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rhyllI did my first bit just now. Wow. I think it took me about a zillion hours just to transcribe half an hour of tape. I'm hoping my transcribing skills do that learning-curve thing that I hear about, because otherwise I am "teh doomed", as you young kids say.
And now, for
So, picking up where my last installment left off... On Sunday I had great intentions of doing some work, but just as I was sitting down to start my pre-work procrastination I got a call from Raj saying that he was in the area and would like to meet for coffee. So we went to MG road and had some coffee and then he said that his family, and especially his wife, had been bugging him for ages to bring me around. So I went visiting.
I felt very awkward at first - Raj’s mother sat me down on the sofa, and Raj’s wife fussed over me and brought me huge amounts of food (covering her face with her sari whenever she was in sight of Raj’s mother). His two sons, both under five, were also running around, generally being incredibly cute. Raj was the only one there who spoke English, so he had to be a very patient translator. His wife (whose name I didn’t get, embarrassingly) disappeared into the kitchen, and his mother commenced the grilling. It made me feel more comfortable, because even if she isn’t exactly the same as Giagia there was a certain..."Giagia-ness" about her. I was informed that she’d thought I was a boy at first, because of my hair and clothes, and made to explain 1) Why I wasn’t married yet, 2) How I could come here all alone, 3) How I could bear to live away from my mother. I’m not sure that my answers were entirely satisfactory.
After a while I started to feel weird that I’d come here mainly on Raj’s wife’s request, and yet she’d been in the kitchen the whole time, so I asked if it was ok to go talk to her. I really enjoyed that part of the visit, despite both of having to prod Raj to translate everything. Raj and his wife are so sweet together, despite having been married since Raj was 6 (although they’re only been living together since he was 19). His wife was showing me how she punches him, and I almost popped they were so adorable. Whenever Raj went out the room we both tried to communicate through gestures, which mostly failed miserably and ended up with both of us just standing there giggling. Despite the language barriers, it was so much fun, and Raj’s wife and I really like each other. I also learnt some new stuff – Raj’s wife was saying that she wants to wear pantsuits so she’d be able to go out with Raj to coffee shops and places where a sari would look too traditional, but even if she changed once she left the house it would be obvious from her posture that she’s used to saris. It made me very aware of all the freedoms that I have, although it was clear that she’s still very happy with life, and with Raj – they both just about glow when they’re near each other.
We took about a billion photos, on various cameras and also on Raj’s phone, so I will hopefully update some photos of us grinning away next to each other soon. And I’m trying to squeeze in another visit as soon as possible, which Raj’s wife is demanding from him daily.
Wheee! People!
My other news is not as gleeful. My research and my bus-catching are both quite well, and are quite intimately tied together. I’ve been catching a lot of buses to various institutions - NIAS again, to talk to Dr. Shanta Mohan, and the University of Agricultural Science (GKVK), to talk to Professor Prakash Kammardi, the Environment Support Group and ISEC, to go to a talk by Professor James Manor, and to talk to a few of the academics there. Travelling by bus is heavily dependant on the kindness of strangers, which happily has been overflowing - not only are people happy to point me in the right direction when I mispronounce the name of a suburb repeatedly and look confused, but I’ve also had several people go out of their way to walk me to a bus-stop or show me where to get off the bus.
In less travel-related news, my research has also been going well. While Prof. Manor’s talk wasn’t directly related to my work it was still interesting and gave me a better picture of India’s political background. He was arguing that since the end of Rajiv and Indira Ghandi’s terms of office in 1989, power has been spreading away from the office of the PM, both horizontally to other institutions of national governance and vertically to the state and even the local level. His talk was quite controversial, because he claimed that money doesn’t win elections in India (as in about 75% of state elections the opposition party wins, despite having a smaller capacity to raise funds for campaigning/bribing the electorate). He also said that India’s press is more free than that of any other country in the Commonwealth, with the possible exception of the UK (this includes RSA, Australia, and Canada), that India’s federal system of government encouraged state-level experimentation in participatory governance, and quite a few other things that showed a surprisingly high level of optimism about India’s democracy. Responses from the audience were fairly interesting too, as a lot of the listeners disagreed with his assessment.
