Appreciation...

Hard work has its rewards, people say. But in the long years of doing a PhD, which is already its own reward, I expected none. Academics, especially don't care so much for worldly stuff (modern-day ascetics they are!). Unexpected appreciation is truly thrilling. Not knowing what else to do with it, I am posting some of it here. I might want to look these up a few years from now...smile about it or even think "oh please, all that was nothing!" Here it is anyway...

"Hey Sushumna...I know, it has been such a long time...We have not spoken much in college...but, i would always admire the way you would speak and give an analysis of all the poems that we were asked to interpret :)You were such an inspiration..." 
"Dear Sushumna Kannan,

I have just read your incisive appreciation of my book Excursions on a google site, and wanted to thank you for such a deeply serious essay – that better understands my ethnography than the reviewers in US anthropology journals who tend to ask how the work may be fitted into extant paradigms rather than appraised in relation to the lifeworlds it attempts to understand.  Having read your own internet profile and got a sense of where you are coming from and what matters most to you, I feel a real sense of kinship and wish you all the very best in your own endeavors.  I presume your Ph.D is done by now?  Are you teaching in Bangalore?

With kind regards and many thanks,

Professor at Harvard." 

"Sushumna,
 Glad to see your email. I live in the US. Your write-up inspired me to start a blog:
 http://maald.wordpress.com/
 The very first post was your article...."
Arun

"i know u'll be astonished to hear this...
for ur 'hit' argument in that workshop...
actually i talked several times with ... n we both somehow connect to ur argument in our thoughts...
actually u provided a fresh air..i mean different perspective altogether..."

"I used to like your class, else I wouldn't had remembered and sent you a mail now :)..." Student from National College. 

 "i bet- i know how analytical u are!!! i am being very very frank- i was with you in CSCS!!!! you are a chip of the old block.

 "Sushumna
Thanks for today. It went better than I had planned b/c you raised the question of essentialism and our perception of hinduism."  
Location: San Diego, CA, USA

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