"santiniketan" or "the cows and the goats"

I'm in a tiny town in India... northwest West Bengal to be exact. It's small, there are a lot of goats and really annoying men. It's very dusty and quiet, one might even say peacful. I walk every day from my lovely guest house (where a nice Bengali family lives, they give me dinner and let me watch terrible television with them) to the Visva-Bharati campus. Visva-Bharati is the university that Tagore founded in 1919 and it's beautiful there. Today I got access to the special archives (with my secret letter from Uma Das Gupta, a very distinguished scholar, ahem, ahem) and spent the morning pouring over books. Tomorrow I'm going to look for photographs of Tagore to put in my collages.

So, yes. There's actually not much going on that's of interest to the general public. I had to spend about two hours looking for an internet cafe, that's how small this town is. It's just nothing really, just trees and a few lakes and goats and lots of cows. It's beautiful. I will take photos either to post here when I get to Darjeeling, or to share with you all when I'm home.

I do miss the craziness of Kolkata. There was something condusive to working in that hostel full of loud drunk people. I'm going to hunker down here and do lots of work, but I'm excited to continue on to Darjeeling soon. Darjeeling is apparently very, very "modern" which will be a bit of a relief. The simple life is lovely when you aren't trying to get anything accomplished, but not having internet when you are trying to write a research paper is a bit daunting and frustrating.

I'm sorry for my incredibly lame posts. I wanted to check in and tell everyone I'm safe, but the only thing I do all day is research a cool dude and make art and swat mosquitos (lots of mosquito swating going on).

I miss you all! I'll write again soon...