The Lazy Eye

Back home, the curious selection of cutlery in which tea gets served has always been, for me, a subject of great intrigue. Very seldom does one find themselves holding a proper tea cup; paper cups are the usual, and on rare occasions, you might spot someone drinking straight out of the electric kettle (which does resemble an oversized coffee mug, to be fair). How does one talk of 'home'? In my hunt for a definition, I keep falling back to these peculiarities- on an assortment of landscapes, soundscapes and their associated quirks, rather than  the situated physical space  of a conventional suburban, single-family  home and its  sub-ingredients. Perhaps the lucid interval of a dreamless medicinal slumber- the comforting fiction of normalcy, the rapid, unmappable erosion of  memory  and cognition. The memorial excess of a keepsake journal- bus tickets to first dates, conference schedules, and lengthy hand-written notes- the necessary, logical instability of f...

 "Her fragrance preceded her. Khus in the summers, Mitti in the rains, Shamamatul in the winters.." Whiffs of naphthalene and filter coffee for evenings in the city, and tales of glorious train rides across Birbhum, Ghatshila, and Hoogly- memories of another time. Shortbread cookies in a yellow tin for a stay at the forest bungalow, jack-o-lanterns, and imperfect chord progressions on my first guitar.  Occasionally she would remind me that I had still not perfected my use of diacritical marks and that she had secured a ticket for the 7:35 next morning. That soon? Thesis submissions, approaching deadlines, and detestable citations were carefully exempted from conversations- meaningless trivia for a bi-monthly meetup.  November brought with it cheerless days of peeling oranges swathed in linen blankets, uncomfortable naps on the subway, and coming home to the harsh neon of the Adobe pdf highlighter. The sun-soaked rooms and their wooden shelves looked glorious at high noon ...