In the Filmfare Office!

At around noon today, I stepped into the Filmfare office in Mumbai. For a good minute or so, I gaped around and just couldn't bring myself to ask someone where the Editor sat! "So this is where stars are made," I thought, looking at filmi journos in their cubicles, typing up stories for millions of star-struck readers around the world!

I snapped out of it, of course, and reflected for a moment on how academics are beset by the curse of having to explain experience. For much as I try, the experience of stepping into the office of India's oldest film magazine (Filmfare was first published in 1952) is ineffable. How do I explain how delighted I would be to lock myself up in a room filled with rows and rows of back issues of Filmfare? What currently fashionable academic parlance do I bring to bear on the thrill of speaking to the Editor of the magazine that gives me wonderful little details on the lives of stars I've idolized? But perhaps it is this sense of excitement that will keep me going in spite of the everyday frustrations of fieldwork. Patience, I tell myself each morning. Patience, and eventually things will begin to make sense.