The Cramps of Writing

The last that I wrote was in July documenting facts of my illness. After that life overtook me and I never returned to writing my blog.

Today is the first day of the new year. Last night was a great party with good music, dancing, and warmth. Christmas was also equally good at Guntur. There was also so much shopping that needed to be done for Christmas as we decided to take gifts for all our Guntur family. So there was that excitement of shopping and journeying to Guntur. This was followed by the brief trip to Bombay and its attendant stresses. Benazi Bhutto died and I mourned for her during my trip to Bombay. Making new friends has also been on my list of issues. The breakfast meeting with the fashion photographer was, I could safely admit, as one of those good meetings exploring new friendships. At the end of the week, my body got too stressed and caved into its usual quota of cold and cough. This week was also the time of PMS and the arrival of blood The last week, as I look back, has been so busy.

The next fifteen days are the most stressful days of the month. I have to write a report of my field work of the last two months for the Family and Rights project. My part of the study is related to caste panchayats and their role in managing marital suffering. I need to produce a minimum of ten page note for the RC. The main themes that I want to document are the following: the number of organsiations that populate a bastia and how amost all of them are players in manging various kinds of disturbance, quarrels, conflicts. My attempt will be to map Addagutta basti as a site of intense political activity. Two, the caste sanghams that are mangaing conjugal/marital are very much servicing the state and acting as important agents between the various organs of the state and the people. Thus the MRO office, the local police station, the water and electricity boards are sites which survive on the activities of the caste sanghams and the other organsiations. Three, I want to focus on the issues that emerged in my interview about marriage, the inequality between the spouses, and the way one tries to cope with the various stresses of living together. Four, I want to write a page of the directions the study can take in the future. In all this will be stitched in the various readings that I have done for the study. So this is the rough plan which I need to put into action from tomorrow.