I am home. I will be for a while. The part of my brain that I have no control over likes it here. The other part is my grandmother’s. She is the kind of woman I was born to disappoint. It did the hard yelling when I declined a project that walked into my room with cheesecake in its hand. But I could – in a way that your brain begs for an outcome when the coin is in the air – not make myself decide to do it.
I need to take time off. Whatever that means. That is the only thing that feels right.
I want to go back to little loves: the smell of green vegetables that fills home every Sunday morning and how I try to separate mint from methi and palak in my head-like the time I spent an afternoon looking at a baby, who climbed over his mother’s shoulders while she spoke to her friend. Nect he hung from her knees upside down, from where he made his way along the wall from over the sofa to the windows, under the curtains where he hid and came out from the other side to jump like a knight over the other sofa further ahead along the wall. And fell asleep there. Face up, under tender sun rays.
I went to eat misal with my cousin and strolled around talking about irrelevant things like I have always wanted to. I read non-fiction books about linguistics, grammar, and writing, finally. I overhear conversations and found out Judy Blume (proudly) does too. I heard, in a train, two boys talk about me in a code language they thought I do not understand (Hah! Tiny world and shared secrets.) I heard them talk about my tattoos, discuss decent conversation starters, settle on asking me for a lighter and not do it. BabyR took a surprise running leap on me from a bed and I caught her, realizing the extent of my adultness. My medicine box got damp. Now all my belongings smell like the inside of a hospital. Jane Eyre, the tee-shirt R bought me, my ink pen smell like a hospital. It brought to my notice that my mental health is worse in the rainy season, which is not a little love, but it is a part of getting to know my mental health better before befriending it. To find and shape the little bitternesses, till I find a place for myself in the kind-hearted non-sense that this life is.