A fragment is not a fraction but a whole piece.

Brilliant line from Lyn Hejinian. I've been thinking of it a lot lately.

Anyhow, so here I am back again. I kind of intentionally let this lie fallow to wean people from reading this blog. What I am doing next will be completely undirected and I don't want to fool anyone into thinking I have any idea what I am doing. Why don't you make it private you ask? Because leaving this public makes me accountable to do something. If it is private then if I never follow up on these thoughts. If it is private it isn't embarrassing when people randomly stop by your blog and see some grand post about how you are going to write the constitution developing country X should have written and also provide a philosophical proof for how to tell if you exist or not and then have your last post be from some time in 2010. Also, having this public means it is possible that someone will read it, keeping my thoughts in check so I don't post something really out there.

I don't really think of this as "publishing" nor do I believe in publishing. Click on the manifesto button to get a general idea on my feelings about publishing. At least for those who can't/don't really have anything to write. So this is just selfish space, generally.

In the near future after I finally turn in everything left over from this summer I will start breaking down vaguely what happened. I don't know that I want to really share everything that happened this summer. It was really difficult in many ways. It wasn't what I expected. I am still processing much of what occurred. But I want to work through some of it, especially with regards to my project. It has given me a lot of ideas and with what I am learning, I have put together many more. Mostly I have just learned that there is so much I need to learn/read. Especially read. I am so embarrassingly underread. Anyhow, that is the plan for the near future. Go through some of the things that happened with my project and to continue to muse about the Indian literature I am reading and have read. I think I may post some of my thoughts about some of these books specifically, not exactly a review, because I am no one to have the authority to review a book, but just a record of what I thought.

And this is rambling. Anyhow, I am not gone. And this blog is far from abandoned. I am just too dang busy to work with it at this exact moment. Just give me three weeks. Dag blast. Three weeks. I have about two or three months worth of work to do and I only have three weeks. Okay, maybe four weeks. Three weeks to finish out the semester, and one week to recover/pull myself together after the breakdown that I will probably have in two and a half weeks.

Also, I am thinking about/looking for a way to get back to India again.

Last real week

I'm not quite down to my last seven days yet, but today begins the last full week of my Field Study. I have this week, then Monday and Tuesday, and then it's home again, home again, jiggity-jig. I've got a pretty coherent plan for my last week, but gosh it is difficult to decide what would e the best possible thing to do with just one week. I mean, at this point it kind of does not matter. I have the bulk of my material. More would always be awesome because I really do not have as much confirmation of my sources as I would like. I think the most challenging thing about my research right now is the realization that the information I really need is scattered pretty well over the population. How do I saw what I mean. I mean, it is simple. I've said this before, but India is a lot like America in many ways. Most people I talk to here do not really read. It is as simple as that. They either do not like it or do not have time for it. But there are people who do read and now those are the people I really need to talk to. But they could be anyone. There is probably some good way to figure out who they are, but until I figure that out (which also requires more time) finding these people is slow extraction largely based on chance.

The other night I went to some sort of academic conference. I found out about it through one of my clubs. They were presenting a few books on the brain that had recently been written. Basically it was a bunch of really old Indians and some advocates for special education. One of the books was about working with the brain to help children succeed and overcome things like ADD and ADHD without medication. This started a huge argument about how to approach special education in India. Basically twenty minutes in the agenda of presenting the books in academic conference fashion was abandoned and it turned into an argument/discussion about special education. There wasn't much book discussion, but it was interesting to say the least. At least I learned that a lot of serious sciency-books seem to be mostly read by older Indian doctors and that ilk.

They had a Canadian woman speak over skype. Except I don't think anyone in the room could understand a word she was saying. The connection was kind of bad. It really was kind of a surreal experience and so very Indian in its way. There were so many brilliant, super-qualified, official people in the room. And yet people got up and sat down as they pleased. "Questions" were usually more statements than questions, although perhaps with high level science this is the case. I have never been to a comparable paper conference in the U.S. I've mostly just been to English or religious research conferences and, well, especially in the English ones, people do not tend to really have questions or opinions. Also, at the end the woman running the panel who had been fielding and answering questions at the end said that she was just a housewife and didn't have a job. I was kind of like "whaaa?" She spoke well and seemed very intelligent, so I assume she has some advanced degrees. It was just kind of random to have listened to someone talk about some science subject and then have them describe themselves to you as "just a housewife." Perhaps it is just part of the evolving definition of womanhood and gender equality. Housewives conversant on the cutting edge of brain science and psychology. It sounds good to me.

Anyhow, today I am going to try to see if I can get in touch with the owner of Fact & Fiction. It is this awesome book store with pound for pound the best selection of books I have seen in India. The store is about the size of a small bedroom, but my goodness there are so many quality books in there. I haven't purchased a book there and I kind of would like to grease the wheels with a purchase, but I am running out of money (it is the last week) and I am pretty sure that I have more books than I have suitcase space, so I will have to look for something small. I bought the Penguin Hindi-English dictionary because it is spectacular and it is so much cheaper here. Except it is huge. But really, it is the best Hindi dictionary I have ever seen. Okay, uh, I also bought the entire Harry Potter series in Hindi. But it was cheap! It was less than forty dollars for the entire series! Don't judge me. These two things are my problem. Because seven books are not small. I had extra weight coming over, so here's to hoping I can slim things down enough. I've set aside money for baggage fees, if it comes to that. Hopefully it won't so that money can go towards September rent instead, but it will be fine either way.

