Final post: What have I learned?

Incredibly, I will be leaving India in two days. That's okay, though, because I think I have reached my naan saturation point.

Results of fieldwork:

Big take-home insight #1: Ambivalence regarding minority politics

I'm very torn about the Gorkha movement, as I am about all the minority-language-group struggles I have been researching. On one hand, if the society around you has defined you in terms of your ethnicity, and discriminates against you on that basis, it seems entirely within your rights to resist that. And if the society around you is full of negative stereotypes about this category that they put you into, it seems natural and warranted that you would want to counter that with a movement highlighting what is good about your ethnicity.

I feel sympathy with these movements because the status quo is so unfair.

Then they go and run around burning the cars of the sons of the people who disagree with them.

So I guess I also feel ethnic identities are ultimately dead ends as a means to build a society. There is not enough room for flexibility and generosity of spirit. All the movements I have looked at always end up being kind of fascist internally and racist externally.

Big take-home insight #2: Lonely Plant is wrong about fare negotiations

Both the Lonely Planet and the Rough Guide I have consulted during my time in India advise you to always negotiate cab and rickshaw fares in advance. This is nonsense.

Remember your basic game theory: at the end of the ride, you are already where you want to go. The driver can either take the fare you offer or get nothing. The bargaining power is on your side.

Therefore, you should NEVER make any attempt to negotiate the fare before the ride. Just get in, stay quiet, and pay what you want at the end of the ride.

I've had tremendous luck with this. If the driver protests and won't take the fare, you set it the money on the dashboard and walk away. (Best to get out of the vehicle before offering the fare). As I've become more bold, I've stopped being bothered when the driver tries to hold initial negotations. Sample dialogue:

Me: "Can you take me to [x place, a measly 20 rupees worth of distance away]?"

Rickshaw driver: "100 Rupees."

Me: "No." [climb into rickshaw and sit down]

Rickshaw driver: "90 Rupees." [climbs into rickshaw and starts engine -- major tactical mistake on his part]

Me: "No."

[Rickshaw driver shrugs, begins to drive. When we arrive at destination, I offer the entirely reasonable 20 rupees and we go our separate ways. This has worked thus far.]

I always offer a reasonable fare. If I were a true economist I would try to offer nothing and see if I could get away with it. But, as you know, economics, the term for which is derived from the Greek for "if I had channeled my mathematical acumen into computer science I'd be a zillionaire by now", is a discipline full of small and bitter people.

My whole plan is, of course, subject to the caveats that (1) you don't want to do this in some dark and deserted place. Fortunately, in India it is never deserted. And (2) you don't want to be so grossly unfair as to bring the wrath of the crowd upon you. But no rickshaw driver is going to run after you on the grounds that you only paid him the normal price, rather than the grossly inflated white person price. And the law isn't on their side because they're supposed to be running the meter and because Indian policemen loath Indians.

Also, you have to have the correct change with you and you have to know the appropriate fare for the place you are going. The latter doesn't take too long to get figured out. But getting change in India is really difficult. I mean, heaven help you if you've just been to the ATM and all you have are 500 rupee bills (~$12). Those you can really only use at a bustling establishment, like a McDonald's or a store being run by Sikhs or Marwaris (they're like the Jews/Chinese people/Lebanese of South Asia). Maybe Gujaratis. But, in general, no one ever has change.

Liet motif of time in India: Poor people's fundamental problem = not enough money.

Big take-home insight #3: India’s identity crisis and the limits of my ability to understand this place

If you want to say something about what India ought to do or what's going to happen to here, you can't get all that far before you have to discuss Hinduism. Because not only are about 80% of the people self-described as Hindus, but also because many of the customs associated with Hinduism—caste in particular—are put in practice by non-Hindus: Muslims, Christians, etc.

But Hinduism is a really hard subject even for Indians. For one thing, Hinduism is really internally diverse, and there is a very politically-loaded debate about what being Hindu actually entails.

As far as I can tell, there is a correlation between education, income, and ambivalence about Hinduism and, by extension, Indian history.

I have to mention this ad for Maruti cars (one of two Indian car companies, though now partially owned by Suzuki) about which I could write an entire dissertation. It is the most amazing ad for displaying the ambivalence of upwardly-mobile Indians about India. The slogan is “India comes home in a Maruti-Suzuki” and the commercial is a montage of homecomings (in Maruti Suzukis) against a sentimental song about love of India.

