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To say that I've been traveling a lot is an understatement...for my standards at least.

Out of the twenty weeks I spent in Europe, I've traveled for ten of those weeks. Seventy days. I've stayed and slept in twenty cities and towns. I've passed through a further eight.

I would say my best experiences were either Birmingham (UK), Padova (Italy), or Granada (Spain). Each had a slight and comparable shortcoming, so the tie is tight. But the main reason why these cities came to the top of my list is not because of the wondrous sights or beautiful architecture (indeed neither Padova nor Birmingham has either), but the people I met in those cities (because of couchsurfing). The experiences, the fun - they were simply unforgettable.

My worst experiences were in Manchester (UK) and Firenze (Italy). Let's just leave it at that.

I have couchsurfed on sixteen different couches in fourteen different cities and towns. Most of them are students. I have stayed with students who study: Latin American Studies (B.A.), Sociology [Security] (Ph.D.), Nursing, Photonics (Ph.D.), Politics & Economics (B.A.), Social Anthropology (B.A.), Mathematics (B.A.), Philosophy (B.A.), Human Resources/Office Administration, Radiology Technician, International Business (M.A.), Musicology (M.A.), Agriculture (B.A.), Communication (B.A.), International Development (M.A.), Medicine, Sociology [Pedophilia] (Ph.D.), and Computer Science/Information Technology (B.A.).

I haven't been in one town or city for two consecutive Saturdays since the beginning of February, with an exception of three weeks in March.

5/2 - London, UK
12/2 - Cork, Ireland
19/2 - Manchester, UK
27/2 - Inverness, UK
6/3 - London, UK
13/3 - London, UK
20/3 - London, UK
27/3 - Strasbourg, France
3/4 - Milan, Italy
10/4 - Bologna, Italy
17/4 - Barcelona, Spain
24/4 - Rota, Spain
1/5 - Madrid, Spain
8/5 - Paris, France
15/5 - London, UK
22/5 - Gent, Belgium
29/5 - Visakhapatnam, India

The cities or towns I've visited and the places I passed through:
Dublin 9/2 - 12/2
Cork 12/2 - 14/2
Kinsale 13/2
Birmingham 16/2 - 18/2
Manchester 18/2 - 21/2
Edinburgh 22/2 - 26/2
Inverness 26/2 - 27/2
Strasbourg 23/3 - 27/3
Toulouse 27/3 - 30/3
Avignon 30/3
Nice 30/3 - 3/4
Monaco 1/4
Milan 3/4
Padova 3/4 - 7/4
Venezia 4/4
Bologna 7/4 - 10/4
San Marino 10/4
Firenze 10/4 - 12/4
Roma 12/4 - 15/4
Mediterranean 15/4 - 16/4
Barcelona 16/4 - 19/4
Granada 20/4 - 23/4
Rota 23/4 - 27/4
Cadiz 25/4
Madrid 27/4 - 2/5
San Sebastian 2/5 - 4/5
Paris 4/5 - 12/5
Gent 21/5 - 23/5
Brussels 23/5

Granadan Life

It's very hard to be vegetarian in Spain. Today, I reached an all time low for food in Spain: barely cooked beans, lettuce and tomato for lunch (though the patatas alioli helped beforehand) and bread and curado cheese. But I did have some interesting sweets during the day: arroz con leche gelato and later, a rosco, a speciality of Cadiz for Semana Santa. But, come to think of it, I'm not really sure what I ate during Semana Santa itself.

I experienced my first Semana Santa, Easter celebrations in (southern) Spain, and it was all just a blur. This was mostly due to my extremely erratic sleep cycle: the first night in Granada was one of the most famous procesiónes of Semana Santa, La Procesión de la Gitanos. So essentially, every night during the week, Catholic brotherhoods or orders wear costumes, much like those worn by the Ku Klux Klan, and parade around town with the idols of Jesus Christ and Mother Mary (for my Telugu readers: Yesu Cristu ooregimpu). These are large figures on ornate platforms that are carried on the backs of about twenty four men (again for Telugu readers: pallakilaga) and guided through the streets by the people in the march. Anyway, so after the weekly CS Granada meeting, we headed over to see the start of the procesión. It started at around 12:30AM and lasted until 7:30AM, until the statue of Mother Mary was finally behind the gates of the Abbey of Sacromonte, a very famous monastery just outside of Granada. There are a few reasons why the procesión took so long. The first and primarily because the people carrying the pallaki had to take baby steps to move. It took about one minute to move one meter, if that. And they switched groups of men very half an hour or so. Secondly, because the abbey is up on a hill, SacreMONTE. Lastly, because they stopped every so often when someone sang a song or prayer. By the time Mother Mary went in, Adele, the Spanish aunty I met at the CS meeting, Serendipiti, the American study abroad student, and I were totally totally tired: from walking, standing, and lack of sleep. I went back to my room and crashed for the day.

