Very tired, so just facts:
Well, the woman who wanted to have the baby is having the baby. And her husband who had said he did not love her anymore (something as heartbreaking and earth shattering as that) and that he couldn't bear to stay with her, is buying her a gift and planning to buy a camera to record the baby's arrival. The typical Indian family, what joy! You will break and be finished, but you will not leave. You will spawn progeny and forever be happy and believe this is your reality, a good reality. Call upon God and believe in him. It is right out of Heart of Darkness. Its unbelievable, unending night. And we are supposedly modern, better than the generation before, with more autonomy. It seems that I am sinking, that there is no way out. Who knows if I will commit such blasphemies myself.

Ma's blood sugar is down.
My boyfriend got me the bag.
I bought two perfumes online today. One for ma.
Pujo ashchhe.
Bhishon gorom.
Ghum peyechhe. Painfully slow download speeds yesterday and day before. I watched both of Satyajit's Felu das. Ate hideous hideous chicken roll.
And strange miracles abound. Like auto appearing almost immediately after I prayed for one in tutiphata morning sun. Happened yesterday too. Jam clearing, bus stopping when it never does. Small things that well, restore faith.

This is not nostalgia

People have left Calcutta in droves. I flew the nest very late at 27. I had been frustrated and had wanted to get out for a very long time. It seemed then that staying in Calcutta was an exercise in futility, waiting for the proverbial cookie to crumble, which, of course, it never did.

But there are so many reasons why one loves home, and none of them are things that make the city absolute as a font of contentment and joy. I was humming Mohiner Ghoraguli r Shaat Tola Bari today and it came back again, as it has for the past few days. Hot summer days, the hint of spring, Jadavpur, such love that it is a physical longing to have those days in my grasp again, friends, the sun on your face in the basketball field on the engineering side, the jheel there, climbing up that windmill like thing, sitting at the foot of a tree, Oli climbing the tree, French classes, BCL, desperate tiredness, bus rides which now seem so pointless, Debasis sir, the world opening up. From the age of 18 to 22, I dare say it was the perfect place to be. Rimi di, Amlan da, Supriya di, so very kind, Queer Studies, a classmate seeking to confirm from the Sappho people very, self-consciously knowledgeably, if the first sexual experience for a homosexual was a defining moment :-)

Babu, all bird-like, even the first year of Telegraph, when so many new things seemed to be opening up, and Floppy plucked out from a heartful of sorrow that were those years.

What will it take to have that love back, the longing for University is such a yearning sometimes, for something that is perhaps not there anymore, because I am not 18.

I miss Calcutta, I wish I could go back to it with an empty page, instead of as a refuge when I am broken, beaten up by Delhi. I wish Calcutta were not such a dump professionally, that I also could take its opportunities for granted like so many in Delhi do.

Ma has 400 pp sugar. Scared.