It is 10:00pm as I start this post in Mumbai. Our flight just arrived and we bussed over to the domestic transfer terminal. The brief reprieve from an airplane and airport life was made no less exhilarating by the lights, activity, and action of the surrounding area. I had a slight worry as our bus pulled out of the international terminal and into the city, but the sensation was quickly drowned out by my (probably) delirious (sleep-absent) excitement. In just 8 or so hours I will be in Udaipur--ready for the summer months ahead; ready to be back on the ground in South Asia; ready for new joys; ready for new challenges; ready for new friends; hoping for developing some serious language skills; and ready to immerse into whatever comes.
I am grateful to be sitting in the terminal with some Wi-Fi--after a little friend-making with a nearby kiosk attendant--and the moment to write a quick message to start this blog off. Thinking about what to write and what might be appropriate, interesting, honest, and candid, I feel the genesis of a blog that will probably just turn into mostly a picture reel over the coming months would be insufficient without laying out some thoughts that have stuck with me from Diana Eck's "Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India." Though talking about deity images, Eck beautifully and aptly extends the known quip, "A picture is worth a thousand words" to challenge us on which thousand words we use are important. The point is that, like reading, we all have our own interpretations, our own expectations, and our own personality / identities / experiences guiding our approach to understanding what we read, or see. These levels of interpretation are key to communication and to sharing experience, and in this instance, me sharing sights and sites in India through a computer screen. I believe Eck's words are a solid place for us to start this digital journey together. Though at times my posts may be more like itineraries or chronicles, I hope this blog spans the romantic to the critical, the simple to the mystic (though, really is there always a difference?), and primarily to allow new insights into the places in India I will be.
I am grateful to be sitting in the terminal with some Wi-Fi--after a little friend-making with a nearby kiosk attendant--and the moment to write a quick message to start this blog off. Thinking about what to write and what might be appropriate, interesting, honest, and candid, I feel the genesis of a blog that will probably just turn into mostly a picture reel over the coming months would be insufficient without laying out some thoughts that have stuck with me from Diana Eck's "Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India." Though talking about deity images, Eck beautifully and aptly extends the known quip, "A picture is worth a thousand words" to challenge us on which thousand words we use are important. The point is that, like reading, we all have our own interpretations, our own expectations, and our own personality / identities / experiences guiding our approach to understanding what we read, or see. These levels of interpretation are key to communication and to sharing experience, and in this instance, me sharing sights and sites in India through a computer screen. I believe Eck's words are a solid place for us to start this digital journey together. Though at times my posts may be more like itineraries or chronicles, I hope this blog spans the romantic to the critical, the simple to the mystic (though, really is there always a difference?), and primarily to allow new insights into the places in India I will be.
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