The next day was pretty mellow. I thought I was going to have an exciting night out, but I met Rolando who suggested that I sleep early (around 8 or 9PM) and get up around 2AM to see the procesión silencio (silen because Jesus died on Friday), and then wait on line at Alhambra starting at 5AM. So, this is exactly what I did. And after waiting three hours on line to see one of the most visited sites in Spain, I was sorely disappointed. Here I was expecting the Moorish palace to be an exciting melange of religions and cultures, but really, it was simply shoddy, well, more like early, Muslim architecture. It sorely lacked symmetry, was not very big at all, and was overall kind of boring. Especially after seeing the wonders of Muslim architecture in India like the Taj Mahal and the surrounding palaces, Alhambra was really almost amateur. The only reason why I (and the others) stayed was because we went together as four couchsurfers traveling through Granada: Rolando from Costa Rica, Szidonia from Transylvania, Alex from Czech Republic (though I think he's Russian), and me from New York. I'm not going to lie, I didn't think we would get along at first, but either the disappointment of the Alhambra, the general time we spent together or the shitty windy, wet weather...or something, brought us together.

After the Alhambra, we were so tired that we went back to our hostals/hosts and slept for the rest of the day. And of course, because we slept during the day, we stayed up all night. Granted, it was a great night - I saw a fabulous drag show (in Spanish) and later, a real flamenco singer. The next morning, I took the 8:15 train to Sevilla and then another train to Cadiz to get to Rota, all on no sleep, as per usual. This is why my facebook status was: "Just as a heads up for those who will or want to visit Granada: don't expect to sleep much, especially between the hours of 12am and 8am."

¡Be ye warned!

Rollercoaster Ride

Couchsurfing is really like a rollercoaster ride. It really is.

I arrived to Granada this morning from Barcelona with absolutely no idea where I'll stay for the next three days. I finally got to an internet cafe after two hours of walking around and finding everything closed. As an aside, I´m not really a hardworker nor do I focus my energies on productivity. All the people close to me (my four family members, Neil, Ava, Nasim, etc.), they're all hard workers, but me, not so much. But even I was surprised at the Spanish work ethic! It was already 10AM and most stores still weren't open. I figured that if they opened at 11 and closed again at 2pm for siesta and re-opened in the evening from 5-8pm, they only work six hours a day...max!

Anyway, it's unfortunate that Granada had be my first real couchsurfing downfall. (I couldn't find a couch in Inverness, but it was only one night and it's wasn't terrible). After four successful and successive weeks of only couchsurfing (with Bologna being the exception - I stayed at my sister's friend's place), I simply could not find a couch in Granada. Nor could I find one in Sevilla, my next stop. I'm checking into a hostel later today. Kinda disappointed about that. I also decided this morning that I'm not going to Sevilla, but to Rota, a small town by Cadiz, on the Atlantic.

The thing about couchsurfing is that it really is a much better way to travel. For example, I made some awesome friends in Italy who were as hospitalable as family would be. Fabio, who cooked for me, gave up his room for me, took me partying and to his classes, in Padova and Matteo, who took me around Rome and explained all the history, cooked for me (too!), and drove me around, in Roma. My time is Barcelona was so wonderful that I'm thinking of even living there for a year or two. Kamil, my host, essentially said it's when I move to Barcelona (not if). Kamil and Paulina were such wonderful hosts and even better friends. So even if the city has nothing to offer, like Padova (or Birmingham), you can still have a great time.

