in the field again

It has been a month since my last entry and I feel I have built up so many things to say. The last entry is something I wrote a while back but have only now gotten around to posting. Since then, I have found it difficult to write about my current experiences. I feel I don’t yet have enough perspective to really understand my three weeks in the field, interviewing farmers and living with a family. But I will give it a little try and have to promise the rest for later.

I am currently in Bangalore again, finishing up a bit of the remote sensing work, but I leave again for the field tonight. Ah, once again, the lovely overnight train ride. I have come to feel almost as home on the train as anywhere else these days. Four months ago, before leaving for India, one of my main concerns was “Will I have a stable place to stay, I place I can feel comfortable in, a sort of home, a place I can be on my own?” And I can say, that like many things in research, I have not answered the question so much as redirected it. Instead of finding a stable place to live, I have learned to be quite fine with a semi-nomadic existence. I currently have my things spread between two places, but the number of places I regularly sleep are about five. If I am in the field late, I simply sleep at my interpreter’s house. If I am at my friend’s house late, I sleep there.

And the needs for solitude and independence? They have not disappeared, but I no longer associate them with the place I sleep. In the U.S. there seems to be a big emphasis placed on having “separate bedrooms” (how many times can I remember telling my brother he wasn’t allowed in “MY” room?) But in the places I have been recently, everyone can sleep anywhere and everywhere. Most of the beds are moveable mattresses, so they are rolled up in the day and can be rolled out just about anywhere at night. And at first, I really thought I would find this difficult, but instead I have found it sort of comforting and warm. There is a certain safety in numbers, I suppose. And not just safety from night noises and creatures (which might have been my main concern as a small child) but also safety from going too far into the depths of my own mind, safety from the loneliness that can be sometimes provoked by solitude. When surrounded by others, their perspective on life and simply their presence encourages me to maintain a certain level-headedness, and that has probably been a very good thing. By and large, I have appreciated my many “homes” and sleeping places of the last few months, even if stability has been lacking. And so, I am looking forward to tonight’s journey.

Since I usually am traveling on my own, I have no pictures of myself in a train. But I do have myself on a chakkeri, or bullock-drawn cart. We were hitching a ride back from the fields after doing an interview. The photo was taken before another four people jumped up into the pile of freshly cut grass. And we were pulled magnificently homewards by the amazingly strong bullocks. I felt on cloud nine.

A strange holiday

Dated 6 September 2008

I felt the need for a vacation. Vacation in the sense of “getting away”. From what? From work, I suppose, but more importantly, from feeling like a foreigner, from feeling constantly stared at, from feeling lost. Yes, I wanted to get away from feeling lost. But of course, it is hard to get away from being lost if you don’t know where you are going. That will only serve to make you more lost, really. But luckily, with money, you can make a plan to go somewhere where people can pretend that you are no longer lost. Can stare less avidly perhaps, make pretenses of not seeing you anymore as the foreigner you are. Yes, I am talking about going somewhere to be a tourist, somewhere where I can use my money, and thereby be accepted for what I am and no longer questioned: a rich white tourist. No need to be curious and stare anymore.

But of course, I didn’t make the plan, I didn’t make the reservation. I tried, first to go to a small eco-lodge, high up in the Ghats. Family run place, with western-style organic sensibilities, a place where I would still put the money down so as to be treated like a human being with an identity of “tourist” (albeit “lefty tourist”), but where it would be easy to believe that people were just being friendly and wanting to make a difference. But they were closed for the month of September. Too much rain, too many leeches they said. Oh…. Leeches. Right.

Second plan was a quickly made one: go with friend to another resort in the Ghats (slightly more commercial) and live in a treehouse for two days. Eat, sleep, and maybe go on a few forest walks. Maybe go to the river and swim. But the friend backed out and I didn’t have the courage to go alone.

So what to do then? How to protect myself in my “going away”? How to hide from where I am without the help of a friend, or without the help of a secluded place of similar worldview? I can’t imagine going to a beach at goa would be very relaxing alone, as a young white woman. Yea, definitely no. and where else can I go? Hampi is lovely I hear, but overrun with tourists and difficult to navigate without your own transportation, says the guidebook. Maybe just go to a swimming pool in a hotel in Belgaum? But they will be populated by businessmen, sitting around the pool….. oh, that will only firmly ground me in the place I already am in, in the place I am trying to get away from. So what to do?

In the end, I take refuge in work. I go to Dharwad Agricultural University and make the library my swimming pool. Sit among phd theses and outdated books. Revel in the dewey decimal system and the card catalogue. Try not to move around too much, or even look up too often because that brings me back to where I am. I get stared at as I go and take more books off the shelf, as I go to bring books to be photocopied, as I go to drink water. Realizing only after I have drank 3 cups of water (Indian-style, not letting the communal cup touch my lips) that the “reverse osmosis” filter is not plugged in, and therefore, is most likely not working. Hoping that I won’t regret that later… pretending to just not notice.

And at the end of the day, as the library was closing, I walked back to the international students hostel, looking forward to my dinner, and then to watching a movie on my laptop. And what a strange dinner it was. I was led by Balu, the night guard of the hostel, to the guest house, where, around a oblong semi-circle, 24 plates were laid out, salad, shenga chutney, and holgi already arranged on the plates. Waterglasses filled, everything in order. But no one there, no one eating. And at the far far tip of one of the sides of the giant U shape, there was a single placemat. No plate, no waterglass, nothing. And that is where I was told to sit. A plate of food was brought for me, and a glass of water. Everything brought by the only person there, the cook/waiter. And I ate heartily, as he walked out of the room, through glass doors, and waited outside. Ate everydarnthing on my plate. As I have every meal every day here in India. As I do most of the time, but there is something so especially rewarding about eating up every grain of rice with my fingers.

But what a strange, almost mystical experience to eat alone in a giant silent room, with places for 24 next to me, empty. Just serving to echo my position, my loneliness amidst so many people. My alienation on crowded buses, even as I am wedged into the middle seat, being touched on both sides. Yet still so alone. It was really a lovely metaphor for my “vacation”: surrounded by the signs of people everywhere, but totally alone. Alone in my head, oh so alone in my head. And then, tonight, my computer decides that it will go back to being silent, no sound, and so I don’t even have the company of a movie. Instead, just music on the little ipod fake. And my own words to somehow fill the gap where other human beings should be, where I am used to having them. There are even two twin beds in this guest room. And every now and then, the date of departure enters my head, as I realize and remember that this is a temporary permanent state. I sing out loud. Reassure myself that I am here and now.