The last perfectly uninterrupted sleep I had was at least fifteen years ago. I can't even recollect what it was to be so soundly asleep that banging doors, ringing doorbells, rattling window panes could not shake off my afternoon siesta. I was alone at home and the folks were locked out for over an hour. Today they would merely have to tip-toe up the stairs and I'd be at the door at time of the night. The luxury of an afternoon nap is a distant memory. Reading this study on sleep drives home what I already know about sleeplessness. I am only too well Acquainted with the Night
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t
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