It's totally bittersweet because you leave the city after a few days but you become good friends with your hosts. You're not really sure when you'll see them again. It's different with my friends from New York because I know I'll see them in eight months but...when will I go to Italy or Spain again?! And the downside is that if you're entirely dependent on couchsurfing like me and don't really know any other way to travel, it can kind of leave you flat faced when you don't have a couch. I suppose even if you do check into a hostel, you can still attend the couchsurfing events in the city or find fellow travelers, but it's not totally the same.

Oh CS. I'll definitely miss it when I spend the summer in Vizag...the community doesn't seem to be too big there. I definitely can't wait to go back to New York and start hosting people!

Toulouse, for some reason, reminds me of India...

It was very weird. I was in Toulouse for about two days (and three nights) and so much of the city reminded me of India: the gullies that were just large enough to let cars pass through, the open air staircases in apartment buildings, and so much more (i.e. I can't think of anything else for the moment, but take my word for it). But I'll be honest, from the beginning, Toulouse was a little difficult for me. I wasn't until the last few hours did I really get to enjoy it. I came to Toulouse purely on whim, like all the other cities I'm visiting. A classmate in my public space class mentioned that Toulouse was amazing in an offhand remark during class once and it stuck with me. So, I decided to see what was so awesome about it. I spent the day in the train from Strasbourg to Toulouse. I had lunch in Paris with Srilekha; Pavan & Harsha during my two hour stop over. The ride was really a tour de France: from Strasbourg to Paris to Toulouse on a train that went through Bordeaux. It was about a quarter to seven in the evening by the time I got to Toulouse. Then I realised that I didn't have the notebook where I noted my host's address. After fruitlessly trying to find an internet café, I phoned my friend Megan in London with my dying phone and asked her to get the details from my couchsurfing account. I suppose it was the difficulty of finding a couch in Toulouse that made the stay difficult to begin with: I sent out a lot of requests and got very few responses. Eventually, I did find someone, let's call him T, to host me for the last two nights in Toulouse, but the first night, Sunday night, was still couchless. Luckily, I got a few responses from the last minute request group and decided to stay with Stéphane for the one night. All was well - or so I thought. So I call Stéphane on my dying phone and he was sweet enough to come to the train station and pick me up. Stéphane's English wasn't very good at all, so I really got to practice my French. We got to his place, an awesome one bedroom apartment in the attic of a three story walk up, and went to a bar afterwards. After sleeping in the morning, Stéphane and I walked around the city and he showed me the sights. I was thoroughly shocked to see a peacock in Toulouse! I've only seen them once, in Delhi, but never elsewhere. We walked along the Garonne, the main river of Toulouse, the Capitole, and past the Arc-de-Triomphe equivalent of the city. It rained off and on and that was definitely a bummer because I totally didn't expect rain in any of the cities I planned to visit. A few hours later, Stéphane left me and I started to see the city on my own. I explored the southside of the Garonne. This part of Toulouse is a lot smaller and perhaps not as...fancy as the center city. I did find a used book market...unfortunately they were all in French. And then I realised that Toulouse does really have a lot of bookstores that are specialised and locally owned. It's a pleasant change from New York where bookstores are closing because of corporate giants like B&N. They had bookstores for just dance and music, history, literature - you name it! Anyway, it really started to pour in the afternoon and I got on the tram kinda randomly. I thought it would go to the city center, but it ended up going to the northern suburbs. After more wandering around, I got back to Stéphane's place and planned to shift to T's place. Incidentally, he only lived a few blocks away. But when I got there, no one answered the door or picked up the phone! Needless to say, I was pissed. I even tried calling him a few times. No success. So I killed some time in the internet café waiting for his call. Then at an Indian restaurant, Ganapathy, owned by a Tamil Sri Lankan. It felt so good to eat annam pappu again! And the waiter even recognised that I'm South Indian and brought out some achar! By the end of the meal, T still hadn't called, so I called up Stéphane and politely asked to stay at his place one more night. He was totally nice about it and let me, but it was still kinda awkward considering we said goodbye and all earlier in the evening. He told me that he wasn't staying at his place the following night, so I really had to find another host. Enter Javier. Javier offered to host me when I asked for an emergency couch but since Stéphane already offered, I politely declined. But I asked him after I got Stéphane's place and he was totally cool with it. So, the next morning, my mind cleared of couch worries, I left Stéphane's place super early (because he had to leave for work) and wandered around Toulouse. It didn't rain either! I found a small street with tons of great graffiti, walked by the St. Sernin Elgise, and had coffee at a crappy café. One of the things I really like about traveling is that I started reading...a lot. Because there's only so much walking and sightseeing and wandering you can do in a day before your feet give. So I made significant headway into Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Although I agree with most of his ideas, there were some faults with the presentation that I couldn't reconcile. After reading quite a bit, I met up with Javier at a metro station and he took me to his place to leave my stuff. Javier is from El Salvador and is doing a Masters in International Business in Toulouse. He is extremely very traveled and very laid back. When we got to his place, he made me arepas for lunch! I was so happy - I've always wanted to try some. After lunch, I headed back in the city and wandered around a bit more until Javier would be free in the evening. It was sunny for the rest of the day and I got to see a lot more of the city. During my wanderings, I saw two entreprising old Roma men making candle holders out of used soda and beer cans. It was brilliant! I bought three just to support them and later realised that I can give them to my next host as a gift. We tried talking, but the Roma men didn't seem to know much French or didn't understand me. But they did ask if I spoke Hindi or if I'm from Punjab. It was really cool interacting with them. I then remembered one of my goals for Europe: learning more and interacting with the Roma people. They are, after all, the oldest part of Indian diaspora and no matter what my advisor says, I still think diaspora studies are very interesting. I met up with Javier at his university and had a cheap lunch there. There I met his classmate whose name I simply cannot remember. She was an extremely sweet Chinese girl who did not want to speak French at all. We talked about Chinese people, Toulouse, summer work/internship plans and more. Javier then took me to the language café, a weekly meeting of people who want to practice different languages. I took this opportunity to practise my Spanish and see how good it is. To my disappointment, I could barely speak it. But the people at the table were very nice and understanding of this. My head started to hurt after about an hour of speaking Spanish, so Javier and I headed down to the weekly couchsurfing meeting at Café Flute. I met a lot of cool people there - including Laura, who was quite drunk by the time we got there. She was some zoologist or something at the university. But the really cool thing was (excluding the fact that she was a lot of fun) that she was wearing a Navdanya t-shirt! I was so so so excited and surprised to this. I asked if she met Vandana Shiva and more about her experience with the organisation. I honestly would apply for an internship with Navdanya for the summer if it was located in a Telugu speaking region of India. Anyway, after the meeting kinda dispersed, Javier and everyone went to a salsa bar across the street. I was such a pleasant change of scenary to finally see a lot of people of colour in France! All of us danced the night away and then Javier and I walked back to his place. And even though it was raining, I still had an excellent time just because Javier showed me a lot of fun things to do. The next morning, I woke up six minutes after my train to Nice had left.

