In my previous post, I spoke about following oral histories and material traces of the war. While I was able to find Ledo Road easily, the hospital on the other hand proved a challenge. Was the hospital still standing or much like most monuments in India converted into something else? They are rarely stagnant. Spaces […]
CASI Student Programs Blog
Since 2007, the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania has supported nearly 200 students! Welcome to the home base for CASI students and alumni to share their thoughts, reflections, and ongoing learnings about their internships, research projects, and travels in India and beyond.
The hip hop duo, Dean and K invited me to join them at a cypher that had been organized by a Delhi rap collective at Deer Park in Hauz Khas Village. This was open to all the local hip hop artists, and they had published the information up on this collective’s Instagram page (and that’s […]
“As I walked round the site I thought that these days the biggest temple and mosque and gurdwara is the place where man works for the good of mankind. Which place can be greater than this, this Bhakra-Nangal, where thousands and lakhs of men have worked, have shed their blood and sweat and laid down […]
“One good thing that came out of the war was that the Americans built this road”, quipped Mr. Borah who had taken out a few minutes from his day to talk to me about his experiences in Margherita back in the ’40s. In my bid to study the oral histories and material traces of the […]
In my study, I look ethnographically at youth-led coalitions in Delhi, India that are set outside of adult run educational organizations to understand i) how and why they come together, ii) what are their practices and how do these develop over time and in relation to other (digital and physical) spaces that youth participate in, […]
Two weeks ago (August 23, 2023), India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft became humanity’s first space-faring contraption to successfully land on the south pole of the moon. This achievement was the long-awaited result of perseverance and superhuman efficiency in the face of resource constraints and past hardships. With spending at just $70 million compared to NASA’s $90 billion […]
Iterative Learning I began the summer aiming to unpack transnational migration aspirations of Indian Muslims in the current political climate. Focusing on citizen interviews in Delhi and Surat, particularly with those in the younger cohorts (18-35) initially, I found that aspirations or plans to out-migrate (permanently or for a long-term) to countries like Canada and […]
“Didn’t you say you have a flight in the evening?” I was asked by a member of the archival staff. It was August 11th, 2023. Working through an almost day-long power cut, my seven-week long archival stint was coming to an end. Here I was, scheduled to board my flight out of Chandigarh at 7.40pm, […]
As the summer comes to an end, I return back to the documents from the archives as I prepare this fall for my honors thesis seminar. By looking at the documents more than one time, I better understand how they fit into the chronology of my paper. It is a challenging task to simultaneously interpret […]
Now that my time at Aravind is over, I’d like to write something that I wish I had before even applying to the CASI internship. I present to you: the blog I wish I had read, to be enjoyed not just by future Aravind interns, but by all readers who seek to pursue work they […]
CASI Student Programs Blog 