You know, I haven't really posted anything about what I have been reading. Why haven't I been doing that? I have no idea. Maybe I will write some posts about that this week and after I get back. Oh, I have to start thinking about what will become of this blog after this is all over. I kind of feel bad about just tossing it aside once this is over. That seems kind of disingenuous. Maybe I will expand/continue to work on what I have been with this project until I connect it in with something else.

Today

Today makes rem feel : \. Yesterday was more productive and exciting than today. I actually didn't get out again today. I feel a lot better. I have not relapsed into fever (at least not yet) and the headaches have gone. I think the diarrhea is starting to go too. Except I had some spicy Indian for lunch. It was probably too early to start on Indian again. Whoops. Oh well. Anyhow, this whatever I have is the most frustrating thing ever. It just keeps changing. I don't know if I just happen to get three different things in succession or what, but today I have been dealing with nausea more than the last few days. But more frustrating than that is the exhaustion. I just have no energy. I guess I just need to spend a few days taking it easy even though I feel better. I went out this morning to get milk and by the time I got back I was huffing and puffing at the top of the stairs. So I did not go out today and it is frustrating.

Instead I tried to contact some people. I wasn't terribly successful, but we will see if I hear back from some people. Dealing with people is like that. For reals.

Last night was both exciting and dur at the same time (does anyone remember when people used to say the exclamation "doi," pronounced something like doy? it was often accompanied by a stupid face). I went to one of my club/meet up things and I was chatting with this lady and then suddenly she was like "hey, I did my degree in English." And I'm like ":o" And then she is like "yeah, and I got my masters in English." And I'm like ":O" And the she says "then I taught English in a university here." And I can't think of an emoticon to express even greater surprise. And then she reveals "until I had children, then I was too busy so I started teaching English in high school." And then she says she has been looking for someone to discuss books with. I tend not to show facial expressions, so my face wasn't changing, but go look up omg cat on youtube for the basic idea of how I was feeling inside this whole time.

Why does she pop up now like a week before I have to leave? Where have people like this been the whole time? She gave me her phone number and offered to give me whatever help I needed. She also expressed an interest in joining in on my research. I mean, she is not a current university professor, but you know, if I actually had time this would have been wonderful. I am still super excited to make the connection though. I definitely plan on trying to stay in contact. I may be doing something similar to this again in the future. And even if I don't, having someone who loves discussing books is always an awesome thing to have around.

So tomorrow...I don't know. It depends on how I am feeling. I still have a bunch of writing to do, so I guess I could work on that.

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!

What's been going on

Okay, sorry, it has been forever. Circumstances...have not been ideal. Since my last post things have just been a little more difficult than I would like. Shortly after I posted last the internet here started going crazy. For like two and a half weeks I could not load any pages related to blogger. I couldn't see anyone's blog and I couldn't post anything. It was kind of super frustrating. Around the same time (sorry this is about to get a little frank) I started having diarrhea problems. I mean, eating spicy, essentially liquid based food, you are always a little soft in Delhi at least. The food here does not agree with me for some reason. I had no problem in Himachal Pradesh. Literally no health problems whatsoever and there I was drinking the water and eating all the food including homemade yogurt and milk and there was no refrigeration. So they are doing something right. Delhi however, the "modern city" is where I have had all my problems.

Anyhow, so I have always been a little soft here, but it was not really a hassle, it was normal. About a week and a half ago things started to get serious to the point where I could not really leave my flat because things were a little unpredictable and there are not really public bathrooms in Delhi. Even at stores and restaurants. Unless you are in a super posh area, there are no toilets in stores and stuff like the U.S. So really, you can't go out. Then I started getting a headache and a cough. Ergo ibuprofen and some generic imodium. The local tablet called brufen works wonders. The generic imodium...not so much.

You all are probably thinking I should have gone to a doctor, and you might be right, but it's diarrhea. It is a constant reality of life in India, so I didn't really take it seriously. I bought some yogurt, held off on the spicy food and just waited it out. Except it didn't really go away. The cough/headache turned into a fever. That was a fun five days. That faded two or three days ago to be replaced by a near constant pounding headache. Oh, and the ever constant diarrhea. Actually yesterday I remembered that I have some sort of cipiroflaxin tablet series thing, so I started that. Two days in, nothing has really changed, but we will see.

Part of the reason I haven't gone to the doctor is it hasn't been one constant set of symptoms. I have been dealing with diarrhea, fever, headache, cough, sinus problems, and aches, but not all at the same time. So I don't know if I just got lucky and got like five things at once or if this is some weird disease with a bunch of different changing symptoms. Another part of the reason I haven't gone to the doctor yet is because this is India. Every time I get some sort of fever or something, but it's usually just a week max and then it goes. This has been about a week and a half two weeks, so if it continues longer I will make myself go out to the doctor, I guess.

But let me be honest, not trying to bash here, but the real reason I have not been to the doctor is because there are only Indian doctors. Quite frankly, I don't trust any of them. I am not trying to fear monger here, because they are definitely very talented, but I've never been to one who didn't lie to me to get me to come to extra appointments and buy extra medications. That isn't the end of the world, but I am someone who does not like medication at all to begin with and I especially don't like someone giving me extra medication for no reason at all. Especially because this has been so varied, I have the feeling they are going to tell me it's something awful and I have to do tests and buy lotions and pills and spend thousands of rupees to cure a moderate case of influenza. No thank you. Also, the other issue is hospitals in Delhi are weird. They don't just have general hospitals. Everything I've seen is super specialized into specific departments. When you go online to request an appointment you have to know the exact kind of doctor you need before you can request an appointment. I'm not even sure what kind of doctor I am looking for. Usually I just, you know, go to the doctor, not the urologist or the endocrinologist or whatever.

