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Reaching Anthropology or how I chose a risky endeavor!
Many people have asked me ‘why on earth should you change your discipline from English literature to Anthropology?’ To put it pithily I have come to love what I am doing and I have been trying to build a ‘career capital’ which should enable me to continue to do so. Not that I have been…
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Doing Anthropology During Covid19
It is useful, as an intellectual exercise, to gauge the effectiveness of methods and processes you are employing while you are doing Anthropology. This is something supervisors constantly encourage their students to undertake while they are in the field and while they are writing up. This helps to understand the strengths and weaknesses of one’s…
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Canadian Trajectories of Kerala Studies: Interview with Robin Jeffrey
‘One evening in December 1967, I travelled from Makara in Coorg to the Kerala side of the ghats. I still remember passing over the ghats and seeing all those red flags fluttering on the Kerala side of the border. E.M.S. had formed the United Front government earlier that year. This image fascinated me then. I…
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Staying ‘Alive’ with PhD: Thinking Back to Where You Started it all
Have you ever thought how you ended up with your particular thesis topic? Some of you will have your thesis topic handed to you by a supervisor, but many will have chosen a path deliberately. A few of us might have developed a craving during the childhood, prompted by listening to certain stories or reading certain comics or tourist guide books. For some of…
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Books have memories, and they certainly do!
In 2008, while I was walking with my friends through the alleyways of Calicut town, where sellers of used-books occupied the verandas of Sunday-closed shops, I picked up Katharine Graham’s Personal History for 40 rupees. Such book-hunting, or rather spending time with my friends to converse and learn English was a normal affair during Sundays…
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How I Decided on iPhone for PhD Fieldwork
Even before heading out for the fieldwork, I feel I have implanted my virtual self there. This happens through my anxious preparations for proposal presentation, drafting ethics application, submitting forms for travel approval and much more. Have you felt the same? Apart from all such anxieties, one of the confusions I have been fiddling with…
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When I met Dostoyevsky
I have wandered the streets, nooks and corners and alleys of Saint Petersburg with Raskolnikov. I have felt tremors and numbness in my legs when I had to accompany him to the old-lady’s room. I have often got entangled in the arguments of Mitya, Vanya and Alyosha and lost in thoughts. But how I met…
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A JNU Student On Why The Politics On Campus Needs To Change
In the long march to revolution, slogans and rhetoric must be youthful accompaniments. But when it happens within the four walls of the universities, one assumes, that it must have far greater implications. One is usually thrilled to be part of such a crowd in the campuses, in processions, protests and dharnas. The energy that fills…
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OF HOUSING, JOBS AND EVERYDAY COMMUNALISM
On the evening of 21 February, 2015 I and my friend walked through the narrow lines of Vasant Kunj, New Delhi looking for an accommodation for him. On both sides of narrow roads, three-storied buildings blocked sun rays reaching the ground. Here and there scrapheap assaulted our nostrils and a flock of bees and mosquitoes…
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P.C. Saidalavi 