My interviews have also been going well - not only a lot of direct information, including some interesting criticisms of the WSF, but also a lot of contacts. Prof. Kammardi pointed me towards several members of the Communist Party, and a few articles from Marxists that criticise the KRRS for not adequately crossing caste lines. I also had a very reassuring talk with Prof. Sangita at ISEC about my work – he seemed to think it’s an interesting and relevant project.
In terms of my work, it’s seeming more and more like it would be a better idea to stay here for longer and get an in-depth picture of things here, rather than trying to do less in-depth research spread over Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai. I’m still going to confer with Jie about it, but it’s looking like I might be hanging around in Bangalore and surrounds for a while. I still want to go to a KRRS village and do some interviews, and to a non-KRRS village, and stay at ISEC for a few days interviewing people and reading their books, and get a good picture of a couple of the NGOs involved in the movement and talk to the Communist Party, and….. Well, a whole heap of things!
And now, to continue my mammoth posting, more social stuff:
I’ve been hanging around a fair bit with Akshay and Suresh from Eco Watch, which has been nice. Akshay and Suresh are both looking after me incredibly well, despite all of their work. Akshay is funny – he’s the least still person I have ever met. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him go a full fifteen minutes without picking up his mobile, and even when he’s typing up a report he manages to give the impression of being constantly running around doing things. Suresh is a lot quieter, and it keeps unnerving me how much he reminds me of Papou. Something in his expressions, plus the Indian headwobble, that Papou also does a little. (As for myself, I’m picking up the headwobble chronically…it’s incredibly well suited to my indecisiveness.)
Also, I can’t remember if I mentioned chatting to a mathematician at NIAS when I was there, who also turned up at the Green Valley school. Well, I got an email from him today asking more about my work – reassuring again, because I worry that I seem a bit like a silly little girl to academics I meet – and sending me this delightful link showing his daily walk to NIAS (for some reason lj objects to the address: http://tejas.serc.iisc.ernet.in/nias/walktonias/walkvir010.html). [In my head, he is an older, alternative-universe version of Russell. I don’t know why.]
And, finally, something you may or may not already know about India:
* On buses, women get on the front door, and men get on at the back, and seating is segregated. (This isn’t signed or anything, it just happens.) There are conductors on buses, and as well as selling tickets they do a different little whistle to tell the driver when to stop and when to go.
And now, for
So, picking up where my last installment left off... On Sunday I had great intentions of doing some work, but just as I was sitting down to start my pre-work procrastination I got a call from Raj saying that he was in the area and would like to meet for coffee. So we went to MG road and had some coffee and then he said that his family, and especially his wife, had been bugging him for ages to bring me around. So I went visiting.
I felt very awkward at first - Raj’s mother sat me down on the sofa, and Raj’s wife fussed over me and brought me huge amounts of food (covering her face with her sari whenever she was in sight of Raj’s mother). His two sons, both under five, were also running around, generally being incredibly cute. Raj was the only one there who spoke English, so he had to be a very patient translator. His wife (whose name I didn’t get, embarrassingly) disappeared into the kitchen, and his mother commenced the grilling. It made me feel more comfortable, because even if she isn’t exactly the same as Giagia there was a certain..."Giagia-ness" about her. I was informed that she’d thought I was a boy at first, because of my hair and clothes, and made to explain 1) Why I wasn’t married yet, 2) How I could come here all alone, 3) How I could bear to live away from my mother. I’m not sure that my answers were entirely satisfactory.
After a while I started to feel weird that I’d come here mainly on Raj’s wife’s request, and yet she’d been in the kitchen the whole time, so I asked if it was ok to go talk to her. I really enjoyed that part of the visit, despite both of having to prod Raj to translate everything. Raj and his wife are so sweet together, despite having been married since Raj was 6 (although they’re only been living together since he was 19). His wife was showing me how she punches him, and I almost popped they were so adorable. Whenever Raj went out the room we both tried to communicate through gestures, which mostly failed miserably and ended up with both of us just standing there giggling. Despite the language barriers, it was so much fun, and Raj’s wife and I really like each other. I also learnt some new stuff – Raj’s wife was saying that she wants to wear pantsuits so she’d be able to go out with Raj to coffee shops and places where a sari would look too traditional, but even if she changed once she left the house it would be obvious from her posture that she’s used to saris. It made me very aware of all the freedoms that I have, although it was clear that she’s still very happy with life, and with Raj – they both just about glow when they’re near each other.
