The idea of leaving this place fills with such sadness. I cannot
imagine trading the sounds of chirping birds for the honking and dust of Dehra Dun. Being here has been such an amazing experience, and in many ways what my idealized version of India was before arriving.

Graffiti in bathroom stalls is usually an exhibit of messy jargon and crude comments and not the most obvious site for serious discussion and advice seeking. In Lebanon, however, stalls in female bathrooms are emerging as the centre for conversation on issues that are too personal for the home, too intimate for friends and too reserved for magazine advice columns. Despite the centrality of the family in Lebanese culture and the importance of peers and a large social network, bathroom stalls seems to be a prominent space for young women to anonymously open up about sexuality, body image and tradition.

We will regularly be presenting a featured artist, writer or performer who is exploring questions of identity and personal narrative through their medium of expression.

The map is your representation. No rigid lines, no defined routes. You direct it on your own account.

What a change to be in India and go an hour without seeing a single person separate from our small group of hikers. The mountain views as we walked were unbelievable: kilometer after kilometer of deep valleys and green rising peaks, occasionally punctuated by a house or two cut in jagged lines into the mountainside. For the first ten kilometers, the hike was grueling, but invigorating - the tough hills broken up by flat or downhill walks against such beautiful scenery it was easy to forget the pain in my legs. There was a point where we picked our way along a ridge path that couldn’t have been more than two feet across, on one side a steep drop into nothingness offered a reminder of how carefully I needed to watch my step.

Something about this man really broke my heart. He just looked so defeated, and started crying silently in the office. He clearly didn’t have much money, and just sat there for the longest time, tracing his thumb along the desk in front of him, shoulders slumped, lines around his eyes. I eventually had to move my arm from around his shoulders and turn away from because I was close to crying myself.

Memory is a volatile object that can re-emerge no matter how much superficial tendencies wish to filter. Every now and then, Beirut’s cultural scene sees a few projects pushing memory to the centre through installations, movie screenings and exhibitions. Luckily, the emergence of public art spaces and curators looking to search for memory is helping this work build and progress. The Beirut Art Centre and The Hangar - UMAM are two sites that are making the discourse viable.

Welcome to Beirut, Lebanon where you can be everything you want to be - among the glitterati in sky high clubs with polished heels, discussing politics among the expatriot intelligentsia in bohemian backdoors, or setting up an evening Nargileh (water pipe) outpost in your car on the Corniche. Even as an observer of Beirut’s many worlds - the contradictions, the contrasts, the tragedies - I feel the unmistakable heartbeat, the pulsing arteries filled with suffocating cigarette fumes and a persistent, intense desperation to stay alive.

Such a contrast to the rest of my day, when, after being bitten by a monkey (!), I had to travel quite a distance to Dehra Dun to get a rabies shot. While at first the whole thing was annoying and ever so slightly terrifying, my forced adventure gave me a chance to see an India away from the traditional tourist track.

Michael Jackson seemed crushed under a weight of identity: black/man/star/brother/father/son. Add philanthropist/media-victim and -manipulator/accused pederast/primate owner/fashionista and dancer. Owner of, and now perhaps a returnee to, Neverland.

I keep waiting for the moment when I say: “yes, this is where I’m from, this is what my culture means, this is a connection I’ve been waiting for all this time. Everyone I meet keeps saying, “yes you are Canadian, but you belong to India” – which just heightens the disconnect between what I want to feel and how I actually feel.