But all the images imply this profound uncertainty about what the customer is supposed to like about India. Is India terrific because it is a rising world power, becoming richer, more modern, and considerably-more-Westernized than many of its post-colonial peers? That is, is India terrific because it is changing? Or was India always a pretty terrific place? Can both of those things be true?

The closing image of the ad, for example, is of a boy (in Western clothes and backpack) hitchhiking with a sign that says “Need to be home for Diwali.” In English. In the background, slightly out of focus, you see the old, rickety bus that he was taking, broken down by the side of the road, with Indian men in traditional garb milling about, unloading some of the baggage. Then a new Maruti-Suzuki pulls up and picks up the boy.

So, the protagonists in the image are these comfortable, middle-class Westernized Indians who hitchhike in English. Yet, this boy, on his way home from the college where he is learning terribly modern stuff, is intent on celebrating a traditional holiday. And a sort of stereotypical, dysfunctional, poor India is there in the background—looking kind of picturesque, actually—but is easily transcended thanks to Maruti-Suzuki.

Indian politics has a lot of references to this ambivalence.

For one thing, India had a famously secular set of founding fathers in the Indian National Congress and the Indian communist parties. They tended to be socialists and Marxists, so many of them were pretty skeptical about God, let alone religion. For that secular founding generation, India’s lessons for the rest of the world were evidenced by its leadership in self-determination of colonized people, the Gandhian model of non-violent political struggle, and non-alignment in the wars of the capitalist, Western powers.

To people who are Hindu fundamentalists, though, the Indian founders' secularism was basically hostility toward Hinduism. It is the case that the Indian constitution and legal code ban certain aspects of what-was-once-considered-Hindu culture, like untouchability. And, over time, socialism, secularism, Gandhian political practice, and non-alignment have all become a lot less popular in India. And there is the uncomfortable fact that the secularists’ version of why-India-is-a-really-awesome-place didn’t have very much to say about India prior to colonization.

There is also a history running back to colonial times where lefty, secularist Indian intellectuals respond to Western critiques of Hinduism by drawing attention to the aspects of Hinduism that look really good according to Western lefty, secularist standards and, particularly, the aspects that seem even better than old-timey Western traditions. For example, the tradition of renunciation of the material world is cited as demonstrating that this is a culture that is less grasping and economically exploitative than the Protestant-work-ethic-of-the-British-and-other-white-folk. A more contemporary example: the worship of goddesses can be cited as proof that Hinduism has better feminist bona fides than the West, female infanticide not withstanding.

In these treatments, aspects of Hindu culture that don't appeal to Westerners are often blamed on foreign influence. People argue the British made the caste system oppressive, whereas previously it was quite fluid, or that the Muslims are the ones that screwed up gender relations.

Yet, even if there is scholarly support for a reading of Hinduism that is not caste-discriminatory, is more gender equal, less racist, etc., the fact is that for millions of Hindus who practice now, those objectionable-to-Westerners aspects of Hinduism are part of their beliefs. I definitely don't have the expertise to say which interpretations of Hinduism are most consistent with the various texts and so on. But it does often seem that traditions and texts are being culled for whatever figures and traditions look right according to outsiders. Finding an "indigenous progressive tradition" is a little oxymoronic if you go looking for that tradition based on a foreign definition of "progressive".

The most prominent political defense of Hinduism against political secularists is Hindutva, often called Hindu fundamentalism; the movement developed as a response to Christian missionaries. But Hindutva, too, is often transparently over-compensating in its attempts to present itself as valuable according to outsiders’ standards. The most extreme example I know is the claim that the Vedas contain the secrets of quantum physics and nuclear weapons.

Basically, I think Hindutva still contains a lot of culling of Hinduism according to what will make India seem more impressive to foreigners, but with a unique take on what outsiders allegedly find inferior in Hinduism. Whereas India's founding fathers were very concerned with the negative views of caste, for example, Hindutva is quite concerned by the view, which the Muslim Mughal kings and the British colonialists shared, that Hinduism isn't very manly. So Hindutva is really hostile to a lot of the androgeny in Hindu tradition, and plays up the myths and traditions that surround men and military conquest. Not to mention the claim that Hindus have always secretly known how to make WMDs.

