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Time and Writing: Reflections on Shaligrams and Knowledge-Making

I am exceptionally pleased that, as of the end of November, my manuscript on Shaligram pilgrimage and practices was officially complete. It’s six chapters long, nearly 320 pages, and contains virtually all the learning, knowledge, and experiences I have had with Shaligrams and Shaligram practitioners over the past five years. Over the weeks of December, it was in review with my doctoral committee members and with a few other research participants concerned with the accuracy of the material. And now, it’s back! And with the New Year finally here, I am ready to sit down and hash out the details and nuances of revision in preparation for my defense in (hopefully) a few months.

This also, of course, begins what is usually the hardest part of manuscript editing: ensuring that I have properly engaged with previous literatures in my field. For those of you who are not as well versed in academic writing, any piece of social science research work must, at least to some degree, refer to and position itself within previous works in the same field. For me, this means that I must not only talk about and analyze other ethnographies of the Himalayas, India, and Nepal but I need to be able to articulate how my work with Shaligrams relates to theories in anthropology that deal with time, space, nationalism, kinship, and religion. In the end, it means that there are likely to be sections of the finished book that are written in terms of their “political positioning” within anthropology rather than by what I want the chapter to actually say about the silas. It’s a delicate balancing act: writing for an academic audience in my field while keeping the work accessible to all those who have participated in its creation in the first place (and who are looking forward to reading it).

Regardless, I remain humbled by the journey. Since beginning this work in India in 2012, I have had the great privilege to travel all across Northern India and into Nepal to spend over a year in the Kali Gandaki region as a student of pilgrimage, of Muktinath, and of the Shaligrams themselves. Now, what remains, is to do justice to everything that has come before in a narrative that I can only accept will have to be, by its nature, incomplete. There is simply too much to say for one book, or perhaps even for one lifetime.

But it also means that the end is in sight for this particular part of the project. I have no doubt that Shaligram practices will continue to be a major part of my ongoing work and that I will be returning to Nepal and to India in the future as I expand this research further. But for the time being, my focus is going to be on getting this manuscript finished and getting myself settled into the academic world (i.e., getting a job) so that I might finally have a position of relative stability from which to continue. Sadly, this kind of research requires a fair amount of funding as well as academic and community support.

I think, though, that the time has finally come for me to get this work out there and to do everything that I can to ensure that as many people as possible can access it. You’ve all been waiting so very patiently and I can’t thank you enough.

Happy Wednesday and Happy New Year. May love, light, and illumination follow you through all of your days.