At first I was a bit taken aback with the question. I was unsure of what was asked of me, and certainly uncertain of what to say to what I thought was being asked.

There was a definite sense of assertiveness along with a clear politeness with which the question was posed. I knew it was not meant to be rude. It was simply more candid and pertinent than I was prepared for.

“Aapko kya fayda hoga?” literally translates into: What will you benefit from it?

And the person asking me this was a nineteen-year-old young man from Agra. We were sitting in his aunt’s bedroom in a one-bedroom apartment in a mostly middle and working class neighborhood in Balkeshwar, Agra. I was there to conduct interviews for my research. My dissertation field-work on reality TV shows in India began this summer in the television studios of Mumbai but also took me to Agra to speak with viewers of reality TV shows. As I sat on the bed next to Kusum’didi (name changed) and explained the particularities of the purpose that brought me to her house and my interest in talking about her interest in television viewing, her nephew, nineteen-year-old Shankar (name changed) posed the question to me: “Aapko kya fayda hoga?”

The question hung in the air for a moment.

And then it flapped its wings and flew around the room;

lingered on the blue painted walls;

gazed at the rain stained lines of dampness seeping through and breaking the vanity of firozi (deep blue) fortifications;

glanced at the flickering television still playing in the background, though now a mute spectator of the unfolding drama in the room;

pondered the close up photographs of Kusum’didi smiling at no-one and everyone, trapped within a gold metallic picture frame with tiny white flowers around the edges;

got distracted in noticing how fair and plastic she looked with the thick layer of make up in the photograph;

and then flapped some more as it circled around the room and re-encountered Kusum’didi face (without make up and intently alive this time) patiently waiting for an answer.

The question was not asked with any malice or suspicion. It was rather innocent in fact; merely an enquiry that could help Kusum’didi and Shankar prepare for the rest of the conversation. It was to define the performance and determine how they should respond to me; what was expected from them; and how the conversation may be used/re-produced (in a film, for a television show, a radio program, or perhaps a newspaper report?). And yet what was underlined in the question was an issue of transaction – of efforts being measured against outcomes.

That was a question I was afraid to answer and my fears arose from many different corners of my being.

At the most immediate and obvious level, I was there as a post-graduate student working on a dissertation research. I did not want to raise their expectation of what might come out of the conversations; but neither did I want them to lose interest in speaking with me.

As a guest who had been welcomed with great warmth and grace, it seemed rather uncouth to cite purely selfish reasons, and yet in terms of field work it was quite simply going to be a conversation from which I was to gain more than them.

And yet, what exactly was I to gain?

It was perhaps a question I should have asked myself a long time ago.

It was also a question I had asked myself many times, though lately it seemed to have become one of those questions that are just too old, tired, redundant and eventually forgotten.

But really, what was I to gain from the fieldwork or the argument-thesis-dissertation it was meant to support?

Mujhe kya fayda hoga? I asked myself.

Why am I doing this? What will I get?

For a moment I was caught up in the performance as well. Was I to provide an explanation of my intellectual aspirations, or how I intended to contribute to the growth of knowledge and social theory? The notion of talking about intellectual commitments somehow seemed very silly, if not superficial. And that itself was not a positive reflection of what I was trying to do with the fieldwork or dissertation, to say the least.

I quickly abandoned that line of thinking.

So what will I get?

A job? A tenure track position?

In the midst of a bewildering, exhilarating and exhausting summer doing fieldwork I was frankly not sure of my professional aspirations either. Did I really want to become a professor? Was that what kept me awake at night, burning the night oil, writing, trying to write or fretting about not writing a doctoral thesis? (To be honest though, it is mostly the latter)

And even if I was to say that is the ‘fayda’ I am aiming for, it again seemed rather ridiculous to try to explain a professorial ambition as ‘fayda-mand’ or beneficial to a nineteen-year-old who had almost dropped out of school and a middle aged woman who never went to school beyond receiving a primary education.

The air-cooler was making a tremendous noise, I observed. And it was not cooling me at all though the damp air that it circulated in the room hung in the hot and humid June air and clung to my skin – as if in anticipation of some response from me.

Fayda. Quick. Think of some fayda, I told myself.

A book.

Yes, that is what this is all about.

I am writing a book.

Or to be more accurate, one-day my dissertation will be published as a book. That is my hope; my aspiration; and the ‘fayda’ that motivates me.

So I said so.

Kusum’didi nodded, more in acknowledgement of the fact that I had said something than of what I had said.

Shankar on the hand stared at me. Then he cleared his throat, and asked hesitatingly but also persistently: A book?…nahi…kya matlab?