Now, it is possible that I am overstating the extent to which debates about Indian culture and Hinduism are shaped by defensiveness against Western standards; that could be a function of my own prejudices and tendency to overstate the importance of the West. If one believes, for example, that there is something inherently sensible about the equality of all humans then maybe the secularists’ rejection of caste doesn’t have to be categorized as Western-informed. But Indians do talk a lot about this problem of being seen as inferior.

Here, I have to mention my other favorite part of the Maruti Suzuki ad, at the risk of belaboring the point. An older gentleman is waiting impatiently outside his beautiful house, which is a sort of sleek, Nordic design, the sort of house Ikea would sell, if it sold houses. His wife stands nervously in the background. His grown-up daughter arrives (in a Maruti Suzuki), looking a bit sheepish. Then, out of the driver’s side of the car emerges a young man, who walks up to Dad, smiles and holds an arm out to shake hands. (NB: he offers a handshake. He does not fold his hands and make a little bow). Mom and Dad are immediately excited to see their daughter has brought home a future son-in-law, and all delay (which was definitely not any fault of the reliable yet affordable Maruti Suzuki) is forgiven.

The most notable thing about this young man is that he is wearing a Sikh turban. The Dad is not. Maybe the family isn’t Sikh. Or maybe their daughter has actually found someone to marry who is more devout than her parents. The marriage is thoroughly modern: it clearly wasn’t arranged, their daughter is apparently off living her own self-actualized life. Her beau is obviously Westernized, what with the handshake and the button down shirt he is wearing. And, yet, he’s completely at home in Indian tradition and, in fact, maybe even better able to integrate it into his identity than the future-in-laws.

Such is the promise of the future generations of India, which will be both more and less Indian than their parents. While still driving Maruti Suzukis.

Now, this is where it gets really weird for me:

I think that the process of trying to justify Hinduism and Indian culture to outsiders is demeaning and not necessarily helpful to India's national project.

But I'm not a cultural relativist. So I pretty much share the view that the good points of Indian society are the ones that look good by my lights (pro-female, universal equality of people, acceptance of homosexuality, etc.). And my wishes for India subscribe pretty much entirely to a Western leftist's teleology: get rid of arranged marriages, castes, excessive use of cardamom in desserts, and so on.

I don't think, as an outsider, I could ever develop a critique or view of Indian society that was more informed by its internal truths than by me trying to find my own values within Hinduism and other Indian traditions. I can’t pretend Indian society doesn’t seem really screwed up to me, but I also believe the conversation about this alleged screwed-up-ness is one to which I can't contribute very much, if at all.

Which, in turn, does make me think my ability to ever recommend or predict where India is concerned is pretty limited.

But I already have my whole second book—about this Maruti-Suzuki commercial—mapped out. So that should get me through to tenure.

In conclusion...

I have met one big goal with this fieldwork: I had no hypothesis about why some language groups get states and others don't when I arrived here. And now I have some hypotheses, which I think I can clarify and test. And I know a lot more stuff about India.

I've also become not-too-bad at cutting my own hair, had a chance to live with my younger sister again, and had fun writing this blog. So thanks for reading it.

xox
B (soon to be not in India)

A car being burnt outside my window

Yesterday, someone in the crowd at one of the GJM's rallies was shot while protesting outside the house of a leader of the recently-deposed GNLF. That man's house and two cars were burned, and other GNLF-connected people also had their houses or stores damaged. I'm not clear on whose car I saw being burned. But, so far as I know, there were no people attacked.

A little visual meditation on the nature of the Indian state: Note the position of the police as the crowd rolls the car to where they are going to burn it.


Compared to what this area has been through in the past, this was really a pretty contained and limited episode of political violence. It was definitely obvious that (1) these guys were very knowledgeable about the safest and most effective way to burn a car. They had crowd control going and everything. And (2) the spectators were all quite calm -- there weren't even shouts of encouragement or solidarity, actually. They definitely seemed more like observers than participants.

And today things were very calm. The stores were open, the car removed from the road, the rallies back on.

Oof... I'll write something more complete about my take on the Gorkhaland movement later.

I actually only have 12 more days in India. I'm already supposing that I'll have to make a return trip, so I don't feel too panicked to finish things up. Nonetheless, it did sneak up on me.

As compelling a reason for a separate state as any

Darjeeling really isn't much like the rest of India. For one thing, its not flat, hot, or particularly crowded. And there is much less rice, lots more noodles. Also, they tend not to use milk in their tea. (There is also supposedly some stuff about separate cultural identities and unique historical civilizations or blah blah whatever that my interviewees are always going on about.) But a REALLY important difference, and one that I am uniquely well-qualified to measure, is the region's surprisingly advanced cuteness technology.

