parotechnics

It had always been my dream to go to Egypt. Perhaps not unlike other people my age, as a kid I devoured factual books from the library. The idea of improving yourself was intimately tied to the the acquistion of "general knowledge" - and there was even a sense of classical romance tied to it. Before there was the world wide web and post-modernism, the things you could know about the world and about history seemed finite. If you could master this store of information, then indeed you could be the master of the universe - like the smart South Indian nerdy boys who were in Bournvita Quiz Contest and who would later clear the IIT-JEE or well, maybe jump straight to MIT (there was one such child wonder in my school, wonder what sort of life he's having now in this time of infinite perspectives, sigh). So it was that us pre-globalisation kids read along with our Riverdale High and ACKs, Tell Me Why, Wonders of the World and all other manner of encyclopaedically minded books. Wh...

I was lucky in the way that I went to Cairo - it was for a conference/workshop -which for once was genuinely stimulating. I met old friends after a while - Kamran from Austin via Karachi, Svati from New York but who's spent some time in Bombay where I first met her; and made some new ones whose work I really liked and with whom I had many rich conversations - while floating down the Nile and walking around the city. It was the gentlest, loveliest time. At a more pragmatic level, the fact that Kamran had done his fieldwork in Cairo helped a lot and insulated us from the usual despair of tourists at being constantly cheated, lost, confused, feeling that they're missing the main point somehow. And he is game for anything and makes everything so much fun. So a bunch of us would follow Kamran around, seeing the sites. For me this was so unusual because I usually travel alone - and this year this is my third trip when I've been with other people - people I liked - and I had a gre...