Of Bicycles, Boulevards, and Freedom: Tales from Home
T he library shuts down at five on Fridays, and one is left with little to do for the rest of the evening. You could buy yourself a paper-bag-full of raw mango slices sprinkled with chilli powder and salt and watch the sunset from the banks of Khoai. Or you could bike your way across the length of the campus, the well-lit neighborhoods of Sreepally, and past the empty grounds of the madrasa to reach home before the first warnings of approaching sundown. One of my favorite lectures from our freshman year at University was on oral histories and the discursive construction of historical memory. It does make for a fascinating subject of study- the individual subjectivity of memory- how one remembers faces, instances and snatches of songs or dialogues from certain wholes. That particular lecture, and the many questions our professor brought up on the dialectics of memory keep coming back as I try to reflect on how I choose to remember my home. "Travelling" includes, for me,