This was first evident in the glorious array of umbrellas on daily display.


Then there is the broad deployment of pint-sized uniforms.

And, for another thing, the better weather and quieter streets mean that people walk their kids about in public quite a bit. There are even pony rides! Another impact of the weather seems to be that the town's indigenous cuteness production is oriented toward knitting children's clothing (note the pink striped sweater on the left in the pony-ride picture and the blue cap in the shot below).

Finally, many people keep pet dogs here, and those are pretty rare in the rest of India. Doma is the puppy who lives at my guest house. (Up close, she kind of has the face of the dog who guards the Labyrinth, from the David Bowie movie).

You may recall that in an earlier post I put forward a rough unified field theory of the commercial-availability of cuteness. In which the critical explanatory variable for high levels of cuteness technology was low birth rates. WELL: as previously hypothesized, Darjeeling is, in fact, near the replacement rate with total fertility of 2.1 children per woman, based on the 2001 census. This is well below the rate for the state (2.6) and far below India's national fertility rate of 3.2 children/woman, which, as we have seen, dooms much of plains India to its shocking lack of appreciation of stuffed penguins.

Albert has voted that we remain in Darjeeling for the balance of the trip.

The Indian Idol ripple effects continue

When last I was in Darjeeling (November 2007), the Gorkha Janmurti Morcha (GJM), led by a firm supporter of Indian Idol winner and ethnic Gorkha Pradan Tamang, was trying to unseat the incumbent Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF), led by an old-timey guy who probably secretly misses the days of radio.

Fast-forward to July 2008, and the GNLF and its unhip leader have been forced to step off the political scene. And the GJM is now leading the charge for the creation of a Gorkha state. Technically, Darjeeling is in the midst of an "indefinite" strike, but this week is a "relaxation" of the strike, so things can go along as before. (What, you feel like that's fundamentally a contradiction of the concept of a strike? Well, mister, there is no place for your Western-centric purist notion of political tactics here in India. You probably think that a "relay" fast-unto-"death" doesn't make any sense, either.)

The GJM flag is up everywhere now, and there have been rallies held regularly to keep people focused on the cause.

The GJM presents a certain normative tension, something that strikes me when I read about many different mass movements. It is clear that many, probably most, people here are passionately in favor of the GJM and its cause. But despite and even because of that genunine popularity, there is clearly a lot of pressure to conform. There is a wing of the GJM for almost any identity you can think of: women, youth, students, truck drivers, private school teachers, hotel owners-- even a wing for non-Gorkhas. Other political parties are essentially non-existent, and anti-GJM posters are immediately torn down. The group is starting to enforce social reforms, like cracking down on alcohol use. The GJM is quite tactically focused on strikes and road blockades, so it issues all kinds of directives about when people can and can't work and travel.

It's probably true that if these measures were put to a vote they'd prove overwhelmingly popular. But it's also true these measures are being unilaterally announced by a small group of people who've never even run in an election. From one point of view, this all looks like a cynical strategy by the GJM leadership to remove any potential opposition, and from another point of view it is a spontaneous, grassroots development that is essentially democratic.

Today's illustration: the private school students' march!

Schools are actually on summer break, but about 500 students turned out this morning - running the gamut from age 9ish to 16ish. They were all in their uniforms and organized in pairs, the girls first, then the boys, lined up in the town square by school. Then a GJM leader said a few words and they proceeded on a little march through town.

My first thought was that this was the most adorable political protest I'd ever seen. It was a veritable sea of pigtails and pleated skirts. And, maybe I'm just getting pervy as I get older, but I think I would have had quite a bit more trouble concentrating in middle school if all the boys had been required to wear those cute ties, not to mention properly tailored pants. They looked so dapper!

There was nothing particularly menacing about the gathering, either. For one thing, it looked like a good way to correct one of the problems of summer, which is that you don't necessarily have all your friends together in one place as often as you might like. Second, attrition from the march-through-town was already starting within the first few blocks--I'm not sure they could have kept things going much beyond the first internet cafe they passed. Third, the kids were supremely undisciplined with the call-and-response they were supposed to be doing as they marched. I've seen a number of these GJM marches now, and about every 40 people or so there is supposed to be someone who shouts things like "We want Gorkhaland!" and then the crowd around answers "Gorkhaland! Gorkhaland!". And variations ensue. There are always some people walking fairly far away from any "caller" who aren't really shouting. And if one of the callers is uninspiring or stops shouting, that can result in a gap of about 40-50 people in the line who are just strolling along.