Strasbourg...

The days before I left for my 'Whirlwind Tour of Western Europe,' I had quite a few papers to write which I put off to the last minute because of my terrible work ethic. Anyway, bottom line, I handed in the last assignment just hours before my bus left for the airport. But there it is: I have nothing to worry about school-wise until September (except for two tests in May). It feels weird. Three days on, I still have dreams about assignments due and deadlines and papers. C'est bizarre.

Like many of the other cities I've visited (and yet to write about), I visited Strasbourg purely on whim. I suppose my biggest reason was to see the 'marriage' of French and German cultures. I later learned that that's as wrong as saying Sikhism is like a blend of Hinduism and Islam (which they teach in American public schools). So I booked Ryanair to the Karlsruhe-Baden airport just across the border in Germany. There were no cheap flights to Strasbourg. I was also curious as to why they called the airport Baden-Baden (in their strong German accents) but didn't actually ask anyone. After an hour long bus ride, which was actually more expensive than the plane ticket, from the airport, I got to my host's place on Wednesday night. Vincent and his flatmate, François, are very nice and generous. Though they're very busy, they definitely try to help as many couchsurfers as possible. There was even another surfer here while I was here! And undoubtedly, the coolest thing about their flat is their some 60' flat screen TV. They connected a PC to it, so I'm currently typing on a really huge screen. Sometimes, I need to turn my head to read an entire webpage.

