A Better Blogger (From Now On)

Dear All,

I apologize for my two-month-long hiatus. I have failed to post consistently, and in doing so, have forsaken the most fundamental objective of blogging! But my silence has its own reasons, some of which I will briefly explain:

The end of November marked my fourth month in India. When Alexander and I returned from our three-week tour through Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, something changed for the both of us. For the first time, Ahmedabad felt like home, regardless of how transitory or uncomfortable it may be. At first I was excited. I finally felt confident in our new space. I could navigate the city relatively easily and was no longer intimidated by the demands of daily life. In short, I was getting used to living here.

At the same time that life seemed more manageable, it also seemed less interesting. The same objects that once arrested my attention now appeared ubiquitous. My conversations with people, while no less edifying, were quickly assimilated into a perpetual series of daily exchanges from which it became difficult to isolate particulars. Colors started to look duller. Food tasted blander. Even the burning piles of rubbish and human excrement were not quite as assaulting.

My experiences started to feel more like predictable encounters than exciting adventures, and it seemed impossible to retell them in any other way. Activities such as hand-washing laundry, buying vegetables, and ridding the apartment of dust and mosquitoes did not provide much fodder for interesting analysis. They did even seem worthy of a bland summary. On the other hand, anything but my basic routines were too overwhelming to fully digest and regurgitate. My thoughts all seemed embarrassingly incomplete; my observations underdeveloped. I was stuck in a margin between simple actions and their meanings, and my mind felt blocked. It no longer felt possible to describe a walk down the street without talking about the ways my whiteness, gender, nationality and class produced the experience; they were one in the same.

Although I am still trying to figure things out, I feel ready to write. Besides, writing is way of figuring things out in and of itself- a method of inquiry, as Laurel Richardson would say. Alexander and I have accomplished and lived through a lot in the past two months, and much of it is worth mentioning. I will do my best to summarize my favorite moments from recent weeks in the following three posts. I also promise to post more frequently, so please keep checking.