Just not my day.

I woke up knowing that my cold, instead of going away, had actually gotten worse. The lack of sufficient insulation means that it’s hard to ever get ‘out of the elements.’  Bangladeshis don’t seem to have quite the problems that T and I have, but they certainly suffer, too, in the winter season.

The kids have the day off for the local elections, which means that they’re constantly underfoot.  I don’t mind it in small doses, but it does make it hard to get work done.  They want to color, they want to play on the OLPC laptop that I brought for them, they want to rummage through our stuff to see what we don’t want.  They constantly want us to take their pictures, because they know that I will develop them and bring the pictures back for them. I enjoy engaging in these activities with them, but it requires constant supervision, and after I few days I realize that I haven’t gotten any real research work done.

Seraj comes in every thirty or forty minutes to ask with help on using the internet.  I’ve been slowly teaching him how to use the computer, how to get to his email, and how to read the daily newspapers online.  But he keeps forgetting to connect the modem, after which, of course, the internet does not work.

And in blowing my nose so much I’ve pulled out my nose-ring, which is terribly painful to stick back in.  I actually don’t think I have the energy to put it back in.

Today I went with Rashida as she gave her vote for the local upazila elections.  The policeman overseeing the women’s line of Ward 9 even let me inside to see the voting in action.  As far as I can tell, the oppositition party did not even participate in the local elections here, which doesn’t say much for democracy under the current administration.

Upazila elections: giving vote

Mumbai’s 9/11

But perhaps not India’s 9/11. There are those who will certainly disagree with me, but I must note how easily life in other Indian cities appeared to continue even on Thursday, as the hotels were still under attack. Perhaps it couldn’t have been any other way. People were certainly concerned, upset, and angry, and security in Kolkata was definitely more than usual, but the kind of stunned silence, disbelief, and grief that I felt–and felt all around me on 9/11/2001 and the days following–were not present in India last week.

One might argue that it is because I myself am not Indian that I did not feel the same sadness and disbelief, but I honestly don’t think that’s the case. I was deeply upset by the terrorist attacks last week, and I followed the news every day. But those around me did not seem to have the overwhelming sense that this event would change their lives and their way of looking at the world forever (perhaps because India has suffered so many terrorist attacks in the last two decades).

And it just doesn’t seem useful to me to talk about anyone’s 9/11, in the same way that I don’t think it’s useful to talk about the Holocaust outside of the Nazi Germany context. This is Mumbai’s.. India’s … own tragedy, and it should stand on its own as a horrible, terrifying ordeal. The rest of the world shares in it–indeed, citizens from all over the world died–but it should not be compared to other events.

One of my favorite authors agrees with me, although he is much more articulate about it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/opinion/03ghosh.html?_r=1&hp