Finished responses to…

Finished responses to one of my Vermont students (I'd given her an extension on her last packet so we could talk about it further first), showered and dressed and drove in to campus. The drive isn't as bad if I leave early; about 45 minutes if I leave at 2. In theory, with no traffic, it should be a half-hour drive, but I haven't yet found that magic no-traffic time.

I'm going to go get some chai and a sandwich for my dinner, then come back to my office and finish grading student papers by 6:30. Then teach. Bizarrely, the drive has turned into the most relaxing part of my day, since I can just stop thinking for a little while. Watch the road, listen to NPR. I can do that.

Of course, NPR was doing a piece on the struggles of African-American men in America today, and I immediately started thinking about Vijay Prashad's arguments in Karma of Brown Folks, that S. Asians in America should be spending more time making common cause with poor black Americans and less time to trying to emulate rich white Americans. And I started thinking about whether there are ways in which DesiLit could/should be reaching out to the black literary community. I got all excited for a few minutes.

But then I made myself stop, because DesiLit is not even a year old yet, and we have a ways to go in solidifying what we already do before we start reaching out further. We need to recover from Kriti, for one thing.

See? I can say no.