The monsoon and the mosquito population picked up right around the same time, so I feel like it is probably related to that. I have three or four days to go on the cipiroflaxin. If things haven't changed by then, I will go to the doctor, maybe. Just, I have exactly two weeks left. Two weeks from American doctors who I can sue for millions if they try to lie to me to get me to take extra tests and medications I don't need. I have to be honest, if it does not become a serious problem, I may just try to stick it out until I can get back to medical help I can trust.

Anyhow, the most frustrating thing about all of this is it has wasted a good two weeks of time when I actually know what I am doing. I mean, it did not take very long to get the information I needed and now that I have some connections, as long as I have one good week, I will be able to get some pretty solid specific conversations/interviews about reading to see if I can't fill out more about the people who actually read. Blah! I am so mad that I lost all this time at the end! Why couldn't this have happened a month ago when I wasn't accomplishing anything?

So nothing has really been happening on the project front to report on. But I have decided to make sure that these last two weeks (exactly two weeks starting tomorrow) I am going to post something on here every day to report what has happened. And I have to catch up on my field notes. Blah on field notes. Let me be honest, field notes proper have been a complete waste of time for me. I am not writing an ethnography. I am looking at the idea of what people read and comparing it to post colonial theory. Things like where they get the books and where they read the books matter, perhaps, but that is like one entry. Their clothing, their marriage rituals, what they look like, what they sound like, how they eat, etc. etc. while fascinating is completely separate to my project. Blah!

Oh, and I have a post I started that I completely forgot about when I got fevered. I should go finish that now. Hold on.

Where do we go from here?

So as I was saying, one of the frustrating things about my project is the perspective it has given me.

I have realized so many ways I could be more successful and more legitimate in my project. If I had another two or three months I would be so happy. I could accomplish so much. I am finally finding the contacts I need and realizing where the best place to focus my efforts is. This project would have been much more successful if I did it in the fall so I could hit up some colleges. I have acquaintances going to college now and if I could get into that scene, I could probably have book club quality conversations about any time I wanted. Somehow getting connections at local paying guests would also be very helpful.

I finally have contacts to start accessing a network, but they take time to build. Really they will not be ready for me to really utilize. One month is not enough time in Delhi! I need more time to become more familiar with the book club members to get them to trust me enough to introduce me to their other friends and things like that.

Another thing I have learned is how important living conditions are. I am not staying in a bad place. I do not want you to imagine that I am living in some awful, dirty, destitute shack or something. Just...the paying guest I am staying in, while affordable, is miserable for getting work done. It is so much harder to work here than I anticipated. I would punch babies for access to a desk. There also are not very many public spaces where you can go and work on stuff. I guess I am so used to being around BYU campus that I did not take into account that there would not always be that available. Doing this again I would plan extra money and pay for more expensive, but better equipped housing. With so much reading and writing to do, it really would be nice to stay in a place at least marginally designed to accommodate studying.

I think the biggest thing I am realizing is how nice it would be to have extra time or another summer to do another version of this project. This experience has taught me so much about how to properly structure and carry out a research project. I just wish that would show up somehow in my final product. Because of what I have learned, I feel like my field study has been a smashing success. I just also feel like that will not be reflected in what I produce and people will wonder what the heck I was doing out here all summer. Which is fine, I just wish I could find a way to include it all. Maybe I will.

This last month will be good. With the contacts I have I will be able to get the information I need for my project. Maybe nobody will even pick up on the fact that the first two and a half months I was in India I accomplished almost nothing. Well, nothing besides establishing the reading stereotype. It just sucks that from the way things look know I am going to leave the country and end my project feeling like I just barely got started.

Book Club

This past Saturday I finally was able to go to a meeting for the book club I signed up for. It went really well, actually. We met at Costa Coffee in Connaught Place. I suppose as a little background, Connaught Place was designed as the centerpiece of New Delhi when the British rebuilt it after they, uh, ahem, leveled the previous city to punish India for the 1857 rebellion. Basically it is a business/shopping district thing. Anyhow, on the back end of L block, we met in a coffee shop to discuss books. Four people besides myself came. I was hoping for a few more people, but still, it was really one of the best research moments I have had thus far directly concerning my project.

I was actually kind of surprised who came. I was expecting the club to be some former liberal arts majors, maybe some sort of professor, or house wives or something like that. The four people who came were all unmarried men in their twenty and thirties. One was an IT professional. There was a business man, someone who worked for some sort of contractor, and an engineer. I was not expecting them to be the ones expressing interest in books. Also, the kinds of books they are interested in was somewhat surprising.

I think I have mentioned it before, but my findings so far have been that Indians generally speaking do not read. If they do almost universally they read quick easy reads like Chetan Bhagat, spiritual material, and self-help books. I have kind of been discouraged by the seemingly complete hegemony of these three things. I keep hoping I will randomly run into someone who reads something else or mentions a preference for classics or literary fiction or something other than, well, to be blunt, trashy novels and flavorless inspirational literature.

The people I met with actually expressed different ideas. One of them specifically noted that they really only like books written by Indians set in India. They mentioned that they liked the Catcher in the Rye, one of the first western novels they ever read, but after that never really found anything else they liked.

