Urdu, which may be a bridge too far. I don't know. I do not want to overreach here. I am not sure how much of these other ideas are possible. I need to spend more time expanding the English language reading idea. I feel like I am a little overwhelmed by it. It is just such a hugely broad topic. I am not exactly sure where to go to write anything meaningful about English readership/authorship in India. I really am not too keen on writing some spacey thing trying to pull conclusions from some non conclusive data based on some random conversations I've had with people about what they read.