This is the green roof of a building next to ours. Who knew that Calcuttans are environmentally-conscious? I was thinking about trying to befriend someone in that building so that I could hang out up there. But then I remembered that I'm lazy.
I collected toilet paper rolls for weeks, hoping to use them for some sort of to-be-determined craft project. Neela thought I was crazy and threatened to throw my stash out in my sleep if I didn't do something with them. Finally I came up with the idea of cutting cross sections and making a map of India on our living room wall out of them. Bangladesh (what what) is prominently displayed using bright orange origami paper. Take a look at the pic from this post to see where it is in relation to the rest of the room (its in the left corner).
... cuz that's totally what these two on my kitchen floor look like they're doing. Either that, or one's eating the other's head.
Two more months 'til I'm back in the states and see the fam! Above: my parents, unknown date (though from the look of my mom's sari and the thickness of my dad's hair, I'd guess sometime in the 70s).
I love crafts. Neela has these bowls, which I commandeered I when I realized the colors match almost perfectly with origami paper I brought with me from Muji. It took a while for me to decide what I'd do exactly, but I finally settled on origami lilies. Pretty!
Having been brought up the US, where we're inculcated with a sense of revulsion at the mere mention of communism or socialism (until you attend an uber-liberal university, that is), living in CPI(M)-stronghold West Bengal and seeing the hammer and sickle everywhere was a bit of a shock at first. However, like all things, they eventually just become a part of the scenery.
Here's a photostitch of the living room of our apartment. Now that I'm moving back to the states, it's probably the nicest place that I'm going to live in the next ten years. Sigh.
I bought a jasmine plant months ago, and it quickly seemed to have blossomed all that it was going to for this year. But then some weeks ago, a few new buds appeared. I was excited for these to finally blossom and once again fill up the part of the living room that they inhabit with their gentle scent. 
I’ve killed 5 huge cockroaches in our flat in the last 3 days. And I mean HUGE. Before this week, we’d only seen one roach every now and again. Maybe it’s the season change? Or maybe the pipes in the building are being worked on, forcing the cockroaches to flee? Either way, this is no good and I’m waging a full-out war on roaches. Naphthalene balls, boric acid, that chalky pen thing, roach spray… I’m going for ALL of it. Those damn roaches will be sorry they ever messed with Flat 10F.
Current cockroach death count: 5
I saw the most amazing thing today: A middle-aged man on a bicycle wearing a hot pink jumper emblazoned with the word “JAZZERCIZE” on the back.
Not gonna lie: I kind of want one.
I recently started reading Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri’s third book. I’m not going to wax poetic about how much her stories “speak” to me (though they do), or how well she captures the Bengali-American experience as I’ve experienced it (though she does). But I did want to post a passage from the first short story about Ruma, a first-generation Bengali-American:
“By now Akash had forgotten the little Bengali Ruma had taught him when he was little. After he started speaking in full sentences English had taken over, and she lacked the discipline to stick to Bengali. Besides, it was one thing to coo at him in Bengali, to point to this or that and tell him the corresponding words. But it was another to be authoritative; Bengali had never been a language in which she felt like an adult. Her own Bengali was slipping from her. Her mother had been strict, so much so that Ruma had never spoken to her in English. But her father didn’t mind.”
I’ve often thought about whether I’m going to teach my kids Bengali. I kind of want them to know a bunch of languages (right now, the list is English, Arabic, Spanish, French, and Hindi), so who knows if they’ll even have room in their heads for Bengali. Also, I worry that my own Bengali isn’t good enough to teach to them and trust that what they speak won't come out as an unrecognizable Banglish mess.
“Bengali had never been a language in which she felt like an adult.” I hadn’t really thought about it in these terms before, but perhaps part of the reason why I wanted to come to Calcutta was to feel like an adult in Bengali.
I love really big birds that can't fly. Ostriches are awesome. Penguins are pleasant. But I especially love emus. So I was pretty excited when during the AIF midpoint retreat last week at Anandwan, a community living ashram for lepers and disabled people near the geographic center of India, Hemant (a fellow fellow) discovered a pen with a couple of emus. Emus! If I ever become an eccentric and reclusive pop star and have a zoo in my backyard a la Michael Jackson, I'm definitely going to populate it with more than a few emus.