Strasbourg as a city is very nice. It's small, quaint and manageable - I suppose like most other European cities. There are a number of canals, tributaries and rivers that create a city of multiple islands. The centerpiece of the city, the Cathedrale; Notre Dame de Strasbourg, is vraiment magnifique! And I think the top platform of the city is actually the highest point in the city. After walking up some 200 steps on narrow spiral staircases, the view was really worth it. The Alsatian rooftops, the colourful buildings; and the German mountains out yonder were très jolis! After the Cathedrale, I walked to Germany. The bridge that crosses the Rhine River was this kind of weird curved and straight structure held up by suspension wires of sorts - not really sure how to describe it. Anyway, it felt awesome to finally sit on the Rhine - a river we studied about in European history countless times. And now, though I stopped over in Germany twice once when I was nine and once this past week, I can really say I've been to Germany because I've walked to it. Anyway, I headed back, tired after so much walking. And I should have been too, considering the three weeks before, I was simply on my bum writing or trying to write papers. On my way back, I passed a bakery with a weird looking cake in the window. I went in and asked what it was. Apparently it's Kougelhopf, a speciality of Alsace. So, I tried one and bought another for my hosts. But sans doubt, the highlight of that first day in Strasbourg was walking up at 2pm and moseying down over to a petit café and enjoying a crepe double fromage sur la terrace. It was really nice to kinda just sit there and observe the street life and the calm French culture. There were so many people on the street - it seemed as if no one was working!

The next day, Friday, I got up real early and rented a bike for a few hours. Because I already walked around Strasbourg so much, I decided to take the bike out to the country and see what the Alsatian paysage is like. I biked through a number of villages whose names I simply cannot pronounce. These include but are not limited to: Weyersheim, Gambsheim, La Wantzenau, and Hoerdt. I got to see a lot of typical Alsatian houses and some very large farms. Each village had a small main street and a very prominent mayor's office, a Mairie. And I didn't expect it, but just as in Spain and Italy, everything shuts down in the towns between the hours of twelve and two. All the while I was bicycling, I was drawing quite a few stares - not that I'm unused to that. But I couldn't decide, this time, if it was because I was, perhaps, the only brown (or even coloured) person in the area or because of my bright orange kurtha. What do you think?

After getting back to the city, I walked around to find a reasonably priced creperie. That's one goal I have for France: to eat crepes everyday. While I didn't find a creperie closeby to the bike shop, I did end up at a cafe. There, I ate a tarte flambée (sans bacon). I guess it's a kind of a flat very thin crusted dough with cream and onions (and other toppings if you so choose). Yay! I tried something else new. Then, I made another resolution: to try a new food/dish everyday. So far, it's been working out. Today, after my hosts' encouragement, I got the courage to buy munster cheese, which, apparently smells like feet (and it did when I first opened it!). I went to a cheese boutique, Le Cloche à Fromage, to get the Alsatian speciality. And with it, I bought a baguette as well! I felt so French! When I got home, Vincent cut the baguette like a true Frenchman and we had the cheese together. Be ye warned, munster should not be eaten alone - only the really French can handle it. After Vincent left for work (evening shift as a waiter) and François left for a family gathering, I melted the cheese on the baguette and it was simply marvelous!

Anyway, I highly recommend you visit Strasbourg and the Alsace area - there are a number of things I didn't mentioned like La Grande Horloge Astrologique, a clock bigger than my dorm room with moving people and an actual staircase, or the Alsatian museum that had two rooms for Jewish exhibits before even World War I. Staying with Vincent and François made the experience all the better - I really got to practice my French seeing as François was not particularly good at English.

Tomorrow morning, I'm taking a train to Paris to have lunch with a family friend and then heading down to Toulouse.

à bientot!

The Markets

Here's an excerpt from my letter to my friend Jordan. I have so much to say about the food & markets of London, but I'll leave this here for now. More to come later.

"I just started six weeks of capoeira classes. It's a lot of intense working out - my legs are so sore. Otherwise, it's a good way to learn about another culture and keep off all the weight I've been gaining. Food in London is simply marvelous. There are so many markets everywhere. Think of the Union Square Farmer's Market and imagine those everywhere in the city and much cheaper. Well, there are two types of markets here: ones for legit London people who live their lives and have families and who aren't as well off. The other markets are more for tourists and hipsters and such. The latter have food stalls from all over the world - it's really great! And the desserts here are superb! And I've started eating cheese. Like, legit cheese, not the Kraft nonsense we have back home. I made a friend in my geography class who works at the Borough Market selling cheese on Saturday. Last week, I bought Terschelling Schapenkaas. This week, I'm eating Fenugreek Schapenkaas (or something). So between the capoeira classes and the markets, I've been doing my fair share of traveling all over the city."

