Tomorrow my first report is due to my advisor in Seattle. I have been trying to fill my time with thinking about what I have done and what I am planning to do. I've been fairly successful at focusing on this, but there are moments of loneliness and some fear that creep up. When I look at my proposed schedule for the next four months, I see week long stretches of time in south Rajasthan and in northern Gujarat, with a few other trips here and there (assuming that my visitors will still come despite the attacks), and a few days here and there that I will be writing and planning here at IIM in Ahmedabad.

If this schedule really does work then the longest stretch of time in Ahmedabad is ending in this next week. I am relieved by this. There is only so much I can do from here, and soon the two main friends I have here on campus go back to the US. There are about five Indian students that I am acquainted with, and hopefully I will be able to get to know them a bit better over time, otherwise I will be desperately lonely. I have been volunteering some time at a local NGO in which I have met a lot of great people, so that is a big help. And tonight I am having dinner with three other foreign researchers living in Ahmedabad at the house of the one from Italy. Hopefully that will also be a nice network for me.

The week after the next I will make my first trip to several towns in Gujarat, ending with a short trip for my birthday to the old Portuguese colony - Diu. That part of the trip will be with a friend who is living in the south of Gujarat, from Harvard, who is doing archival work on a Fulbright, although I haven't heard from him since the attacks and I don't know for sure whether he will still be up for it. I really hope so.

Recommended Listening

I have been listening to this webcasting from the South Asian Journalism Association. It is fantastic for understanding the wider context through discussion, and a careful sifting through of information and the latest from Mumbai. Check it out: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/saja/

Thanksgiving Day

I am grateful to have been able to spend the day with a group of people that are kind and with whom I share common concerns and values. It was a meeting I have been looking forward to for a while, and it was everything I hoped it would be. I also realized a while after returning to campus how thankful I am for having had the distraction today. I am thankful that my mind is so full of questions related to my research that I can somewhat avoid thinking about what has happened and what is happening to the south. When I do think of it I feel so many things, and I am reminded of the confusion I felt after the bomb blasts here in Ahmedabad in July. I am thankful this evening to not be in Mumbai, and I am thankful to not have witnessed personally any of those horrible events. I am thankful for the emails from my friends and family, because even though I am an 8 hour train ride away from all of that, it has certainly had the power to unsettle me.

Terrorist Attack in Mumbai

I just now woke up with a text message from Sage. I didn't know anything about the attacks as I was asleep in my bed in Ahmedabad. I don't quite know what to say just yet, except that I am perfectly fine and safe.

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I checked in with an Indian friend of mine in Mumbai and he was also safely at home away from that area of town. While it is a beautiful day in Ahmedabad and I have a meeting in a few hours that I have been waiting for since I arrived, still I feel, as I did in July, totally shaken. That area of Mumbai, not the fancy hotels (which I cannot at all afford) but the area in general, had sort of become a getaway place for me, and it felt safe. I certainly know all of those places. I don't really understand how it's possible, but somehow if you are not directly impacted by these tragedies, you just keep going. There have been so many attacks in India in recent years, so many horrible attacks, and yet everyone else has to just hope that it will not come any closer. Knowing that Americans were one of the targets does concern me, as there is really no hiding one's nationality, but there are relatively few Americans and foreigners in general in this area of the country, I think that makes me feel a little better.

It is certainly days like today that I am confused about being here, confused about what I am doing and utterly homesick.

The last few days all sorts of things have happened. I've met some 30 fellows from a local NGO, in which young Indians, mostly from the US, come back to India to work on some project. These range from helping to build bathrooms to helping a small business to expand and become more professional to helping create other, non-work, spaces for young rural to urban migrants. I spent the day with this group on Sunday while they were having a workshop at Gujarat Vidyapeeth. Some of you know that Gujarat Vidyapeeth is the institution that gave me an affiliation in the end. It is the university that Gandhi started and was the first vice chancellor of. During the day I heard about the individual projects of these fellows, took a tour of the campus and learned to spin cotton (not very well, but still), with the help of three female students from the university. I might have stayed in the dorms of that university instead except that there were many rules and the amenities at IIM were unbeatable. I agreed with the current Vice Chancellor Iyengar yesterday, we met for the first time face to face, to stay at Gujarat Vidyapeeth the last week of March in order to get a feel for the life there and to give a talk. Living there involves wearing Khadi clothing (homespun cotton), waking at 5 for prayer and cleaning, eating breakfast, meditation...

