Skip to main content

Remembering Youth

The first night in New York was suffocating. The combination of heat and stale smoke from the forest fires made it hard to stay outdoors. Inside the hotel, cut off the pulsing energy of the city that always drew me in, it felt pointless to even be here. I decided to brave the elements and go out for a walk. I have survived Kolkata in the high heat of August as recently as last year so how hard could this be. It was much worse than I imagined and I am still not sure why - that restless energy stayed with me for the rest of my stay. Falling asleep at night was hard unless I took long walks but the walks made me feel unwell after a while. One evening, I passed out quite suddenly. One moment, I was chatting with people around and the next I had was not there in the here and now. I had lost some time by the the time I came to.

All ended up being well and the next several days proceeded without event. But the sudden loss of control, the heat induced event left me feeling a great sense of unease. What about this city was making me so uncomfortable all times of day and night this time around. Was I imagining things being in the air that were not. Why were all those people in the train coughing - the man behind me had a hollow, rattling cough that stilled all the conversation around. Presumably, others were concerned too like I was. Yet, the locals carried on with their lives. I was a visitor for a week and I tried to emulate their example - acted like all was well and normal. 

New York and Seattle are the anchoring points for my coming to America experience. If the anchors start to come unmoored, then I don't feel like I am have ground beneath my feet in a figurative sense. The last few times I have been in Seattle, I have been overcome by melancholy over what it no longer is - a far cry from the first time ever I saw it over two decades ago. New York, specially this last time felt too far removed from my best, brightest memories of the city also from that time. My cousin M often drove us into the city in his trusty Ford Explorer. It was usually around dinner time that we went out. M had his favorite places he showed us, I tried my first Cosmo at M's favorite bar. 

It did not help my relationship with New York that M passed away suddenly in his 20s. It was a brutal blow for the whole family- we never got a chance to say good bye. His parents were not able to get him to the hospital on time as he had fallen sick abroad and his treatment was delayed past the point of no return. M's passing changed New York for me forever because my divorce followed soon thereafter. It used to be the three of us going out to the city together, M brought out the best in people and our meetings with him brought restorative energy to our struggling marriage.

Whenever I am back in New York, I try to reclaim those long ago days - the animated conversations, easy laughter and certainty about the future that can often be the territory of ignorant youth. 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

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
111 comments
Read more

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha
5 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques
6 comments
Read more