Well, with the kids, a few teachers had selected the right kid for the "call" part of the job -- someone popular but also loud. But most of the students put in the "call" role were blushing and muttering instead of shouting out their lines. And, I'm sorry to say it, but there was not a single girl in a "call" role who was doing an adequate job, and most were very giggly. Perhaps the neckties do have excessive swoon inducing properties.

So, this morning I was thinking the whole thing was pretty amusing and harmless, not too National Socialist Party Youth or anything, despite the uniforms. But then in the paper today there is a story about a teacher getting fired because his students told that parents that he had criticized the idea of Gorkhaland in class.

Young people engaged with the democratic process or totalitarians in knee socks? Can anyone really know?

Also, I think my book of Sudoko puzzles is a give away

Hello from Siliguri! Crossroads of Northeast India and jumping-off point for Darjeeling, if they ever stop with their strikes

I’m going to write more about this town in a future post. It is a challenging place to describe. But I wanted to mention something super exciting: BOTH of my first two contacts here mentioned that I might be put under surveillance by the government while I am here!! Because this is a border area and the strikes are still on in Darjeeling (north of here) and they try to keep tabs on all foreigners in the area. Plus, it wouldn’t be too hard to follow me – I am the only white person in town, my residence is registered at the police station, and rickshaws trail me on the street as it is, hoping I’ll change my mind about walking.

Still, I believe that when certain facts inevitably come to public view, they will give me away as someone who is definitely not an international woman of mystery.
1. I have a really lame phone. Seriously, the Vodaphone guys were shocked by it – they didn’t say this to me directly but I know “purana” means “old” in Hindi.
2. I’ve been reading the Bourne Identity. I figure real cloak-and-dagger types probably get annoyed by all the inaccuracies in popular culture depictions of deep cover operations.
3. I checked my luggage on the flight here. Not conducive to quick get-aways.
4. I have a blog.

In limbo

Harrumph! I'm stuck in Kolkata, again. Last fall I got stuck here for a day when I missed my flight because of general strikes against the West Bengal government (http://tinyurl.com/2rrnph); a week or so ago I had an unplanned two-day reprieve from research when the West Bengal government called a general strike against the central government and then the opposition called an "us too" general strike against the central government for the following day (http://tinyurl.com/5aavry); and now I'm stuck here because I missed my flight to Darjeeling. Because the Darjeeling-statehood party called a general strike and asked all tourists to evacuate, then relaxed their stance a bit, at which point the anti-Darjeeling-statehood party called a counter-strike (http://tiny.cc/ODl92).

I feel West Bengal is like a little bit of Latin America in India. Full of anachronistic leftism, overzealous civil disobedience, and totally loony, paranoid anti-Americanism. (I don't mind anti-Americanism, as long as it isn't too UFOs-and-second-gunman-esque. Saturday's interview was all about the Darjeeling agitation is a US plot meant to destroy the otherwise vibrant Indian communist movement and slow the global revolution of the proletariat. I think my Indian Idol theory is better).

The increased urgency of the Darjeeling statehood movement over these past few weeks is generally good for my dissertation -- more to observe. And I really appreciate that everyone here is working hard to make my topic policy-relevant. But it raises problems for me when they get over-enthusiastic and limit my ability to do my research. The general strike is not -- I don't think -- all that dangerous. But, while it's still being strictly observed, it isn't possible to rent a room in Darjeeling, move around, get food, etc. And, the reporters I've been conferring with me tell me, political leaders are keeping a low profile and won't give interviews during the strike.

Actually, that is something I didn't realize: the political parties are technically supposed to be inactive during general strikes, too. If a political party uses cars or keeps its office open during their own general strike, an accusatory article appears in the paper. This is surprising to me because, in my mind, (a) general strikes are inherently political - the one thing they are definitely not is a day off from politics and (b) general strikes are supposed to pressure the government by causing economic losses and inconveniences. But since political parties don't make anything or facilitate anything, what's so intimidating about them not working? The opposition strikes fear into the heart of the government by taking a day off?

The rest of India thinks Bengalis are lazy. I think they've probably just been enervated by sixty years of excessive general strikes.

