Interactions in the ‘Field’

Abstract

The first leg of my study started in Baroda, India. As I arrived on a dusty scorching morning, it was with a heavy heart. My previous weeks had been spent meeting and speaking with UK-born Gujaratis in a bid to prepare myself for fieldwork in Baroda. Unfortunately I had been warned by all of them that my plans of finding young men and women who would be willing to talk to me about their intimate experiences and marital relationships were futile. It was an impossible task, they told me, since ‘Indian Indians’ will not talk about relationships, let alone sex. I tried to recall my earlier trip to Baroda, some two years back, when the idea for the study had first emerged. Surely I had not imagined all those conversations about love and marriage?