In India now. Feel like I have been here since December. As someone here remarked, “it's like you were gone for a vacation, only a short while.” Shows how easily time bends in our minds. The future seems so far away, and the past so close.

It also feels I have been here a long time because I have had a jam-packed first few days. Friday and today (monday) were extreme workdays. Remote sensing on a superhighway with no speed limits. Except that that metaphor gives the impression of progress, of which there was astonishingly little. So perhaps it was more like remote sensing as a boulder being rolled up a hill, again and again and again. Sliding down each time. No wait! It was what it really was, no metaphors necessary: a giant map in which I am very very lost.

Shrini, the coordinator of the project I am affiliated with, told me today that I am the only person he has never seen relaxed, that I am always tense or hyper. Which makes me realize I perhaps need to approach this a different way (ya think?). Because lordisa, I certainly don't want to only be stressed or hyper. No, no, I need to step away, step away from the remote sensing.

Which is what I did over the weekend. I went to see a movie on Saturday night. Tingya, a Marathi film with English subtitles (thank goodness).

Here is my onion analysis of the movie:

Skin: the story of a boy in love with the injured family bull that must unfortunately be sold to the butcher to pay off family debts. (oh terribly tragic! Boy cannot bear it! Boy runs to nearest village to get a doctor to look at bull, comes back with doctor and very bloody feet! Oh, even the stoic father is sad!)

Next layer: Agrarian crisis in India: debt is destroying families, breaking the boy's heart, making the father contemplate suicide, and tearing the mother between husband and son. (Political context: since the late 1990s, almost 100,000 farmers in India have committed suicide, the Left attributes the suicides to the cycle of debt caused by the commodification of agriculture, the integration of farmers into volatile world market and the deathgrip of debt to agribusiness companies)

Inner onion: Ah, the circle of life continues. Bull is sold, but one year later, family cow gives birth to new male calf. Boy rejoices, father and mother smile at the bittersweet irony. Film ends: zoom in on neighbour who is very pregnant....oh the metaphors!

All in all, an interesting movie.

And then, to top it off, I went to the first ever Bengaluru Pride Parade on Sunday. WOWZA! It was quite a fun time, a lot more people than I expected. Perhaps 1000 in total. Here is a little information about why that is really amazing (from http://bengalurupride.googlepages.com/)

In India today we are closer to where Pride was when it started in 1970 (in the USA, reference to Stonewall). LGBT people face a lot of harassment from the police. Lesbians are subject to violence and even forced to commit suicide by their families. Gay men are blackmailed by organised rackets that involve members of the police. Bisexuals are denied the chance to express same sex love and forced into opposite sex marriages. Transgenders are routinely arrested and raped by the police. Same sex couples who have lived together for years cannot buy a house together, have a joint bank account or will their property to each other without being challenged by their families.
All this is possible because Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code treats LGBT people as criminals. A case currently being heard in the Delhi High Court calls for this law, imposed on us by the British, to be amended so that it no longer applied to consenting adults. This very small change will not remove all problems for LGBT people, but it will be a vital step towards affirming that we are equal and accepted citizens of India.
On June 29th LGBT people in Bengaluru, Delhi and Kolkata will march in the hope that this change will come soon. Kolkata first did this in 1999, and has done so every year since 2003. Today in 2008, Pride is going national as a sign that the time for national change has come.

There were lots of people marching in masks, and many people hid behind their placards when someone would try to take their picture. On the other hand, many others welcomed photos, and even requested them. I went with a filmmaker and carried his bag while he filmed. We tried to do a few interviews at the end, but the drumming was too loud. Oh yes, there was drumming and dancing. And slogans like “I am proud to be a lesbiaaaannnn!” I will send a link to the film when we have finished editing. For now, here are a few pictures:

Aren't these two just lovely? Note sign and mask in background

I am not hiding. I am not invisible.

Dancing!

These two asked to have their picture taken. I was happy to oblige.

mmmm. ah.

A day of smiles of so many meanings.

i have succumbed to technology or welcome to my blog

Dear friends and family,
Well, you called for a blog, so you will get a blog! HA! And I will begin on the plane, just to make sure I don't procrastinate it into oblivion.
As many of you may know, I felt it was hard to leave Montreal yesterday. I have been enjoying my time there over the past few months. The warm summer weather is not nearly as easy to leave as was the piles of snow I left last December! But as I sit here on the flight from Paris to Bangalore, watching “Geovision” and working on my proposal, I realize I am looking forward to the work waiting for me when I land. I don't know a lot about how the actual research process will be, but the one thing I know for sure is that it will be different from working in my cubicle in Montreal. And I look forward to the change.
A side note about “geovision,” a wonderful part of flying these days. Instead of watching bad plane movies, I can watch a map with the progress of the plane charted across it. So I am able to connect what I see out of the window of the plane with a political boundary. With a name of a city, a body of water, a mountain range. And interspersed with the map that zooms in and out are satellite images of various interesting features near where the trajectory of the plane crosses. Such as the Indus Delta in Pakistan, which is the current feature. Earlier in the flight I had a spectacular view out the window of the plane of Romania, the Black Sea, and then Turkey. Geographic connections that I had never made in my head before, that yes, of course, Romania and Turkey share an inland sea. And the mountain ranges that we have crossed! I realize how little real understanding I have of any place that I have not been to. Which is a good thing, really.
Ah, plane meal two has arrived, must put this little story on hold.