India, the land of no-expectations

Hello far-away neighbors and friends.

I have just returned from a lovely weekend getaway to Jaipur, India's desert-city capital. My rooomate/friend and I went there to visit some of our old Hindi teachers and do a bit of shopping. We did just that--and thoroughly enjoyed our sumptuous hotel room to boot (it was certainly the nicest place I've stayed in India). I am thinking about escaping back there one weekend later in June or July for an intensive writing retreat--my NSF grant is due early August, so I will have to buckle down and set the research aside for a bit. What better place to do it than a beautiful hotel room overlooking a courtyard with a fountain for only $30 a night?

Our return to Delhi was a bit overshadowed by an unexpected visit from my roommate's landlord, who came to inform her that I MAY have to leave when she does in early June. i had been planning to stay on in this apartment and have already installed an air cooler and paid for internet...so now I am feeling at loose ends. This incident made me realize how much of my 'feeling okay' about my routine in Delhi was dependent upon the fact that I have a nice place to come home to in the evening, in a neighborhood I know. Finding another place is going to be a bit of a trick because most renters don't want to rent for only a couple of months, but most hotels are too expensive to stay in for so long. I have made several contacts about furnished apartments but they are all in south Delhi (I am now in north Delhi and like it here very much).

I am trying to remind myself that things work out here, even if not in the way one expects--take the research assistant, for example. the first one fell through, but the one I have now seems much better. I'm hoping the same will be true of the apartment.

Otherwise, things are chugging along as before. I interviewed my first patients on Friday, and that went very well. I will meet a doctor this morning and interview more patients this evening. One particularly intriguing pattern that is already emerging is women's tendency to talk about "tension" (they actually insert the English word when speaking in Hindi). This seems to be an idiom for a full range of mental health problems, but people don't differentiate it much beyond that (perhaps because poor mental health is still stigmatized here?). It's interesting also because almost all the women I've interviewed so far have stated that "tension" is a cause of diabetes. This tells me that locally, even if people don't have much familiarity with the medical side of diabetes, there appears to be a widespread understanding that there is a mental health component to diabetes. More to come on that.

Love to you all!!