productivity

I have mixed feelings about going back to India for several months next year.  It was pretty hard to be away from home sometimes, and while life was fast paced and interesting, it was also pretty stressful.  But there is one sense in which it was much easier to be in Bombay.  My work was easier to do, and it came naturally.  Here, it is more of a struggle.

I miss the extreme productivity of my two and a half months of fieldwork.  It was day after day of learning new things, interviewing people, taking notes.  And when I got back home, it was necessary to write for a couple of hours, just to make sure that I wouldn't forget the events of the day.  I felt so pressed for time that everything was urgent, and I was constantly productive.

Now I'm back to the unstructured and self-directed part of dissertation work.  Its harder than I remembered.  Its strange, because my existence here in Carrboro is much more comfortable than in Bombay.  There is nothing exhausting about my days.  Living in the clean suburbs of North Carolina, in a quiet apartment complex with a pool, an air-conditioned car and fast internet, is just easier.

But I have no appointments to keep or schedule to follow, unless I set one for myself.  And for me, that is similar to telling myself that I will get to the gym every day.  Its a nice sentiment, and sometimes it works, but on balance, its more of an ideal than a reality.  I wish I was again engaged in collecting my data... that was tangible and unambiguous, and now I am finding it difficult to be creative.  I'm back to staring at my screen for hours and reading tangentially related stuff for inspiration or distraction. 

I'm enjoying it too.  But who knew work would be harder once I had more time and more amenties.

puja preparation

One of my last days in Bombay, I walked through the site of a temporary puja in front of the Govandi train station.  (The word puja means worship of a deity, roughly.  But I also heard it used to refer to the physical structure of a shrine). 

A newspaper-wala nearby said that every year, the rickshaw drivers set up a puja in this area.  Its stays up for several days and is a big celebration, very colorful and noisy.  He didn't know if it was meant to celebrate a particular thing... he said it was just an annual puja.

When I saw it, the puja was still being set up.  It was a very bizarre sight.  The mechanical statues-- larger-than-life depictions of Hindu deities as well as people and animals-- were disassembled and strewn about.  They were missing heads and arms, and many of them had wiring sticking out of them.

People walked by and tended to snicker, especially at the scantily-clad bottom half of a muscular man.  But once the puja is set up, I'm sure many of the onlookers will be somewhat reverent toward it.  For once, I didn't get odd looks because I was taking pictures... maybe the rest of the passersby also thought the scene was worthy of documentation.