Rethinking love, life and philosophy in jogja

1. Roline in her previous post mentioned about being late in writing her blog. I am clearly displacing her from that position.

2. Landed in Delhi on 14th. After attending a wedding and meeting a close friend in two different cities, reaching Delhi seemed like a homecoming.

3. One of the main reasons (probably the only one) in delaying this entry was the hope that with passage of time I should say something remarkably profound. I would not commit the mistake of promising that the following paragraphs will reveal something extraordinary, but I do hope that it reveals something familiar.

3. To reflect and write about events passed also gives an opportunity to give newer meanings to these events. I remember my first day in the wisma hotel, Yogyakarta. My encounter with my roommate from Uganda - Sam (also known as uncle Sam). I had also assumed that every white person in the lobby was a participant from Netherlands and ended up wishing them luck for the football finals!

4. Which brings me to the essence of this summer-school - rethinking, rethinking, rethinking. Discussions about prejudices held about the Dutch, Indians, Ugandans and Indonesians revealed how misplaced commonly held perceptions were. The issue of identity was brought home when we were asked to imagine if we were born again who would we want to be. It was indeed a disturbing and enlightening question - revealing how privileges were distributed geographically, and in terms of class, religion, race and time.

5. To be honest in my limited life span the most I have thought about India was in indonesia. Faced with a volley of questions on the concept of arranged marriages, caste, secularism, usage of drugs, bollywood, I was exposed to my level of ignorance on many topics! Time to rethink...

To be continued

Bipin