(a book?…no…what do you mean?)

His confusion was palpable in the air; Kusum’didi too seemed unsure of what I meant.

I resorted, rather helplessly, to a pantomime act. I gestured with my hands; outlining the contours of a book; and opening an imaginary book to read it.

And then I explained: “A book, you know…jaise kitab ki dukan mei…kitab…” I did not bother finishing the sentence because it seemed so futile.

Neither of them seemed to be remotely familiar with a book. Not even the concept, let alone an actual book.

How could that be?

And then something more awkward happened.

Shankar broke the pause with a further clarification: “You mean…matlab… like… ‘The five mistakes of life’…type ka book?”

(you mean…meaning…like… ‘The five mistakes of life’ kind of book?)

In the flash of a moment I both reeled and recovered from an existential crisis that graduate students working on their dissertation must be intimately familiar with. Indeed, was the dissertation one of the top five mistakes of my life or could all of the top five mistakes of my life refer to my pursuit of writing a dissertation? Personal crisis aside, the moment struck me as particularly revelatory.

Agra, a dusty and ancient city in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India, is etched in imagination as the home of Taj Mahal – the testament to eternal love and splendor. Many hapless hearts and astray souls aspire to such love and such grand expressions, all over the world. And yet, when I found myself in the city for my dissertation fieldwork I encountered aspirations of a different kind – more existential, practical, functional and transactional.

The prevailing sentiment was most prominently about defining fayda, and performing to maximize fayda.

But fayda (as I tentatively understand and seek to conceptualize in my dissertation) refers to more than a cost-benefit analysis. It is about a way of life and learning to live, imagine, anticipate, pursue and perform accordingly.

Shankar and his aunt’s question and confusion were as much about deciphering my intentions as about their preparing to answer my questions and engage in the conversations. With time I began to notice their particular interest in the formal and performative aspects of a conversation – what to say, when to pause, the language or the words to use, how to say, how to look, how to sit etcetera. In referring to a book the most accessible title that Shankar could think of also reiterated the performative aspects of life (of identifying and correcting the mistakes one is likely to make in life). His familiarity with the world of books was defined in terms of ‘how to’ books that serve a function – helping him to optimize any (life) experience; perform to his potential; clarifying the end goal and accordingly identifying the means to carry on (a conversation or life in general). Shankar’s aspirations to be considered impressive and distinct (as following conversations on his life goals, fashion sense, ability to speak English better and many other issues revealed) were defined in practical, commonsensical and handy terms. Life, for him, is about figuring out what is to be done, doing it and benefiting.

Kusum’didi on the other hand referred to books as the magazines she found in the ‘beauty parlor’ she frequented. She got haircuts, facials… “aur jo jo karwate hai” (and all those things that are done) at the salon, approximately twice a month. And during her visits she often looked through the pages of the magazines on film stars and celebrities, observing their clothes, hairstyles, make up, accessories etcetera. She referred to those magazines as books. Like Shankar, for her books were a part of a larger focus on acquiring cues about how to look, how to dress, how to apply make up, and so on. Fayda, or benefit is anticipated and calculated at each turn; and performance that will deliver oneself to the marked fayda or beneficial destination was always in attention.

Fayda (end goal) and performance (means pursued) are tied together; reiterating the connection between ends and means more than the distinction between the two.

This attention to fayda and performance became an enduring feature – recurring in different encounters, places, times and instances throughout my fieldwork – and is at the heart of my dissertation, even if the fayda of the dissertation is still unclear and aflame.

It has been snowing, without a pause, since last night.

And I have been trying to fit my dissertation within the limits of a ‘one page only’ application just as incessantly. Well, there has been some pause on my end, namely a night’s sleep, but the endeavor feels just as unremitting.

There is no clarity in sight, for either the damp and distraught sky or my mind. But it is a race to the finish. Can I finish the synopsis before it stops snowing?

I am competing with the sky – infinity, as it extends into the eternal and unknowable cosmos.

Soon, I will be howling at the full moon.

Yes, I am being melodramatic. And silly.

But indulge me.

A dissertation worth its name should be inflicted by drama.

It is only appropriate that I fight cosmos this snow draped, damp afternoon. And, test the limits of my human, rational, reasoning; defy destiny; scream at the haze above and abyss below; claim my existential realm, build and destroy, write and erase, think and rethink in defiance of whatever that invisible, infinite, eternal power is.

It is what we modern people do – compete with the cosmos.

And this is my modernist quest – this dissertation.

