Happy 2010!
Wishing all of you a (belated) new year! It's amazing to think that a year ago I was celebrating in Hilo, eating ozoni amid the haze of fireworks. This year, I began 2010 in Kolkata, India, where instead of fireworks, the loudest noise was from a nearby night club and the non-stop hurtling traffic outside my window.
I wasn't able to blog in India since I had no internet. But, even if there had been internet access, I'm not sure I would've had time to sit down and write about all that I was up to. Every two or three days, I repacked my stuff to move to a new place. Corey joined me, which was really nice since it would've a very lonely holiday season all by myself. I'm slowly downloading all of my pictures to my computer and will upload them to my blog and facebook. In the meantime, feast your eyes on some of Corey's photos:
I recommend watching it in slideshow format. Corey has a Canon SLR 30D (somewhat dated, according to him), but he's been doing photography for a lot longer and got some really nice shots. The best part of taking photos in India was that often children would come up to you and say "picture" and then pose for you!
Most of my Watson-related work took place in the small town of Shantiniketan where I visited sites related to the poet
Rabindranath Tagore. I only discovered Tagore earlier this year, but I'm becoming more and more fascinated with the Bengali poet each day. He was a genius. Not only did he write poetry, but was a painter, dramatist, dancer, choreographer, singer, and frequently gave philosophical and political lectures. Despite winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, Tagore still remains relatively obscure. He's also received somewhat cursory critical treatment, which mystifies me. Shantiniketan is 160 km north of Kolkata, about a 2.5 hour train ride away. The town is best known for Visva-Bharati University, founded by Tagore. There's a museum as well as the Tagore archives. Getting into the archives was tricky. We needed introductory letters and had to see several individuals, before we could finally look at some of the manuscripts. I found some really interesting correspondence between Tagore and W.B. Yeats. Let me just say that doing archive work may seem glamorous, but when you're actually trying to decipher Yeats's scrawling handwriting, it's tedious and can be frustrating. I spent about an hour deciphering each letter and some letters just turned out to be things like: "Tagore, when are you free to dine with me this week?" Kind of funny.
Anyway, life here in Dhaka has been peaceful and relaxing. Yesterday I went on a tour of Puran Dhaka (the older part of the city) and today (actually in 30 minutes) I'm leaving for a day trip to Dhamrai to see traditional metal working. I'll be sure to write more soon and upload pictures.
