We were in Kolkata last week. R is at Anandi for the Pathshala Residency (Resting Academy) this year. It is a huge deal and I am super proud of her. She’ll get to concentrate on projects and work with seven other residents for almost five months.

She had a cold (a nasty one; a sneaky one) just before the trip; we were all really worried and I stayed back for three days to make sure medicines could be medicined and emergency doc visits could be emergencydocvisited. She’d left for the place as planned and I was taskless so the three unaccounted-for days in Kolkata I could do anything with. I did not want to do much without her.

This (photographs below) is Kolkata seen sans R. (Or rather, Kolkata with her an hour away. She’s neckdeep in work and research we could not have long phone calls either, so that hour was like a lifetime in effect.) I could not enjoy the roaming around much. To worsen matters, what I saw wasn’t the Kolkata I’d put together via all the Malayalam-translated texts from when I was younger. Anand’s Alkkoottam (The Crowd), and in some strange nonlinear way Apaharikkappetta Daivangal (The Stolen Gods) had painted a strangely sad, beautiful picture of the city that did not match what I saw. I saw old buildings speak of forgetting and disrepair and despair instead of memories and patina, and layers of nostalgia that I had no business feeling in the first place. I don’t want to underline the city in melancholy shades of blue (yet); I’ll revisit their streets and eateries and semicrowded buses again with R and see if it was just the general sorrow-tinted-glasses I looked out of, and not the place.

Here are some letters from the east. In all stages of life and significance. The yellow one is an Ayurvedic de-addiction programme.

I took a bus to Victoria Memorial on a gloomy day (among all the other gloomy days, so just another day).

The flooring marble shapes are well-resolved. Not at all purely geometric and wonky. This I loved.

The glasstop tables holding history have these beautiful railing corners. Totally upstages whatever is inside. This also I loved. (Yes.)

Most buildings also have interesting non-corners.

These leaves are nothing special (in the blog sense, not in the larger scheme of things). Just reminded me of how I was taking Kolkata in. 

What R staying far also means is that C and P and I are ‘alone’ in Bengaluru. We miss her in all the ways painful and slow. The house feels quiet-empty even with Diwali’s plosives. Chellam was (and continues to be two days post) restless through the evening. I know she would’ve calmed down with R around. We stayed outside in the parked car on the main road on Diwali night (with calming music and Manikandan Ayyappa taking turns) and could come home only after 10:30. We saw many lessfortunate dogs gone astray with their legs holding their tails prisoners. The morning after, there was a terrified brown guy hiding in the plants as we three walked our morning walk amidst the torn pieces of paper and the lingering aftertaste of sulphur and the road painted burnt silver-grey. He was shivering. C and P left that one in peace.

More soon.