Rediscovery of a Hobby

I've been able to spend the past couple of days in my hometown of Bridgewater, New Jersey. One of the old time hobbies that I was able to take part in during high school was the art of ceramics. After dropping my brother off at school one morning, I decided to pay my old ceramics professor a visit. I will always remember my teacher for having a profound appreciation for the connection between art and culture. When I was in high school, I never quite grasped why he placed so much emphasis on offering his "cultural ceramics" class every semester. Now, looking ahead at the summer, I can totally see why.

As I shared about my trip to India - an idea popped into my head that was sort of like a random chance occurrence and moment of satisfaction mixed together. All this time as I was pondering what the heck I would do with my time after getting off work everyday in New Delhi - an instant solution popped into my mind as I gazed past students working on their coil pots and the art posters that had hung on the wall when I was a student at the high school. At that moment, I thought to myself, what would it be like to explore the ties of ceramics with Indian culture? What would it be like to be able to work with local artists - learning their craft, their trade, their lives? What better way to experience authentic Indian culture than to immerse myself in the lives of the people? It was an awesome moment.

Some of the greatest memories from my trip to overseas last summer came on a forty six hour train ride sitting on a plastic bucket seat with no shower, limited food, and a squater toilet that could only be reached by hurdling over dozens of standing room passengers. Yet in the conversations that I had with the college students who had just finished a semester of police training or the family who was making a move out into new territory, all those bitter memories of conditions that I would never face in America seemed to fade away. What I experienced was exactly what the majority of people in that country went through on an everyday basis. It was an experience of what it meant to be with the people.

Looking ahead to this summer, I'm excited for the opportunities to be had that will be forever cemented in the category of truly "meeting the people where they are." Maybe the whole trade of making pots and sculptures will be part of it!