A thesis, a narrative that explains the world – empirically induced; conceptually deduced; reliably argued; authoritatively pursued. Beyond the doubt or force of even a slithering shadow of a snowflake.

A dissertation is, after all, a modernist battle cry: yes, I can; yes, I shall; yes, I will.

(And then, congratulations: yes, you have.

All this for one moment of validation? You insecure bastard child of mine: whispers the cosmos, as the snowflakes smile and slither past my window.)

Sail around the world? Yes.

Trace the shape of the world? Yes.

(Why is it round by the way? A cruel joke played by the cosmos in a sense: leaving us back where we started.)

Convince others of my narrative (by force or wit – and start the colonial-neo-colonial-imperial-neo-imperial-capitalist-neo-capitalist world system)? Yes.

I am doing what others have done, over and over and over again.

Not the hustling in abstractions part, though that too. Rather, the attempt to test the limits of my ability to think-prove-argue and conquer the world, via mind or matter – the modernist part.

It seems petty.

And silly.

Until I make it melodramatic – and find in my quest a modern valor; an ambition to reach the frontiers, trace the horizons, find new lands and open seas in between; shoot a rocket and get giddy over a fluttering cloth on a piece of a moon-rock; and tell stories of the journey (some call it social theory). Then this effort seems all right again – still silly but not petty; dramatic and grand in its self-involved abandon.

But abandonment is everywhere I turn to. The slow sway of the snowflake; the drift of the breeze; the meandering clouds without addresses; the awkward, jaunty waves of tree tops; even, the pit less neon street light.

So what is their abandonment and what is mine? Where do we meet and where do we leave?

Brooklyn sticks out its tongue – a block long series of rooftops stained by thick, sticky, black tar, painted with caring hands of weary landlords – to stop the wet snow in its track.

The mad, ethereal dance of snowflakes, falling with abandon, careless and dizzying, meets the roof top in silent sighs and rushes away to other business in puddles of water through the city streets. The city never stops, they say. Is it competing with the cosmos too? Heartbeat by heartbeat; snowflake-by-snowflake; water puddle over water puddle.

Where does it end?

When will it stop snowing?

And my dissertation?

Ah, that too.

I was looking for a specific book but my eyes wandered. Instead of picking up the book on methodology that I needed to read urgently I found myself leafing through Urdu poems. There you go again, Ms. PhD student: so easily distracted; so fickle. But the scandal does not end there. Bright winter sunshine rushes in through the window and I can almost hear the soft snow on the ground, from last night, melting away – gently melting in the sunny embrace. In the hushed silence of a New York apartment I read aloud Azmi to myself.

I look at the bookshelf again, and see the title: Argumentative Indian. Why do I find the same book on the bookshelf of every Indian friend who lives here in the U.S.? Is it a comment on my circle of friends? What does it say?

Is it meant to be a reminder of who we are, though we live so far away from home, every time our distracted eyes fall on dusty bookshelves? Is it a validation; or a yearning to break the silence of empty apartments and shrill deadlines with some hearty rambling? The endless adda over cigarettes, cha (not chai) and the occasional samosa and jalebi as I remember life to have once been?
I remember moving into the new house; the smell of clean walls and empty floors. My father installed a fancy key chain lock on the main door. Dada and I both observed it to be a rather excellent idea: open the door just that wee bit to satisfy your curiosity about who might be standing on the other side and yet, without commitment. The door was neither closed, nor open.

The key chain broke within two days of our moving into the new house. Just for the record, Dada and I had very little to do with its collapse. Actually, if I remember correctly, the base for the chain dislodged from the wall. And the door was never closed (during the day, and sometimes on forgetful nights). People streamed in and out, through the door, all day long: and adda carried on. It was no environment for children to grow up: Ma reminded us all. We had to study for examinations after all. Such distractions will not do. Only purposeful ones: music lesson twice a week, art courses over the weekend, walk to the library and film festivals when they are on.

Twenty-five years later I am still dealing with distractions. The key chain at our New York apartment is very strong, indeed. Nobody visits during the day; and hardly ever at night. But I am filled with memories of adda and guilty pleasure of reading: Aaena.

I guess Ma won after all.

And the secret desire to rebel, to contest, to ramble and revel in angst…?

Well, it is on the bookshelf now. The Argumentative Indian: on bookshelf after bookshelf of feisty Indian girls and their American apartments.

Though I must admit that beyond questions of becoming a cliché and wondering if one exists – truly – only in distracted, stolen moments, such consensus on reading material is rather disturbing. Sincerely, an argumentative Indian.

It’s back to the methodology book now.