It seemed like there was a general preference for Indian novels with a mix of history and what they called "fantasy." From what I gathered, I think what they mean by fantasy is what we in the West would more commonly call magical realism. They kept talking about the fantasy elements of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children and there are not really very many elves or dragons in that. The other thing that they seemed to like were again the self-help books, although their taste in them was much more refined. They differentiated them into two types: those that focus on doing and those that focus on just giving inspirational messages. One of them called these those that work and those that do not.

It was so awesome to talk to people about books like this. It was so great just to talk to people in general on a level like this. It was not perfect. I consciously restricted how much I expressed my opinion. It was a titanic effort, but I had to keep reminding myself that I was not here to argue about truth or correct their misconceptions. There were so many times when I knew they were completely off base or at least had an extremely limited perspective that may have been accurate, but did not factor in so many different perspectives and ideas. They specifically panned Japanese authors for being ridiculous, which is sad, because I am passionately in love with Japanese literature.

The issue of translation also came up. They made some good points, but concluded that translation was always a bad idea. Again, so much I wanted to say, but I just let it lie. I learned a lot though. If I could just have a few more meetings like that with people my project would be amazingly rounded out. I wish I had the ability to talk to people like that on a regular basis. Every day would be freaking amazing and it would only require an hour or two each day. I would have more material than I know what to do with.

Also, they discussed and shared the best ways to get around India's bit torrent firewalls to download e-books illegally. I was so torn. On the one hand, it is piracy and it definitely negatively affects the publishing world and the future availability of books, but on the other hand, it is so important for people to read and for these ideas to get out there. Books here are prohibitively expensive. I have actually been surprised. Until prices drop or incomes rise, books are definitely a luxury good here in India. Which has tremendous implications and opens up a huge discussion on reading and literature and ideas and stuff. I just found it all quite funny and kept my mouth shut.

Not to get into it too much now, but it may be that in India books, like internet and telephones, will skip the hard phase and go straight to the mobile, wireless route through e-books. That makes me so sad to some degree, but it makes sense. The developing world may actually play a bigger role in the demise of the physical book in favor of the e-book than the book addicted west when a mind-blowingly enormous reader market opens up as China, India, and other places as they develop enough to where they have the disposable income and the free time to make reading as a pastime feasible.

I think that is one of the most frustrating things about this project. It has been an amazing experience, but the biggest things I am learning are how to set up a project better in the future. Not just in project structure. I am actually fairly happy with my project as I outlined it. Rather I am learning so much about how to properly plan a project for actual implementation. I know so much more about the necessity of contacts and what kind of contacts to have, timing, location. Actually I am just going to make this another post. Screw academic professionalism. I am an English major. I declare this stream of consciousness writing. It is now legitimate and cannot be criticized.

Some new leads

And that is about how I feel about that.

Anyhow, things are good in general. I have a few new leads for my project. It honestly feels like I am not accomplishing what I want, but everything will be okay in the end. The problem is I just need to remember what I designed in my project. Because this is so much harder than I was anticipating, I sometimes freak out that often my days do not result in much as far as my project goes. But in my actual project proposal, I put down that I intended to get around twenty to thirty good interviews/conversations. So really things are going fine. I have already talked to a good ten or twenty people about the issues I am really interested in and I recently had a few good ideas/connections.

I have not given up on Hard Rock Cafe. So far it is the best place to crossover social boundaries. Just...the stupid hard rock is kind of throwing me off. I have also begun experimenting with coffee shops. I am still looking for the right time to go. During the afternoon they are more manageable and quiet, but then there are less people. One concern with coffee shops is they are more like fishing than other methods. I need to balance attracting people's interest with just straight up asking people stuff so I don't scare them away.

The other day while I was experimenting with establishing rapport with bookshops by purchasing something small I had a genius idea. Thus far I have kind of struggled with talking to people in book stores. I tend to come off as awkward or weird if I try to act normal and people are not really that interested in research projects. But I realized I could be covertly more successful if I just hung out in the Indian authors section and then asked people what books they recommended. This would then automatically start some sort of conversation on reading. Voila! We will see how it goes. Also, so far, I think purchasing things at bookstores really does help in working with them. Not necessarily in getting them to talk, although it helps that, but also in sort of unofficially asking permission to loiter. At least they always have that hope that I will purchase again.

One cool thing is that the people at my PG have expressed interest in my project. They are all around my age-ish, so it makes it easier to talk to them since we are all in the same boat, essentially. So if worse comes to worse, I should be able to get ten or so good conversations out of where I am staying. I wasn't sure if that was going to work out or not. My initial observations suggest that none of them really read, but then that is what I am here to find out.

My last really good lead is the book club I joined. I found them on the internet. They just restarted apparently and so far only meet once a month. I couldn't go to the last meeting because of the temple trip, but come hell or high water, I am going to be at that meeting this Saturday. There should hopefully be around eight people there. And they haven't decided on an agenda. Holla! I am hoping that I can have some conversations with these people. Maybe even over the internet or in person later? We will see. I want to see what they read as well as talk to them about their perspective about reading in India. I hope they have deeper opinions than just looking down on other Indians for not reading. We will see. However it goes, I hope I an make it to at least one more book club in late July or early August, depending on when/if they hold it.

