Remembering My Duniya

Abstract

This autoethnographic place-based essay explores the ecological space the author grew up in the desert state of Gujarat, in western India.1 Simultaneously, it is also an exploration of the inner journey of discovery, joy, and belonging that a child enacts in discovering the outdoors, his /her/their Duniya,2 or to put it more formally, comes into an environmental consciousness. The essay is a contribution to autoethnographic scholarship in the evocative tradition, focused on the role of memory.3 Written in nonlinear story segments, the narrative mirrors the ways in which memories surface—fragmented, disconnected, nebulous but also (on occasion) brilliantly clear and saturated with the sensorial world in which they originate. End notes identify key readings from the fields of autoethnography,4 cultural anthropology,5 memoir writing,6 narrative nonfiction,7 and environmental studies8 that influenced the form, scope and intent of the stories.