Ramulamma & The Dora's Tools

Disclaimer: I think I'm trying to grapple with ideas and theories that may be too complex for me. Please pardon my lack of proper articulation, but I just had to write about it.

Although I've been thoroughly enjoying London thus far, it's been a few weeks and I've been feeling a little nostalgic. I do miss New York, my family, and my friends. But one thing I don't think I can get in London by myself is my familiar Telugu-New-York-ness. Going home and speaking Telugu, going to the Hindu temple in Flushing, seeing Aunties and Uncles at Indian parties, stuff like that. I don't know how to explain it exactly. I suppose it's a lack of "the usual dose" of "Teluguness" or teluguthanam in my life. I felt the same way when I was in Kerala last January. In fact, now that I think about it, it was probably my first experience in a completely non-Telugu setting. Previously, all my travels were with family or family friends who were all Telugu. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't phone very often and so I don't get to speak Telugu here in London.

Whenever I get that feeling in New York (if I don't go to Queens for a while), I go online and watch a Telugu movie. This time, I decided to watch "Osey Ramulamma", a non-Tollywood Telugu movie. I'll forewarn you: I'm not very good at narrating stories. Set in rural Telangana, the story is about a Dalit girl, Ramulamma, who is raped by the local dora or landowner/vassal. After giving birth to the baby, the dora tries to kill her. She escapes but loses her entire family. She is then taken in by a childless couple in another village. The dora of that village soon discovers her beauty and attempts to rape her. When he approaches her, Ramulamma kills him. She then learns that this dora is the son of the dora who raped her. She is forced to flee and takes up arms with the local Naxal/Maoist group. The rest of the movie is about the dora tries to kill her and how she narrowly escapes every time. Eventually, when she is to be hanged, she manages to kill the dora. However, her hanging was under the auspices of the police, so as soon as she kills him, they arrest her (again) and she is likely to be finally executed.

What struck me most about this film is that it didn't show the typical love story narrative found in Telugu movies. This is, perhaps, a good reason why I still remembered this movie ten years after I first watched it. "Osey Ramulamma" was made in 1997. To my knowledge, movies at the time and even before rarely left the forward caste wealthy perspective. Nowadays, there has been a shift to the urban middle class educated setting as seen in "Happy Days" or "Koncham Ishtam Koncham Kashtam" while still maintaining the forward caste narrative. "Osey Ramulamma" showed struggle on multiple levels: class struggle, caste struggle, and women's struggle. There are multiple references made those three struggles and identities throughout the movie - something you don't always hear in other Telugu movies.

Watching her struggles, all I could think about is Audre Lorde's quote "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." Audre Lorde was a notable black lesbian feminist who challenged the first wave of feminism early on and made great strides in providing alternative radical theory and practice in combatting racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of oppression. She wrote an essay with the title of the quote that criticized a New York University (NYU) conference on women's issues. She argued that ignoring the differences between women is not the way to real change; they need to be acknowledge and tackled. The conference was organized by white women who still adhered racism indirectly (the token inclusion of the black lesbian, etc.) In their attempts to fight for gender equality, they may achieve short term goals, but without the inclusion of all women and accepting the different women be they of color, old, poor, lesbian, trans, disabled, real change cannot be realized.

Perhaps I am taking this quote too literally in my interpretation of "Osey Ramulamma" and perhaps I didn't properly analyse the essay. But as Ramulamma continued to use violence and quite literally the master's tools (the same guns his goondas used), this quote kept running through my head. By using the same tactics as he did, Ramulamma, in her struggle against caste, class, and gender oppression, would perpetuate a system that may not have the same oppressions, but perhaps others. This is, very likely, a realize why people are disillusioned by the Maoist struggle in India right now and why the leftist agenda is cast as a fringe movement. There are inherent weaknesses in the struggle.

