The discipline did not die; it just went on a family trip to San Jose and nearby Lake Tahoe. I was hoping to experience the Sublime but the wind blew that desire away, literally. Too choppy water and too shaky gondolas prevented us from getting properly imperial views of the lake and its surrounds. When my brother, cousin and I tried a mountain bike trail, the altitude defeated us. The air was too thin at 7,000 ft and the ascent to sharp, a 1,000 ft over five miles, for our mediocre conditioning to handle. I did, however, gain a new perspective during the trip.

As a literature student and critic in training, one is taught to make much of “Culture” by granting it the power to mold our perceptions. Or, in Ranciere’s reading of Kant, to train us in “the sensible:” that is, we learn both how to perceive, and more radically, what to perceive, and politically what is possible. But I lost track of all this, and worse, forgot why I studied culture so closely.

Then I spent time with my Indian relatives some of whom are my age. The difference between them and me? They are married, have stable jobs are essentially set to live out their lives in a predictable, not unfulfilling, future primarily concerned with family. If this sounds like an indictment, it is not and I did not experience the thought with a smile. Rather, I was very envious of their general security, their wealth relative to my student wages and, perhaps most importantly, the smaller universe they desired and created for themselves. This universe, however, is not purely an autonomous creation; it is co-created by Indian-American culture, which demands nothing less than everything they have already attained. All of which is to say that, for the whole weekend, I felt very very behind in the “life narrative” that Desi culture writes so fervently.

Is pain always the prerequisite for an insight or re-realization?