Tag: positionality
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Holy Baths
This video (“In Devprayag”), placed here for continuity in the blog but completed well after our return to the U.S., adds illustration to Mark Wilson’s fine description below of our visit to the beginning of the Ganges in Devprayag. His text explains what the video shows: the three rivers, the suspension bridge, the mountains. The…
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Geological Holy Land
Our trip to Devprayag, where the Bhagirathi and Alaknanda Rivers combine to produce the Ganges, began in Haridwar on the bank of the Ganges. This was the day that I could see India through the disciplinary eyes of a geologist. The rocks and landscapes we saw on our northward journey transcended the extraordinary human culture…
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Discovery of India
I sat next to Mrs. Sukhwar on the train from New Delhi to Haridwar, and we spoke together in English. She has lived in Delhi for 50 years, though she was born in Lucknow, and she was on her way to Haridwar for the same reason we were: to join the Aarti ceremony in honor…
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Discovery of India – and Positionality
Trailer for sale or rent / Rooms to rent fifty cents I’m reminded of one of my undergraduate professors of poetry, Richard Tillinghast, who advised us to only read one book at a time. He said he couldn’t think of Huck and Jim without hearing the tremor of far-off drums and feeling the heat of…
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Discovery of India (Redux)
The history of colonialism is replete with examples of discoveries of people and places who were already there…and doing quite well, thank you very much. Most often when Europeans went on their voyages of discovery it meant very bad things for a very long time for those who were “discovered”. I have found it to…