Hello? Hello?

I have often wondered why I decided I would do fieldwork, knowing that I don’t particularly like talking to strangers. But, now that I’m in West Bengal, trying to interview people in a place where I don’t have many contacts, I am realizing that there is an aspect to fieldwork I dislike even more than talking to strangers: talking to people on the phone.

My best college friend, Michelle from LA, could tell you about how little I like the phone. About how, when we were in college, I would go weeks without checking my voicemail. And about how I still sometimes do that. And about my tendency to not return calls for a long time even after I listen to my messages. And how my phone goes unanswered a suspiciously large percentage of the time. Large enough that, if you didn’t know me, you might start to suspect I was sitting by the phone and letting calls go to voicemail, just because I didn’t want to use the phone. But, since Michelle does know me, she is certain that is what I’m doing.

Now, I’m stuck here making tens of phone calls per day trying to get interviews. I just hate it.

First, there are all kinds of technical oddities with Indian phones—I can’t possibly get into it here, seeing as how the capacity of the internet is finite, but in India you have to dial the numbers differently for cell phones, land lines, long distance land lines, and long distance cell phones. And it has taken ages to master that. And, for whatever reasons, even properly dialed calls get dropped about 25% of the time.

Oh, also, West Bengal has no government phone directly. Full stop. There literally isn’t one, in print or online. In fact, the government of West Bengal website does not list even a single phone number. And, also, so far as I can tell, if you do call the West Bengal seat of government, there is no operator to help you if you don’t know somebody’s extension. The one time I’d like to speak to a person!

When I finally get someone on the line… Well, the next thing I hate is that nobody identifies their office when they pick up the phone. As in “Hello, this is the office of Mr. Singh.” Instead, they just say “Hello” or “Namaskar” or sometimes just “Ji?”—which is a polite form of “yes?” but still seems terribly abrupt to me. I mostly have the rhythm of asking whether I am speaking to such and such an office down, but initially it really threw me. And it is still bad when I’m being transferred. As in:

Me: “May I speak to Mr. Singh?”

Unidentified Voice #1: “Just a moment”

Unidentified Voice #2: “Hello?”

Now, at this point: how am I supposed to know if I’m speaking to Mr. Singh’s secretary or to the man himself? Because, it has gone both ways on me. Which means I’ve talked to secretaries and inappropriately used the second person and to politicians and inappropriately used the third person. I wouldn’t be quite as self-conscious about this were it not for the low quality phone connections. Which mean that when I get someone on the line I antagonize them for the first minute by shouting back and forth about whether we can hear each other. And then I antagonize them by not really having any idea who I’m speaking to. And I go on to antagonize them by not being able to understand about 40% of what they are saying. It doesn’t make me feel confident about asking for favors.

I get two kinds of “no’s” and I’m not sure which one I dislike more. People who have actually said “no” have been, frankly, kind of mean about it. I particularly dislike when someone posts their direct number online and then has this whole “how dare you waste my time?” attitude when I call that number. Because, listen buddy: I know you’re important. I don’t expect you to take your own phone calls. But how am I supposed to know that you’re using some perverse logic wherein your listed numbers are the ones you don’t want people to call?

The other kind of “no” is the handle-my-call-like-a-hot-potato between assistants. With transferring and retransferring, and “why don’t you call back” at this time or on this date. And I don’t really expect people to call me when they say they will, although I can’t help being a little hopeful when they give an actual time and date when they are going to call. Why do people have to embellish when they blow me off? It’s just mean.

What is totally mysterious to me, though, is trying to figure out when “yes” means “no”. In particular, the people who promise to get me meetings with or phone numbers of important people and then disappear. I think it is pretty common to have someone make a promise he does not intend to keep in order to avoid saying “no.” But why would you promise things above and beyond what I even requested? I guess it is about wanting to appear cool. Like telling the other 10^th graders that you have a girlfriend from summer camp...

Which reminds me: once, when I was in 6^th grade, I hung up the phone on someone who had called to ask if I wanted to go out with his friend, Carson. I thought it was a prank and they were making fun of me. It was only in the last few years that it occurred to me that they might have been serious and that, in that case, I may have been a wee bit harsh in my rejection. I believe that my current troubles probably relate to the bad karma I accrued from that early phone misadventure.

When I get back, I think I will get a Blackberry. Then I can enjoy the illusion that I don’t own a phone at all. Evil, evil machines.