Wayanad, by name is not a new place for me. I have visited the place several times as a tourist and as a student for field work. But four months of experience here has taught be that I previously knew little of the real beauty, terrain and moreover the lives of people in this heavenly district of Kerala. Even though I was so excited to begin Profugo’s field fellowship since I have a strong affinity
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On a Saturday afternoon in January, I found myself on the balcony of the Prasanthi Cottage, my current home. I took in my surroundings – the lush hills, the distant moos of cows, the airy dance of floating clouds. I sat, alone, with a wide smile on my face. This scene may seem like a cliched description of someone who claims to be “at peace,” or maybe that of someone who is a bit eccentric.
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Visiting a Post-Landslide Community As some of you may know, between August 16 and August 30, Kerala was hit with the worst flood the area has seen in over a hundred years. What is very unfortunate about the whole thing is that some of it was not preventable and some of it was. See, 5 meters of rain fell in just about 10 days here in Wayanad where I am. That’s over 16 feet of
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There’s something magical about being cooped up in an airplane for 23 hours. It gives you a certain high of impending doom: O Ye mighty jet lag deity…be ever so merciful to me. The beauty of flying Lufthansa as opposed to *ahem* American for an international flight is the constant conveyor belt of food that they give you. The constant calories certainly pacified my anxiety about the long travel times, first from Denver to Frankfurt,
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It’s February 18, and so with that I have officially been in Wayanad for four months, or nearly half of my total fellowship. If I could go back to the day before I left for India and tell myself one thing, I’d probably choose to quote, of all things, MTV — specifically, that early 2000s classic “Diary”. “Diary” was a show where a featured celebrity would talk about the supposed truth of their day-to-day lives,
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