update

First, I just want to explain my internet/email situation. I feel really bad because there are a bunch of emails I haven't responded to after way too long. It's really hard to respond because the internet keeps cutting in and out. We didn't have it for a couple of consecutive days this week. The rest of the time I'd say I have access only one out of every fifteen times that I try. I absolutely do get, read, and savor all emails and I really appreciate them far more than the speed of my response would suggest. I post here more often than I write emails because at least then there will be some sign of life from me. Plus, it's easier to compose these posts offline and post them when I get a connection, whereas with email I like to see what people have written while I'm responding. It's hard to keep up here, too, though.

I've just realized tonight I have much more work than I thought. As I explained earlier, I am drafting up info-sheets for most of 33 demands to be issued daily during the march to the PM and central government of India. I somehow thought that they were just for distributing to passersby. Apparently, it is also these sheets that will be delivered to the government as the official statements of demands. So that puts a lot more pressure on me. I have an absolutely huge amount of work to do in writing, research, and battling with MS Word's always-wrong auto-formatting to get these all these sheets written, laid out, edited, printed, and ready for the march, which starts in exactly 9 days. I am also, of course, more than a little nervous about the march itself. More excited than nervous, though.

Anyway, for the next week I am going to be holed up here at Sambhavna working on this stuff from the moment I wake up until late at night every day. So I might not post as much. I have a bunch of offline writing I've done -- very general observations about being in India and stuff like that -- that I will post here in increments over the next week. I don't want to dump huge pages of text here all at once.

(I took the photo above at the courthouse the other day, where several old Union Carbide executives on the Indian side of things were appearing. These women are gas victims, holding a noose.)

Once the march starts my posts will include more serious explorations of the the lives of the people surrounding me (poison-gas survivors and activists) and their stories. This is a deep place -- very special -- with a lot of heavy and incredibly inspiring stuff going on and I don't think my posts so far have really reflected that yet because I've been so busy trying to describe how different life is here in India in general and to paint the broader scene.

Life has been as crazy as ever. There's just an unbelievable amount to say about each part of each day that I can hardly decide what to write about. Right now I'm a little sick and very stressed, but it will be ok. I have some kind of cold and also diarrhea, which I think is unrelated.

Just wanted to mention bats. I have seen only a few bats in my life. There just haven't been many in the places I've lived. Right at sunset this evening I took a break to go stand outside on the terrace and breathe a little. The sky was completely filled with bats. Hundreds of bats in the dim light. They sort of tumble through the air. They were not flying in unison or anything, just twisting in all directions through the air like huge insects. I loved it so much I just stood and watched for a while.