I just wish I was not so dang shy. This would be so much easier if I did not have so many feelings about randomly assaulting people with my project. I just don't want to do that, both because I do not like randomly talking to strangers, but also because I do not think that will really help me talk to people who actually do read to get at the heart of the matter. I hope this comes together.

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.

Blah, okay, I am here

I finally got settled. After a month.  A little longer than I was anticipating, but it all worked out in the end. So now I should update at least somewhat regularly. At least weekly. I am hoping to do more than that, time and ideas permitting. I need to get a book to write down thoughts. I am always bursting with ideas when I am walking about or riding the bus or an auto or something and then I get back to wherever I am staying or the internet cafe and sit down to write a blog entry and...I can't think of anything I feel like writing. I think the problem is I talk throughout these awesome ideas and entries and stuff and it takes a long time and then when I have computer access I can just remember thinking awesome thoughts about something like "comparative food presentation in Indian families in the village and the city" and I just get exhausted thinking about going over it all again and putting it into writing. I am just too lazy, probably.

Anyhow, I have "wifi" here. I mean it works, but it seems like everyone who has a computer here, if they have internet access, they are downloading movies and music from bit torrent. It kind of crowds the network a lot. Indian Roomies, not that I have told any of you about this blog yet, but if you ever read this, I love you and your constant downloads.

I also took a Vodafone internet thingy, so I have back up internet, which is actually faster than any wifi I have used yet in India, which is kind depressing because it is not even 3G. Or maybe it is "3G." The terms get confused here. Remind me to update about buying an internet dongle in India sometime.

So what have I been up to...in a small nutshell...it is kind of difficult to process through all of it. I guess shortly, I got to India about a month ago at 12:30 am with no one expecting me, which actually was not as bad as I was afraid it would be. I chatted with a nice Indian couple from Punjab for an hour or two and then read until the metro opened. I took that to the New Delhi Railway station metro station and got lost and then shafted by an auto driver. That is okay, I knew I was getting shafted and I did not have the energy to fight for a decent price.

This is where I made my mistake. I listened to the dag blasted guide book. I am never using a guide book again. They lie horribly. Okay, I will use a guidebook if I happen to be a millionaire and can afford to stay at all the expensive places. But on a budget? Heck no. They don't even recommend good places. All the places they recommended were these overpriced tourist trap things. Anyhow, because of the stupid guide book (yes I am blaming it, because it is the stupid guidebooks fault) I found a hotel in Pahar Ganj (travel tip: if you ever go to India, never, never stay in Pahar Ganj. I would sleep on the streets first. It is safe, but if you want the worst part of the Indian tourist experience, go there. Everyone is trying to get your attention and your money and it is full of the worst kind of foreign tourist. They all have their dreadlocks and their hippie clothes and think they understand India and are having this "adventure" or this "spiritual" experience. Idiots all. Anyhow, Pahar Ganj is grasping, fake, and incredibly stressful. The real India is so much better than Pahar Ganj.) (Remind me to post an entry just on Pahar Ganj.)

Anyhow, hotel in Pahar Ganj. There are two hotels in Pahar Ganj with very similar names. One is very expensive, the other is very cheap. The guidebook, despite being updated, supposedly, only a few months ago rates everything by this code from LL to G. (Because that makes sense) Because of a quirk in how they laid out the maps in this book I thought I was at the cheap one, but I ended up at the expensive hotel. I just went with it because I was still kind of stressed out about being alone and having all my stupid luggage (two bags: worst idea ever. It is the first time in my life I even entertained the desire for an e-reader. It was short lived, but that is how stressful being in India on your own with two freaking bags, a limited budget, and no where planned to stay.) (For clarification, I have two bags because I have one for my books, essentially, and one for everything else. (yes, I have that many books to read (English major, duh))) I was really tired and stressed and was not really thinking straight and so I completely misconverted the nightly rate in my mind because I still thought I was at the cheaper hotel (that makes it sound like I was crazy delirious or something, what I mean is I was tired and had a minor brain slip) and so I ended up staying at a hotel that was forty dollars a night, instead of five or ten like I had planned. Also, because I checked in at like seven or eight, when I left at eleven the next day, an hour before the noon check out time posted at the desk, they charged me an extra half day at twenty dollars. So yeah, sixty dollars for the first night. In India. It sucked. But oh well, live and learn, book your hotel, or at least have a game plan next time. The next hotel I stayed in was only like eight dollars a night, so I repented.

I spent the first week in hotels while I was trying to find housing, which while you are in the field is actually way more difficult than I was expecting. Basically I could not find anything. Even among the members of the church, I came up empty for a place to stay permanently. Anyhow, after a week and having spent a significant portion of my budget and having waking nightmares of running out of money in a month and a half if I got stuck in hotels the whole time looking for housing, I decided to just go all in. I checked out of my hotel (which charged me a whole ton of extra fees they neglected to mention at the outset and tried to charge me three times the going rate for a taxi) and went to the Vasant Vihar church. That afternoon a friend of my begged me to go visit his family and village in Himachal Pradesh...so I went.

If you have a problem with that, office, I love you, but you can suck it. I was breaking my back, stressed out of my mind looking for housing and someone offered me a week of free housing and meals and the most awesome, immerse-yourself cultural experience available in India, so I took it. If you have any suggestions for housing, I'm all ears.