After more than a week at IIM I have grown used to the place, the food and my routine within it. I think of it as though I am spending a lot of time here at the moment, but there will be weeks at a time when I am not here at all, but rather making trips to border areas between Gujarat and Rajasthan, where many of the migrants that work in Bt cottonseed pollination fields come from. I am still unsure of when I will be ready for that. I need first to meet with a contact that I have not been able to meet with since my return. He is the one that everyone else I speak to points me to. I also badly need a research assistant that can act as an interpreter, for I do not speak Rajasthani nor the tribal languages of south Rajasthan. But I think that these things will happen soon enough, and in the meantime I am planning a shorter trip to visit a nearby farm and to visit an agricultural university to speak with the head of the agricultural biotechnology department. I am also desperate to find someone willing to make a very important phone call for me. I tried calling this person that I have been very interested to speak with, with no luck. It is really difficult to make myself understood when I need to call someone else first and explain over the phone who I am, and who gave me this number, and what I am looking for -- in Gujarati! Hopefully tomorrow a Gujarati friend of mine - one of my teachers from the summer classes - will be willing to make the call on my behalf. We'll see.

I spent several hours yesterday at the Police Commissioner's office trying to complete my foreigner registration. While I was sitting in the waiting area the sweetest little girl with the biggest eyes I've ever seen started talking to me. Her shy older sister and brother added a question here and there. She told me they are Muslims from Pakistan also registering with the police. They asked me if I go to temple, where I am from, why I am here, what I do, what the exchange rate is between the US dollar and the Indian rupee, etc. Right before their mother came and they left the little girl gave me a little candy, waited until I had accepted it and put in my mouth and then asked me whether I liked it. So sweet. The encounter made me feel so much better about being at the scary police office. And when I looked around I realized that now that I have been there perhaps six times, it really isn't so bad.

A little while ago my room started to smell of smoke so I turned the fan on. But then it got really strong and I opened the door to see the entire hallway filled with smoke, and so I hurried up the stairs to the next floor and the way out, holding my breath the whole way. It looked like there was smoke coming out of every floor. But as I looked around everyone was acting normal. I went into the student activities office and asked what was going on. They told me that they were spraying to kill mosquitoes and I asked what on earth they were using that it smelled and looked like particularly fowl smoke: a kerosene based insecticide, which they spray every week. I was relieved that my building wasn't on fire, but I took a long stroll to avoid exposure to it. As I walked around I saw the guy with his huge plastic sprayer, with no mask or protective gear. I suppose I haven't yet been bitten tonight.

Now my advisor advised me not to spend too much time blogging, but with the lovely comments I have received and the prospect of more of their kind, I have to write more than once a week. Today was a winner. I spent the morning at a local NGO that brings Indians born and living abroad back to India as fellows to work on various projects for social justice and civil rights. I was fortunate to get to brainstorm with the woman in charge and she, of course, had all sorts of comments, ideas and contacts for me. In the afternoon I went to Gujarat University where my Gujarati language professors work. It is clear that if I am going to make progress in my Gujarati studies I will need to get off campus as much as possible, study on my own a little each day, and continue to take lessons with these professors. I was reminded of how very kind they are, and how hilarious one of them is!

While it feels as though things are moving slowly, it has only been four days since I arrived in Ahmedabad and I already have a long list of potential contacts. Now I have set myself to the tasks of studying Gujarati, emailing and making as many phone calls as I can each day, and reading and writing as much as I can. I am still very much in the planning process of my research and every conversation, every reading, every brainstorm changes and furthers my project a bit. It's kind of fun and kind of scary! I want to get out to some farms soon and to a few of the agricultural institutes to start talking about cotton production! I want to get my feet dirty!

