Dangerous Intersection
Returning to a Changed Country & the Future of HONK
Last week, my family and I arrived back home in Western Massachusetts. Not long after, I took my daughter and her friends to the lake near our house to swim. On the way we passed this sign:
When we got to the lake, a kid in the water was hollering at his mom, who was standing on the shore, making sure she watched as he bobbed underwater. “Tell me,” he yelled, “if I disappear.”
After leaving India earlier this month, I hadn’t really known what to expect - not from the country to which I’m returning, nor from myself. I can’t overstate my gratitude for the time I had in Kolkata, which included the privilege of a keeping a life-on-hold in the U.S. But the flip side of the relative ease with which I’ve slipped back into this other version of my existence is the disorientation of the familiar.
Having left one life and re-emerged into another, I’ve been feeling kind of invisible, not because I no longer stick out as foreign, but because I can’t quite shake the sense that I don’t fully exist anywhere, in either place. Perhaps the strangest part of navigating juxtaposed, disparate lives is that I’m seemingly the conduit. I’m the one meant to now metabolize that experience into this experience. I’m supposed to have learned something. Instead, I feel the opposite, like I don’t understand anything, including this road sign, but also whether the last year of living in Kolkata even happened. I feel like the kid in the lake: Tell me if I disappear.
One way I hope not to disappear from my Kolkata life is with the continuation of HONK. But what might a Kolkata Almanac look like if I’m no longer in Kolkata? The short answer is that I’m not entirely sure yet. My intention for this newsletter was always to amplify the voices and work of writers, artists, scholars, and activists from across West Bengal and the Bengali diaspora, and I’m hopeful that now, in a roundabout way, I will have more time to do just that.
Originally, I also started this newsletter to connect a network of students and faculty, in and around Kolkata, who are invested in creating more opportunities for local writing instruction and literary community. Though I don’t know yet exactly when I’ll be returning to Kolkata to teach, I will keep folks posted. I will also ask friends and colleagues in West Bengal to let me know about any workshops, readings, and/or other relevant goings-on there to share here. So if you are reading this from India and have any publication updates, student experiences, or upcoming opportunities, please do get in touch!
Otherwise, I want to take some time, in the coming weeks, to extend my thanks to some of the many, many people who supported me this past year in my own research, the stacks of which I’m both eager to settle down with and a little nervous to unpack.
But aside from future teaching and writing, for now, I can’t help but look back. Kolkata is a relentlessly wonderful city, and I miss it. So, today, I’m sharing some of what I miss most, hoping these moments and sensations don’t disappear from me.
I miss South Kolkata for its verandas and shutters and color:
I miss signs that sound like poems:
I miss Kolkata’s willingness to throw everything and anything into a taxi:
I miss the public validation of the worth and necessity of literature:
I miss the cinematic lighting of Kolkata at night:
I miss this dog who kept watch over the intersection of Gariahat Road and Ballygunge Park Road, prancing out into traffic in his little winter jacket like a sheriff:
And I miss the sometimes not-so-subtle reminders that everyone has a story:
Loved the ode in pictures.
Like the story and the photos! welcome Home! I wonder what conversations go on at home with the kid in the water and his family😵💫. Here in Nor Cal we have LOTSA of road signs. Just about 2 miles away is one that says “ICE” on a curve…even though in July it is always between 95 and 105. A better one would be…”road is melting ahead”. 👍
And Sacramento has 3 different signs for almost the same thing in the residential areas.
Speed Bumps
Speed Humps
Speed Lumps
I guess it depends on the height of each one. ? 🤔. But they do get your attention to “SLOW DOWN”. Stay well and happy.