Anyhow, so Himachal Pradesh was amazing. I stayed in his village for four or five days. I slept with at least one other person in my bed at all times. Clean was a relative term. I showered outside with cold water in my underwear. Sometimes while chatting with whomever happened to be nearby. I hung out with the local youth/young adults in the village centers like they seem to do. I will just have to post a series of entries about the whole experience. It was awesome. I got by with hinglish, essentially. My friend essentially speaks English as long as we talk about basic things and I know a little Hindi, so with that I got by for the week. At the end we went up to visit Shimla. (which is cold. I was so surprised. It was actually really cold. In summer. While Delhi was over a hundred degrees. It was bizarre) Shimla is incredible. If you ever happen to be in India, it is one of the most relaxing places I have been in India.

I came back to Delhi, tried to find housing for an afternoon. I had something that I set up while I was in Himachal Pradesh, but that fell through so I went to Hyderabad for the YSA conference. That was great and covered another week or so of housing, although more than half of that was on a train.

When I got back to Delhi again I used the Vasant Vihar church as a base of operations while I searched for a paying guest accommodation, essentially what students/single working people in India use. After three or four days I found one that was generally honest and met my basic requirements, so I took it and here I am. I have two room mates and there are two other people on the floor, although I think another three will be moving in. I have no A/C, but that is not really an issue. I do not mind the heat all that much and it will be monsoon before long. A/C was an extra sixty or so dollars a month. Not worth it.

Anyhow, I will update specifically about my accommodations. Oh, and my project. I should probably talk about my project, since it is kind of the whole reason I am even here and the reason for having this blog. But I tire of this exercise. Also I am tired. Also also, I should find a scale. I definitely have lost weight. I should figure out how much to see if it is kosher or if I should take steps.

I made it!

Okay, well, here we are. I made it. The trip was fairly uneventful. It doesn't even phase me anymore. I was so shocked when I realized there was only two hours left to Delhi. It felt like not much time had passed.

Anyhow. I am at a hotel thing. It is way more than I really wanted to pay, but considering the circumstances, I will accept it. Plus it has free wi-fi, so until I get situated, that will be great.

I still need to find housing. There is a cheaper more hostelish place somewhere nearby here, so I am going to go out to look for that and I am going to send out some requests on couch surfing and this other website a friend of mine showed me. I may go wander around Delhi University campus as well to see if I can find any leads on student contracted housing or something like that.

Bah. Okay, I don't know quite what else to say at this point. I have a lot to work out. Well, mostly just the housing. So far I have already been talking to a few people about my project. Nothing I can use per se because I need to go print out the participation things. I can already tell though, those dang things are really going to make this project awkward. I really wish I did not have to use them. I hope they don't mess this up for me.

I feel like I am not going to be very productive until I can relax about where I am leaving my stuff and costs and stuff. it is too bad this place is so dang expensive, haha. It would be so convenient. But it will work out. There was a semi-longterm kind of thing left out there on couch surfing. I am going to contact them and see if we can meet up or something. Dang this is so sketch, haha. I love it.

I had a minor panic attack this morning when I realized that I am in freaking India and I haven't arranged housing yet. So...everything should be fine. I don't really feel culture shock yet. It just feels normal. Getting from the airport to the metro and then finding an auto and being directed all over the place and ending up taking way to many stops and then being lead down this super sketch street where the hotel was and just taking it because it was the first thing I found so far and the other things weren't turning up...it was an adventure, but if felt super normal. Like this is India. I don't know. I will report more on culture shock. We will see how I do once I really start facing the heat.

Okay, I am off to find food, water, a map, and then maybe to go out to see Delhi University. Who knows.

Visa Vie

See what I did there?

My visa is finally here. I feel like I have suddenly accomplished so much even though I did not really do anything except throw money at a middle man to process documents for me. It took the visa processing company about two weeks to work with my paperwork. The Indian Consulate took less than six hours to get their stuff done. Oh well. A few polite phone calls and now all is well.

My flight is officially scheduled for May ninth at 10:35 AM.

I still do not have housing, but I am sure that will figure itself out eventually. I have sent out another round of contacts. Did I already say that in my last entry? I cannot remember. Anyhow, new round of pleas is out and we shall see. If worse comes to worse I will just be in a hostel for a while. I am concerned about my ability to approach people to see if I can stay with them, because that is incredibly far outside my comfort zone. But getting out of my comfort zone is the whole point of this endeavor, now isn't it? If I wanted to be comfortable I would have just stayed home, worked, and saved money rather than going out on this madcap adventure to India on money I don't really have to do something I am not exactly sure I even know how to do.

I am meeting with Dr. Eastley tomorrow to confirm I have all the reading material I will need. There is no required reading for IAS 397R or ENGL 490? 493? (I can't remember which one is the mentored research one). For ENGL 358, my Southeast Asian literature class I already have the required texts. It is just my ENGL 480?, the directed readings course, I think I have about half of the books I will be reading from, I just need to confirm if I am missing any, and then get the specific chapters I am supposed to read from Dr. Eastley.

Okay, you know what, I am just going to confirm everything for future reference so everything is clear when I talk about my classes. These are the classes I am taking:

IAS 397R Field Studies Field Course
ENGL 358R Southeast Asian Literature
ENGL 480R Directed Research in English
ENGL 490R Individual Readings in English

There we go. I had it backwards. Anyhow, I have all the readings except for I don't think I have them all for 490R, at least not the specifics. I am super excited for the news reading assignment for IAS 397R. I will probably just get either The Times of India or The Week (an Indian news magazine thing) or something like it. We will see how I am feeling. I think the only part about the FSFC that concerns me is the writing two or three pages everyday. I have had bad experiences with journaling. Maybe it will come easily. I hope so. Maybe if I do it on my compy it will be easier.

