Travels with Tavish

After my early arrival back to campus on Saturday morning 2/18, I was delighted to find upon waking that breakfast was my favorite—upma and pineapple sheera. I will continue my investigation of the mess meals throughout the semester; my new hypothesis is that every other Saturday they serve this meal in the morning. I spent most of the day relaxing—it was much too hot to spend time outside between the hours of 10-5. I will have to get used to this before April and May come… On Sunday morning I went to the farmers’ market on campus and bought some guava and raisins. I was incredibly tempted to buy jaggery, or gud, a sugar product used in many sweets here. One farmer was selling it in large chunks about the size of a small flower pot. I somehow restrained myself, convincing myself that I would not be able to make anything with it until I return to the US and that if it sat in my room for the next two months it might become an ant-attractor. There has so far only been the occasional...

I spent most of Monday the 13 th preparing for my upcoming week of field visits. My train, the Devgiri Express, was to leave at around 9:30pm that night. I had lunch with Shilpa at her hostel—she has told me many times about how much better the roti is in her hostel because it is handmade. In my hostel’s mess, the roti is made by a machine. The roti in her hostel is definitely much better than in my hostel, but both pale in comparison to some I have had outside campus. I want to try making roti when I get back to the states sometime when I cook Indian food—it looks pretty simple and it always tastes good. I ate dinner with Saikrishna in his hostel before heading out to the train station. Both times I have eaten a normal dinner at his hostel, they have had a delicious spicy paneer dish (my hostel rarely serves paneer, unfortunately). He is tired of paneer, but I love it. After dinner, we took the local train to Thane station, where we would get on the Devgiri Express.  I slep...

Last weekend, I was able to eat a few more meals outside campus than usual. On Friday night I went out to Hiranandani with Shilpa and two other CTARA students, Sumit and Anameka. They had Subway and Dominos, and I of course opted for Indian food. I ate pav bhaji at the place I discovered last summer when my group from Northeastern stayed in Hiranandani. Sumit and I ended up walking back to the hostel after dinner, about a 45-minute walk. We had a great conversation about many topics including theatre and CTARA, but the most memorable piece was when Sumit said, in relation to people asking me all the time about what things are like in the US, that “this is what people ask about because there is not yet enough shared experience between us (Indians) and you, so the differences are what people talk about.” This was an interesting way to think about why this is always the first topic of conversation when I meet someone new here. On Saturday morning, I was sorely disappointed to find t...