Getting sick while traveling can be tricky. Welcome to my collection of stories and tips of traveling while sick. Ever since I left Italy, my home country, in 2016, I fell ill countless times. In 2016 I almost fainted on a beautiful beach in Florianopolis, Brazil. In 2017 I was hitten by a powerful stomach…
Category: India
Post-orientalism in “Lagaan Once upon a time in India”
Snake charmers, carpet vendors, and veiled women. These are the images of India evoked in the mind of the western spectator feverishly waiting in a cinema hall. But in Lagaan, Once upon a time in India, are only one side of the story. Films continue to be one of the most popular form of entertainment. And,…
My adventures by voice
2016 is the year my life changed. However, I never could have guessed it. 2016 per se didn’t start well for me. I was coming out of a 2 year relationship quite heartbroken, and felt lost about my academic career. I wanted to quit everything. And so I did. I graduated earlier, while working two…
School-स्कूल
When, in 2018, I first set foot in a school in India I didn’t know that that was the place I was going to spend most of my time during the whole semester (as part of my Masters, I studied at Savitribai Phule Pune University for six months). My mother is a teacher and I…
India: towards Right to Education?
“The Republic of India is deemed one of the emerging superpowers of the world. With a 8.4% GDP rate and a extremely rapidly expanding market, not only it has been meritorious of BRICs membership in 2009, it has also become world’s fastest growing economy in 2018. Economic success notwithstanding, numerous are the endemic evils Indian…
School in India
Khelghar, at Athavle Corner. When I walked into the small, dirty and only room of Kelghar, at Athavle Corner, Pune I had one thought in my mind: “This is not a school”. I had to wait until the end of the visit to realize how wrong—or maybe right—I was. Started by the Non Governmental Organization…
Heritage walk across Pune
Cultural heritage is both easy to grasp and difficult to define: it is immediate, you know it when you see it. The definition by Unesco recites that heritage is the “legacy of physical artifacts and intangible attributes of a group or society that are inherited from past generations, maintained in the present and bestowed for the benefit…
Doing Sociology in English in India: Towards a new Tower of Babel?
Since I was a child, the Tower of Babel has been my favorite story from the Genesis. When I first arrived in India I realized how the country resembles a bewitching Babel, embodying a maze-like, per se linguistic microcosm. Its 1.3 billion inhabitants, who speak more than 19,500 different languages and dialects, would be unable…
Βιβλίοϕιλία: Love for books as engine of social reforming
Bibliophilia, the endless passion for books, has represented for centuries a fascinating custom. It could be -ism per se—thereby resulting in the obsessive–compulsive disorder of collecting and hoarding books; however when it serves a broader purpose, love for books can inspire the reader and become a catalyst of social change. B. R. Ambedkar and Ramakrishna…
Sacred Groves, Tamhini
I had gone to Navratri dances the night before. When I woke up on Sunday morning that very feeling of captivating energy, deep intensity and mystic spiritualism experienced during the Garba was still with me, and I have taken it along with me during the excursion at the sacred groves. The sacred groves are segments…