Other than that, everything should go smoothly. Before I leave I am definitely going to have to set up a reading schedule for my two reading courses because they are fairly rigorous. Well, exceptionally rigorous, but I wouldn't have it any other way. It is so exciting to finally have a semester in college that is specifically, completely geared entirely towards exactly what I want to study. I am curious how I will feel coming out of it. Will I discover things about it I don't actually like? Will I like it more? Will I like it less? It is so exciting and new. I wish all of college could be like this.

For now I am kind of in this limbo space. In less than a week I will have so much to do it will be crazy, but for now things are basically set. I just need to do a little preliminary planning and pack. Well, besides locate housing, but there is not much I can do about that except e-mail and/or call people and hope for the best. So for now I just work and then come home and read. Right now I am in the middle of Bombay Time by Thrity Umrigar. I actually started it a few months ago, but lost interest in it, yet suddenly it has become a page turner for me. It is so strange how that happens. One day I would like to know the psychology behind that. I mean, I know sometimes the story just gets better, but in this case I read the first ten pages and could not find the energy to keep going and then I started again the other day and I could not put it down. Maybe it is all in perspective or something or psychological state.

Horses

Okay, okay, so I sort of fell off of the getting back on the horse horse. But I am back for reals this time. It feels right. Despite my miserable failure to post regularly during the prep course, in the end I somehow ended up with exactly fifty posts on this blog. That seems signish enough for me. That portion of the blog is over and now this one will begin.

Everything is mostly in place. I think. I have my courses set, generally. I just need to reconfirm that I have all the books I need. Never mind how I will actually get the books to India, but that is a problem for another day. Like tomorrow. My proposal was done a while ago and I received my IRB approval today itself. My visa has been approved. It is supposed to be in the mail. Assuming that Travisa came through for me. I have had to sort of gently nudge them through the process, but at least I officially have the visa now. I don't quite have a place to live yet. And by not quite I mean not at all. I am sure that will figure itself out though. I have a friend who has given me some fresh contacts, so hopefully they will lead to something. I may be in a hostel or something for the first few days, but that isn't the end of the world.

I should probably look into packing. I don't know that I will need all that much this time. The biggest part of my luggage will be all my books. So many books.

Anyhow, today I am writing hopefully not too desperate sounding e-mails to some more people to see if I can figure out somewhere to stay, make sure I have all my paperwork in order, and begin the process of packing.

Also, I need to decide if I should push my flight back a week or not. Right now I am scheduled to leave Thursday, but I don't quite feel ready, to be honest. A few more days to put things in order might be nice, if slightly expensive.

I think I am going to rearrange this blog a bit, now that it isn't under any official strictures of the prep course. Oh, and I should probably go over the IAS course contract to make sure I know what I am doing so I can get started on it.

I am slightly nervous I am not going to be able to operate in the heat. Hyderabad wasn't that bad last summer, but this is Delhi. I don't know if I can handle 120/50 degrees again. It was pretty bad in Rajamundry.

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.

Sarah, don't you dare grade this! It doesn't count.

I just wanted to say, that right now, Delhi feels very far.

I Am Alive

Blah, I kind of fell off the horse there for a week or two, sorry about that. I had a small existential crisis about my project and got stuck in a rut for a little while there. I have talked to a few people about (thank you Rachel) and I think I know where to go moving forward.

It was the literature review that kind of made me panic. Not the literature review itself, but how it applies to me. Looking at reading and writing in India from a sources point of view has been really, really difficult. Mostly because there are two sides the the problem and they rarely meet. The English major side is obsessed with the post colonial. There are hundreds of papers and books on the topic, but as they are coming from the English academia perspective, they are all about the themes and writing methods that are in a given text. No one ever really talks about why the book was written in the first place or who might actually be reading the book and what that means. On the anthropological side, it could be that I just do not know quite where to look, but from all the databases I have searched and what not, it seems that anthropologists have not thoroughly studied reading much. I was not even looking specifically for India. I just was looking for ethnographies or studies about reading. I am sure that anthropologists study this kind of thing, but I have the feeling that all the sources that would be useful to me are subsections buried in the chapters of specific ethnographies or general anthropological texts. I have a few books about literacy in India, which will hopefully be helpful.

I am coming to terms with the fact that I may not be able to use my sources to focus/narrow my topic. I was kind of hoping that I could feel my way along with what others have studied before and pattern my research methods after them. However it seems like I am just going to have to make it up as I go along.

To make up for this, I am going to see if I can work the network of Indian people I kind of know who live here in Provo. I am going to do some super informal interviews with my friend and any Indians he knows to talk to them about my project. I want to ask them a few questions about reading and just sort of point blank ask them what they think I should do or how I should approach it. I figure in the field I can try to be all subtle and sneaky, but here in the U.S. with people I know, I might as well just come out with it and ask them what they think of my project. Hopefully this will guide my efforts as I redouble my efforts on getting my project set.

