What are words worth?

It's a weekend, and so the burden to think and write academically is off--or is it? Some might say the very act of writing is academic; it involves a three-step (at least) translation, from thought to word to type, mixed up with processes of selection, analysis and synthesis, creating or inviting meaning by placing certain sounds, pauses and images in specific order. No matter. Here I am, on a Sunday morning, looking out from my small rectangular windows on to a quiet Somerville street. Cars wait attentively in driveways, while cellphone-toting walkers are being energetic in activewear, and the stone-walled church at the end of the street waits for the faithful to break their weekend fast to seek prayer and peace. Now I hear the strains of the choir waft down my way: a pleasant opening to the day. I have cleaned up my small apartment, done my morning stretches, listened to the news on public television, had a granola cereal breakfast, and feel virtuously productive, having e...

"So...what do you work on?" "What's your area of research?" "What do you do?" And there's a pause, a wait, barely a few milliseconds, for me to gather the disparate threads of what makes my academic self, and compose an answer that sounds suitably confident and meaningful. I usually end up saying something that I want almost immediately to qualify, to explain, to fill out, to extend, and even, to retract. But the opportunity for introduction has passed, and I am left having painted myself into a corner with a phrase that lacks substance, is incomplete, vague. My answers are either too broad, or too specific, and either way, fail to capture the questions that drive my curiosity and interest. More often than not, a more fitting answer for that specific context shapes itself in my head many minutes after that opening (and limiting) question, and I kick myself, wishing the words had made the cut sooner. Trouble is, my questions are in fact a...

Public Art on the Rose Kennedy Greenway, Downtown Boston I feel like I've reached this point huffing and puffing, having made my commitment to the long haul and put in my two cents' (calories? bytes?) worth at irregular intervals. When I started, the idea was to hone a discipline of writing, something, anything, and maybe find a critical audience for it. My stats show that in no year did I reach my desired target of one post a week. The past week has made up for it somewhat, I guess. So I'm patting myself on the back (stretch, stretch) for reaching my one-hundredth blog post. Now that I have marked that milestone I guess I can get on with the actual act of writing the wisdom gained in the spaces of my everyday--yes? My friend and I sit here with our cooling cups of coffee, touched by the breeze of a late Massachusetts summer morning, inquiring after each other's quality of sleep and the recurrent ache in our bones; we come to the gentle realization that we...

It's not a new thing but being old doesn't make it any less interesting for me. Or, I suspect, for any of us who are faced with navigating new situations and places without a compass or rule book, when we slowly gain access to a mostly invisible set of codes and conventions, such as looking to the left first instead of right while crossing a road, or having your choices in place before reaching the counter to place an order at Chipotle's. The newcomer sticks out, with her immersion in Google Maps and the hard-to-disguise lost look as she stops tentatively in front of impassive unmarked buildings which solidly refuse to yield either name or number, assuming that knowledge on the part of every passer by. The sense of first-time-ness is actually quite wonderful, when you are captivated by the largeness of the trees and the cleanness of their leaves, or the clarity with which the skyline marks itself against a blue sky that seems so much brighter than the expanse above...

So it begins. I walk my way to the unmarked bus stop on Melrose's Main Street and get on the bus that swings, so quietly, to the edge of the curb. I find an empty seat--spoiled for choice--and train my eyes on the moving peri-urban scenery, aware of the tiny cramp of anxiety lodged somewhere in my gut. All of this is so familiar, yet so strange, as if I am suspended in some space not home and not outside, neither ghare nor bhaire .  The bus smooths its way to the Orange Line train stop, my first encounter with the T, and I feign confidence as I walk through the turnstile and slap my borrowed Charlie on the sensor pad. The train, like its predecessor,slides into the station and again, I find a seat opposite a woman who looks more like the academic I am than I do. She is buried in a freshly minted typescript--the paper I should have written--with pen appropriately poised. I find my way into the book I've been reading and dissolve into anonymity. At least until the tra...

It's the 15th of August, and Independence Day in India has already waned, while my morning in Boston has just begun: a cup of coffee downed and a sunrise watched, a few pages of a novel read and a wondering set in motion. Wondering about what?-- one might ask. Lila, in Book Three of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet, says, almost bitterly, "Each of us narrates our life as it suits us." And I think, yes, planning is often done as a "prospectively retrospective" exercise, if you know what I mean. Here I am, my first morning on what is supposed to be an academic adventure, wondering how I need to plan my time so that at the end of my four-and-a-half months I feel validated, that my family and colleagues will recognize that it has been time well spent, time that justifies my absence from the consuming routine of home and semester. The subtext here is: how to deal with the niggling sense of guilt of being away from my regular "duty". I'...