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Just before Christmas I went to Pune, a large University city in the state of Maharashtra, India. On my last day I went out with some colleagues to see a little of the surrounding town, villages and hills. I was sightseeing, looking for key Indian images to take home on my mobile phone.

Here is a bullock cart:

And here is a sign from the University which I like very much:

The motto might be said to sum up the aspirational buzz of ‘progress’ in India, what seems like a palpable kinetic energy oozing from television screens and billboards everywhere. It’s a crazed and complex cacophony that others might rather identify as globalisation, capitalism, consumption, commercialism or urbanisation, with either a positive or negative emphasis.

And here is a photo of the renovations going on at the University of Pune central building, which in colonial times was the British governor’s residence:

I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel walking round a colonial-era mansion in India, and I think about the asymmetrically conjoined histories of our countries. My Indian colleague is telling me about the building’s former splendour – the ballroom where they hold exams, the gardens landscaped and planted with native and not so native species, and the servants’ quarters adjoined to the house, now used for university administration (the Office of Information has a sign just right of its door which says, ‘Please no enquiries’).

But strolling around the beautiful building in the perfect winter climate the sun is burning my white skin ever so slightly. Do I feel guilty? That’s not the full story – I trust my own contemporary political and personal position in amongst all the cultural and social dynamics at play in the moment (or do I? What does it do to travel to other countries, to consume them, take photos of them; to barely touch their surface and then to write about them, to appropriate them in that way? What does it mean to work in international development, to talk about capacity building, policy and advocacy on behalf of another nation?). But I think there will always be this slight discomfort and it’s constructive for the kinds of questions it provokes. Though I feel I cannot be held directly, personally responsible for the historically specific events of Britain’s colonial project, it is part of my culture as it is indelibly part of India’s. And today I am still prey to the pitfalls of contemporary forces of power and knowledge – media, communication, representation, education, research (let alone the meta-forces of politics and economics). And I could still be implicated in their misuse.

I had a lovely time visiting the sights of Pune, and perhaps I should just lighten up and enjoy the ride, but I don’t think you can travel to other places without it making you question the very place you came from.