As my three English classes start getting heavy, I am falling behind in my reading. I am not too worried though. There are about eight more books that I am absolutely determined to read. All in all a few thousand pages. I can manage that. Basically a few covering different topics on the history of India, an analysis of India's current situation, some texts about religion, a travelogue, and a book about the history of New Delhi specifically. Also the one or two books I have been able to dig up that in some way discuss the literacy and reading in India. And if I have time I have a history of Indian literature in English. I feel that at this point, considering that I am not going to find some great studies or ethnographies about studying the reading/writing habits of an ethnic group, the most important thing I can do to prepare is to increase my general knowledge about Indian history, culture, geography, and religion. I hope focusing on orienting myself to the location rather than my specific method first will help me to think on my feet and develop things as I go rather than try to adapt my specific methods that someone else came up with to my location. I don't know.

Also I am working on my Hindi via Hindi films. I can begin to pick up words, but I can't follow when they talk at normal speeds. We will see what I can do in two months. Not that I plan to try to operate in Hindi to any degree, but I feel it would help.

Also, also, I am working on memorizing the major gods and goddesses, which is going well, as well as state names and capitals, which is going...not so well, but I will master it!

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.

Blocked

I think I am currently encountering something that I may encounter in the field, so maybe this is a positive experience in retrospect. I just have kind of been stumped on what to write about. A few days ago I had like three or four posts bouncing around in my head that I should have written down and now they are gone. Having the experience of needing to press on and do stuff with this project when I am not feeling terribly inspired has been enlightening. I sill don't know quite what to do about it, but I am learning about it at least, for what it is worth.

My reading mood died somewhere about three-fourths of the way through January. I was on fire. I am so sad. I have so much to read still that I want to read. Just when I sit down to read it is like pulling teeth to make myself do it. I blame everything else I have to read. I also think I need to go through and logically organize which books I am going to read first. It has been kind of random so far. I have a backlog of about forty sources I have identified. I have started going through some of them I just feel mentally flat lately. I can't get my mind around them. I have narrowed down my project ideas, I think. I just need to really make a decision and start pumping stuff out.

I just need to sit down and ponder India for a little while, I think. That is what inspired my ideas. Maybe I will get them back that way. Right now my mind just feels dark. I don't even understand

Tempus Fugit

I don't actually know if that is a real phrase or if it is spelled right. I don't even actually remember what language that is supposed to be. Just whenever I think of the phrase "time flies," that is the first thing that pops into my head. Every time.

Anyhow, the last week has been crazy-go-nuts busy. This semester is going to be freaking insane. I do not have much time tonight. I have to crash through some Plato I should have read yesterday, but did not make enough time for.

So I did not finish all six books I wanted to, but I did finish four, which I am super pleased about. All in all it was about fifteen hundred pages, so I am not going to cry about the remaining five hundred or so I did not get through.

The Empire Writes Back...I do not know quite what to say. It was not as difficult as I thought it would be. The only chapter I really had any trouble with was the chapter on post colonialism and theory. That is partially because I do not really know the literary theories all that well. At least I do not know them well enough to understand the nuances of their relationships with post colonialism. I am excited to read it again. It has helped me open my mind to a whole bunch of new ways to consider post colonialism. It is more complex than I thought it was. I still think I stand by my initial opinion that I do not really think it is a productive literary...area...genre? Some of the questions they raise were interesting and really made me think. I will definitely have to read it again soon, especially the theory chapter.

After finishing it I feel stronger than ever that post colonialism is the stupidest literary grouping ever for India. I did a little research. India has a frickmassive literary tradition already. In like twenty different languages. At least. At least twenty freaking different languages. Why are we holding their hand and changing their diapers in post colonialism? Let them manage their own English literature. Sure, their English literature deals a lot with colonial issues because that is where it came from, but let us stop and consider a few things. They have a frickmassive literary tradition already. Indians who write books classified in post colonial literature know these languages. To be educated enough to write in English, they most likely are familiar with at least some of their native literature. Ergo, their thought processes, writing style, and perception of the world is at least semi-influenced by their own literature. So how is studying it apart from that tradition helpful? More than any country that didn't get its native culture obliterated, (por ejemplo the United States, Australia, etc.) India has best integrated English into itself. What I mean is, English is almost to the point in India where it is not an invasive language. It is not a threat to the local language. The important place of religion in India all but guarantees that English will never be able to replace the native languages of India. Why would a muslim abandon Urdu, a language influenced heavily by Persian and Arabic, for English? To what? Read the Bible? Why would a Hindu turn from Hindi or Tamil with their heritage in the Vedas and the Ramayan? The current leader of the Sikh religion is a book! And it definitely is not in English. Thus I now am certain that trying to come at India primarily from the post colonial perspective is to severely retard their development. The thing is, it won't actually retard their development. What it will do is maintain the culture of ignorant Western academics who have spent a few months at an Ashram and took some pictures at a temple and ate solely vegetarian food with their hands and now think they are experts on Indian culture and are so worried about helping India recover their national identity through literature when they have already done it in their own native language and if Western scholars would just back the hell off they would be just fine in expressing their own views in English rather than obsessing about whether they are decolonizing or not.

So I officially now renounce India's place in post colonial literature. There is only Indian literature, some of which is written in English, in the period during and after they were colonized. The place of their English texts is on their native soil, in their own libraries, not in some politically correct, sterile, UN-esque post colonial collection floating out in the middle of the Atlantic.

Anyhow I have stayed too long. I have to go read that dag blasted Plato crap. Shoot me now. Why does anyone like Plato? I mean seriously. You can sum up everything he says in like a paragraph, but he goes on for pages about this inane crap setting up these unrealistic conversations that magically perfectly work out so someone looks super ignorant while the Plato voice character looks so bloody brilliant. Nobody cares about your stupid logic! Just say it and be done!