CCTV: We are watching you

After realizing how similar London and New York are and discovering that Queen Mary has the newest and only Masters program in Community Organising degree in the entire United Kingdom, I seriously considered the possibility of coming back here and pursuing that degree. It's only one year and half of it is fieldwork, it's significantly cheaper than private education in the states, and I would learn how to deal with and overcome oppression and marginalization in other Western nation-states and governments.

Last semester, while discussing monitoring, policing and security of public space in my Exploring Public Space class, my professor dropped the little tidbit that London is the most watched city in the world. By watched, she meant that there are more security cameras on each Londoner than any other person on earth. While that freaked me out a little bit, I didn't think much of it. Upon my arrival, I noticed a lot of signs that read "CCTV is watching you" or "CCTV in operation for your safety and security." Even then, I didn't pay much heed to them.

My thought on the subject deepened when I was walking along Old River Lea, one of the back water canals of East London. It was a Thursday morning, around 10AM and I was photographing the graffiti by the river. Other than the occasional bicycler passing me by on the path, I was alone. About fifteen to twenty minutes into my walk, a motorboat with two "official looking" men came up the canal. They were sporting yellow vests and had some gadget of sorts. To me, it looked like a camera at the time.

Again, I didn't think much of it. (I need to do more thinking, more often!) I kept walking and taking pictures. Then I noticed that they kept pace with me and whenever I stopped, they did too. It struck me after the third or forth time this happened that they could be from the government. After all, with the number of CCTVs around, I'm sure everyone's activities are easily traceable. Here I was, a brown man walking along the canal taking pictures. In the current political climate, being brown itself is reason enough for suspicion. What if they thought I was planting a bomb in the canal? What if they thought I was trying to sabotage the Olympic stadium? My thoughts jumped to all different directions. Needless to say, I was a little freaked out.

Eventually, I walked to a ramp that connected to a walkway leading back to the regular streets. As I was leaving the path, I realized that these men were probably from the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority (LVRPA) or whatever body that manages the canal system. I saw them interacting with the other LVRPA employees by the walkway. Still, they did follow my movements until I left the canal. Still, there are cameras everywhere. Still, there was the possibility that they could have found me on CCTV and followed me...if they had wanted to.

My point isn't to further expose my over dramatic nature; many of you are familiar with it already. No, perhaps this incident was purely in my head. But that doesn't change the facts that I had mentioned in the last sentences of the previous paragraph. The cameras are everywhere. And a quick look at crime statistics in the United Kingdom shows that it does not experience significantly less crime than other parts of the world. It is, in fact, right up there with the United States. No, I won't cite the statistics because statistics are merely a form of malleable rhetoric; you can do a quick google search if you want to. Baseless security measures such as cameras, gates, and state organised policing have been proven ineffective against preventing crime. In 2003, Setha Low, a professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center-City University of New York (CUNY), clearly proved in her book Behind the Gates that there isn't significantly less crime in gated communities compared to non-gated communities.

However, those are quantative, numerical arguments. I asked my newfound friend, Hannah from Amsterdam, how safe she felt in London. She said she felt safe with the cameras. Then I asked her how safe she felt in London vis-a-vis Amsterdam. Then she said that she felt safer in Amsterdam even though there are far fewer cameras. Why? Because she knew the place. So on an individual level, it's the personal knowledge of the person that helps ensure safety; of course, this is just one of the ways.

We then have some things left to consider: Why all these cameras? Where do the feeds go to? Who watches them and why? What do they do with the information? I, obvsiouly, have my own conspiracy theory-like notions of why. I acknowledge that this account is incomplete in terms of delineating the history of British CCTV and reviewing notable controversies, but I digress. I'll leave you with one of Banksy's most famous works. Google Image "CCTV" and you get this image multiple times.

Photo Credit: Daily Mail, UK

Crossing the Road

Crossing the road has been quite the ordeal here. At first, I couldn't seem to understand why. India has the same "opposite" side driving, and I've gone, on average, every other year of my life. And my sense of right and left is pretty weak. The streets in London are different than anything I've seen before. The street corners are fenced off and you can only walk through a certain opening. They even have painted signs on the ground before the curb "Look Right -->" or "<-- Look Left". Analysing all that, it then struck me that in India, I was looking every which way before crossing the street; you never know what's going to come up at you. Meanwhile, the orderliness in England was allowing me a laxed sense of alertness.

They don't say look both ways before crossing the road for nothing!