I finally picked up Gun Island today. A book by Amitav Ghosh; a gift from a loved one. I am sitting in my usual spot – the bar stools overlooking the trees in Bahrisons Book/coffee shop. There is something extremely alluring about a coffee shop that smells of books and freshly roasted coffee beans. Even Ma associates this place with me and my Sundays. So, here I am. Sitting on a high chair, holding on to my cortado and looking outside at a giant Neem tree (I think). Winter seems to have overstayed its welcome in the city. Grey clouds coupled with the pandemic have made its way into our moods. Few pages into the book, and I have already started referencing the dictionary a little too often. Typical Amitav Ghosh. The backdrop of Calcutta and Ballygunge Place in the story makes me smile. Places that have become close to my heart. It is beautiful how a city can just be a city, till you make memories there with a loved one. Then, the city and everything that comes with it becomes a fragment of that person and all the time spent with them. The places may become hazy, but the warmth never leaves.

It is a rainy Monday morning in Calcutta. The will to work is really poor. It has been more than two months of being holed up in Dada’s apartment, as India’s 2.0 version of Covid rages on. Isolation has blended weekdays into weekends, and my view of the world is through a balcony which faces a small walking space. I sip on coffee as I watch people getting in their steps. I get my steps in too, by circling this small living space. Any curious onlookers would have given up by now, on my sanity and their boredom. We have normalized everything by now. The isolation, the inability to meet our loved ones, the lack of life that was. Everything, except death of a loved one. Everything, except maybe facing our own mortality. Fear has found a place in our collective hearts. And we are sanitizing our way through every human contact.

It is 9 degrees C in Patna right now. I have forgotten what wintery mornings feel like here. Can’t blame my memory. It has been 20 years since I left home. Twenty years since Baba and I dropped Ma to school, on our way to the train station. And Ma couldn’t turn around to say bye, because it was all too hard. Kids leaving the nest can never be easy, no matter how big a brat the said child has been. Ever since, my presence in Patna has been guest-like. Luxuriating in the presence of top notch food and zero chores for those measly 10 days a year.