My article in Cricbuzz!

When I went to London in high school, the hotel helpfully provided a 'basics of cricket' leaflet for its foreign guests. I looked at it, thought it was too confusing, and didn't bother learning anything about it at all.

Then I moved to India, where it was certainly necessary to learn the basics.

But I never thought I'd get an article published in a well-known online cricket news site!

Read it here:

http://www.cricbuzz.com/cricket-series/cricket-news/71373/south-africas-exit-brought-breakup-level-sadness

Thanks to G. Rajaraman for forcing me to put my thoughts into written word form :)

I put the world in neutral

Over the last few months, I have drifted far, far away from my daily Bengali study.

I don't know exactly why, especially at a time when I should have been eager to learn - our Let's Learn Bengali open group has crossed 800 members and the intermediate group has progressed so much. I still speak with my in-laws regularly. I have many Indian and Bangladeshi friends who want to talk to me in their own mother tongue, yet it is me who resists, even as I don't want to resist. I want to hear them talk about their day, the joys and frustrations, the deeper things of life, to be fully and truly themselves. I want to be able to capture that in myself, the inflections, pauses, the allusions. I have so much opportunity right now to really plunge in and become bilingual, culturally competent in more than one sphere. 

But I'm not there, and maybe it's that I'm judging myself for the halting sentences, the superficial conversations, the accent I will never lose, the translating from English, the trying to remember what page in the textbook that grammatical construct was on. I'm spending too much time in my head that I can't converse, I can't understand, I can't love. So I go back to default, put my world in neutral instead of moving forever forward. I can compose the most beautiful lines in my own mother tongue, weave words into a tapestry that captures a feeling, decorates a moment. Yet when I read Raihan's Bengali poetry, I'm lost on the third word and I can't even understand the denotative meaning, much less appreciate the beauty and deeper meanings. A cry of delight leaves me analyzing - can I say those words too? When? Will they laugh at me if I do? Does sundor apply to more than just things you see? What about things you hear? taste? Why am I wondering these things when I should be enjoying the time with friends, the good food, the music? I hate that I am thinking so much and living so little, so little that I don't even remember the moments afterward. I'm not even learning very much this way. But is it necessary? I know that I have to be uncomfortable while learning and using a new language, but is it even doing me any good? I know there's still lots to learn and work to do. But the work is getting in the way and I seem to be spinning my wheels, not improving.

I don't have to learn Bengali, you know. My husband speaks perfectly good English. There are plenty of non-Indian women married to Indians who never learn much more than a few phrases. I speak well enough to have simple conversations with my in-laws. But I just want more than that. I want to be able to connect with them about more than just the weather and cooking. I want to be able to comfort my friends in difficult times, on their terms. I want to be able to discuss books and movies, and exactly what I liked and did not like about them. I want to know when the compliment I think I'm getting is an icy barb in disguise. But no textbook has chapters on these things. I am not interested in textbooks anymore; they don't teach the things I really want to know. How to live, how to love, how to connect to people in the language their heart speaks. That's the reason I want to learn and always has been. It still feels like there's a gulf between, and I'm not sure if I can get to the other side. 

But from yesterday on, I'll make my tiny futile attempts to do just that. 

Lost in the shadows of the city lights

Portrait of Saurish Lahiri by Anirban Saha

Post originally written in April 2012 as a reaction to the above photo for Anirban Saha's photography project. His fantastic website is http://www.anirbansaha.com

There's a comfort in anonymity; in being one in a million. One in five million, to be more precise.

She lets go of my hand. Even though the night is warm and muggy, the sudden coolness in my palm spreads throughout my body. We step off the train. This is no time or place for sentimentality. We go our separate ways. No one has to know.

My mind remembers; my hand remembers as I make my way home through narrow streets unsuitable for the number of people who travel them daily. I skip over a pothole, dodge a passing car. The driver honks his horn at me. It is the only interaction we will ever have. 

I keep walking. Passers-by complain about the weather. Hot; humid; smog; pollution. But they understand nothing. The fools don't realize that they cannot breathe because the night air is full of urgency. 

Everything is important right now. The weather, the cars, the girl. Especially the girl. Some kid, slouching along in his low-slung jeans and too-tight t-shirt, is playing music out loud on his phone. I've heard two songs now and they were both about her. Every song is about her. DJ, get out of my head.

I catch a whiff of what seems like her perfume; I become hypervigilant, searching for her face in the crowd. But she is not there; perhaps it was someone else, perhaps only an olfactory memory, but it nearly brings me to my knees. I lean against the side of the nearest building and catch my breath. That damned kid is still somewhere around. Maybe I should give him my headphones. But then a familiar guitar intro slams into me, soon to be followed by lyrics that will tear into my soul. A river of red taillights adds to my sensory overload. 

Isn't this what I wanted? This feeling that everything matters? This crowd, the fading summer heat, these taillights, these songs, this perfume? The moment where everything is centered in Her; this feeling of endless possibility that will only last until I dial her number one last time, only to find it disconnected? 

This very moment is the pinnacle of my life, in all of its pain. After this moment, it's all downhill from here.

 I close my eyes. A tear slips through the lashes. 

No one has to know.