Summer of Stockinette
It’s that time of year again, when I scramble madly to throw things into a suitcase and make a mad dash for the airport, amidst wrapping up a crazy semester. Am leaving in a short while for India, where I will spend the next three months. My itinerary is even crazier than last time, but I am hoping to actually do less, even though I will have more time overall.
My priority will be to stay cool (not merely a fashion anxiety, but a serious survival skill in the oven that is currently New Delhi, or the wet sauna that is Calcutta). Also on my agenda are a few weeks at the archives in Pune taking lessons to improve my speed at reading Modi documents. I have to start a new research project this fall and this will be an initial archival trip trying to see what is out there and might be useful. Am psyched!
Other than that I’ll mostly tear around the country meeeting family and friends. Some of these, poor souls, will peddle substandard varieties of
mango as being the best. I have decided to be sensible about this
problem. I will pig out on the Devgad Hapus and Pairi,
(Hapus is Alfonso in English, but I don’t know if Pairi has an English
name) but also eat some Chausas, Dussheris and Langras, just to keep them happy!
The heat, however, means that not much knitting is going to get done. But I’m not sure how much wool, or indeed any yarn, I’m going to want to hold in my hands when it’s 111 degrees, air cooler or not. So we’ll see. I’m taking the Cascade Fixation skeins I bought sometime back with me, so am hoping my summer of stockinette yields something. Otherwise, this blog will turn into a bit of a travelogue until the fall.
Having stuck, more or less, to my new year’s resolution of eating less and exercising more (with results!!!), I am hoping that, older and wiser, I will not slide back into eating obscene amounts of food like I usually do at home. But I fear that this resolution might be seriously threatened on my very first stop: Hong Kong! I’m spending a week there on my way to Delhi, and along with hiking and kicking back with an old pal from college who lives there now, dim sum and all kinds of street food are high on the agenda.
Oh well, hopefully the heat will take care of my appetite once I’m in Delhi.
