From my article about going back to India to do research, in the Chronicle dated February 1, 2008:

The tourist in India is expected to complain of the heat and the dust. I suffer terribly from the infernal conditions in which I sometimes work, but worry that to notice it would immediately mark me as the outsider that I have now become. I am also aware that my taking comfort in small pleasures — for example, the cool air coming through a straw curtain splashed with water, is a dubious form of nostalgia. And yet I’m not always certain of the correctness of that reading. The truth is that I want to distance myself from the Indian rich, who to my eye appear more greedy and grasping than the rich in the West. This judgment governs my social behavior when I’m home. They speak English, I immerse myself in the vernacular; they stick to the cities, I go to the hinterland; they appear arrogant and uncaring, I sullenly cultivate my guilt.

If I had a moment to spare while in India, I would notice that the difference I was asserting was, for the most part, an academic one.

http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 54, Issue 21, Page B7

chronicle-of-higher-education-amitava-kumar-india