SUPER fried chicken

That's what I had for dinner tonight in good old Kolkata. I'm exhausted, literally exhausted. I spent the whole day working on my project. I took a one hour and $4 cab ride to meet my advisor, Professor Tapati Guha-Thakurta, in northern Kolkata. $4 is a LOT of money in India, I'm living in a hotel for only $5 a night.... so think about that one. So yes, it was a bit of an expensive day, but what are you going to do? This all led to me wanting to spend little-to-no money on dinner, hence the SUPER fried chicken. It's not really fried, it's really tandoori and it's REALLY delicious.

Anyway, enough about food. So, yes I worked all day. I met my advisor for the first time. I was very, very nervous. She is one of the pre-eminent scholars of modern Indian art. She knows all about my subject, her grandfather actually studied at Rabindranath Tagore's school! She's really amazing. The thing is, she really liked me! She gave me an endless list of books to check out, many of which I won't read just because i don't have time in one month, but some of which are really, really helpful. It's just all so exciting. She gave me names of people to meet with in Santiniketan. She also told me she wished I could just do the collages and not have to write a paper (I wish that too....) but we came up with an outline for the paper that makes it relevant and not too hard to do in addition to everything else.

After the meeting I went to the hostel and locked myself up in my room with my books. I read for about 2 hours then I got a surge of creative energy and did some work on one piece that was really terrible and is now much better!! Great. I'm just excited for everything. It's a cool feeling.

My plans have changed a bit. I am now leaving Kolkata a week from today (so, next Wednesday the 18th). I want to meet with a Tagore scholar and she lives here, and I also need to track down a lot more books. It's a good thing. My advisor told me that Santiniketan can get depressing for a person alone for more than a week. Good thing she told me, I will not be there as long and I'll be much happier for it!

I'm going to go listen to the "spiritually enlightened" australians play terrible songs they have written inspired by George Harrison. That's what happens every night at the hostel, but they are leaving soon and that's maybe a good thing..... it's a funny place, full of happiness and bizarre things. Last night I got into a bit of an intoxicated rant with some Brits about the multiculturalism of Britain vs. the American identity. It really didn't go anywhere, but it was fun none-the-less.

MUCH love. If you are reading this you are probably someone I am missing!!