We took about a billion photos, on various cameras and also on Raj’s phone, so I will hopefully update some photos of us grinning away next to each other soon. And I’m trying to squeeze in another visit as soon as possible, which Raj’s wife is demanding from him daily.
Wheee! People!
My other news is not as gleeful. My research and my bus-catching are both quite well, and are quite intimately tied together. I’ve been catching a lot of buses to various institutions - NIAS again, to talk to Dr. Shanta Mohan, and the University of Agricultural Science (GKVK), to talk to Professor Prakash Kammardi, the Environment Support Group and ISEC, to go to a talk by Professor James Manor, and to talk to a few of the academics there. Travelling by bus is heavily dependant on the kindness of strangers, which happily has been overflowing - not only are people happy to point me in the right direction when I mispronounce the name of a suburb repeatedly and look confused, but I’ve also had several people go out of their way to walk me to a bus-stop or show me where to get off the bus.
In less travel-related news, my research has also been going well. While Prof. Manor’s talk wasn’t directly related to my work it was still interesting and gave me a better picture of India’s political background. He was arguing that since the end of Rajiv and Indira Ghandi’s terms of office in 1989, power has been spreading away from the office of the PM, both horizontally to other institutions of national governance and vertically to the state and even the local level. His talk was quite controversial, because he claimed that money doesn’t win elections in India (as in about 75% of state elections the opposition party wins, despite having a smaller capacity to raise funds for campaigning/bribing the electorate). He also said that India’s press is more free than that of any other country in the Commonwealth, with the possible exception of the UK (this includes RSA, Australia, and Canada), that India’s federal system of government encouraged state-level experimentation in participatory governance, and quite a few other things that showed a surprisingly high level of optimism about India’s democracy. Responses from the audience were fairly interesting too, as a lot of the listeners disagreed with his assessment.
My interviews have also been going well - not only a lot of direct information, including some interesting criticisms of the WSF, but also a lot of contacts. Prof. Kammardi pointed me towards several members of the Communist Party, and a few articles from Marxists that criticise the KRRS for not adequately crossing caste lines. I also had a very reassuring talk with Prof. Sangita at ISEC about my work – he seemed to think it’s an interesting and relevant project.
In terms of my work, it’s seeming more and more like it would be a better idea to stay here for longer and get an in-depth picture of things here, rather than trying to do less in-depth research spread over Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai. I’m still going to confer with Jie about it, but it’s looking like I might be hanging around in Bangalore and surrounds for a while. I still want to go to a KRRS village and do some interviews, and to a non-KRRS village, and stay at ISEC for a few days interviewing people and reading their books, and get a good picture of a couple of the NGOs involved in the movement and talk to the Communist Party, and….. Well, a whole heap of things!
And now, to continue my mammoth posting, more social stuff:
I’ve been hanging around a fair bit with Akshay and Suresh from Eco Watch, which has been nice. Akshay and Suresh are both looking after me incredibly well, despite all of their work. Akshay is funny – he’s the least still person I have ever met. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him go a full fifteen minutes without picking up his mobile, and even when he’s typing up a report he manages to give the impression of being constantly running around doing things. Suresh is a lot quieter, and it keeps unnerving me how much he reminds me of Papou. Something in his expressions, plus the Indian headwobble, that Papou also does a little. (As for myself, I’m picking up the headwobble chronically…it’s incredibly well suited to my indecisiveness.)
Also, I can’t remember if I mentioned chatting to a mathematician at NIAS when I was there, who also turned up at the Green Valley school. Well, I got an email from him today asking more about my work – reassuring again, because I worry that I seem a bit like a silly little girl to academics I meet – and sending me this delightful link showing his daily walk to NIAS (for some reason lj objects to the address: http://tejas.serc.iisc.ernet.in/nias/walktonias/walkvir010.html). [In my head, he is an older, alternative-universe version of Russell. I don’t know why.]
And, finally, something you may or may not already know about India:
* On buses, women get on the front door, and men get on at the back, and seating is segregated. (This isn’t signed or anything, it just happens.) There are conductors on buses, and as well as selling tickets they do a different little whistle to tell the driver when to stop and when to go.