So, I am beginning to feel settled here at IIM, and though I am homesick, I am getting used to where I am. I am also just barely beginning to see where I might be going with all this, but I'll let you know the status of this in the next few days.

A few days on

I made a quick trip to Fabindia to dress up my room a bit.

New girl

This is my first day in the dorms at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. The room is nice and it even has wireless! I need to get a few things to spruce the place up. My welcome package included: a phone for my room, a plug in mosquito repellent, and a surge protector. The room has a nice big desk with shelves, a bed and pillow, two big post-it boards, two chairs, a little stool and a cabinet that is like a military locker. At one end of the room there are double doors that open out to a green area and walkway. There is a security guard at the top of the stairs 24 hours. I've noticed some other foreigners, but hadn't talked to anyone until lunchtime. I was sitting feeling a bit miserable about the status of my language skills and about not knowing a soul, and then a German guy leaned over to me to ask why he hadn't seen me before. We talked for a little while and I learned that there are 38 European exchange students and that they are all leaving soon. I wonder whether I will be the only foreigner after that. He told me that all the classes are in English and that nobody speaks Hindi or Gujarati in that group. It is a strange thing that even when I get my Gujarati back up to speed the only people I can count on speaking Gujarati are the staff and anyone outside of the gates, otherwise I have no idea. The Indian students could be from anywhere.

It is hard to know where to start with all of this, but I am trying to spend the next few days getting myself completely set up here and starting to make phone calls, and then I will start making contact with local NGOs and having meetings with the contacts I made over the summer.

Tomorrow to Ahmedabad

Just now out in the bustling street I ran into a very strange woman from my Hindi classes in Seattle. I don't remember her name, but I do remember that she spoke very slowly and quietly and seemed awfully naive. At the same time she was probably the best Hindi speaker in that class and she had grown up in an ashram. I thought it would be quite amazing to meet someone I know by coincidence in this city, but then there is really only about a 15 block radius in which tourists tend to roam around here. Clearly I am one of them, but since my first time here I see Mumbai as a place that I can come and find many of the things, and certain comforts, I like without leaving India. For example, a place that I can go and write and plug in my computer without too much trouble, a croissant, a beer, some fish or chicken, things like that. I've decided not to beat myself up about getting to know the rest of the city.

I am nervous and excited to see where I will be staying in Ahmedabad. I arrive tomorrow evening around 6pm and I am supposed to take and taxi to the campus, look for dorm 4 and ask for my room key - we'll see! I cannot emphasize enough how nice the weather is here - how much better that when I was here last! Apparently this is the time to come because of the weather and because the tourist season is not yet at its height.

Typically, I left the rest of a very important funding application to be completed here. So I am sitting daily in a crowded little internet cafe slaving away. Wish you all were here!

Return to India - Mumbai

I arrived in Mumbai today and feel more than a little disoriented. I'm happy that I planned to stay only a few days here as I am starting to feel anxious to settle in and take my stuff out of my suitcase. After five nights in a 16-bed room, however, I am delighted to have my own funky room with a door that locks and a bathroom all to myself! The internet options are not as good as they were a few months ago, but at least the tiny little caves are still open here and there. The flight from London seemed like nothing for some reason, which is fantastic, I even slept!

Yesterday I was finally able to meet with the woman that was my excuse for going to London. I haven't been able to think about it all and write it down yet, but it was definitely positive. It seemed like the beginning of a long term thing, perhaps there will be a post-doc for me when I'm done with all of this.

I already have a meeting when I get to Ahmedabad. I also found out a few days ago that I will be staying at IIM in the women's dorms, which is what I originally wanted - so that is great!

The weather here in Mumbai is fantastic, and the streets are as crazy as ever. Well, I think that's about all I've got for now. Love to you all!