In Calcutta there were times when I would wake up one morning and say that it felt like Durga Pujo. Every time I said "Aaj pujo-pujo laagchey" Ma would laugh. It was simply in the air - the sunlight through the leaves did not scorch, the breeze was warm and moist, the sky just blue enough. A sense of festivity would linger somewhere in the crevices of my mind through the day, secretly hoping that it really was Pujo.

Now, sitting by my window overlooking Woodhouse Road, something in the air reminded me of the lane behind the temple in Mangalwadi. The late afternoon sun, the sky, the green and, above all else, the calm. It reminded me of the 21 chicken pox-ridden afternoons that I spent looking out of the window by my bed with nothing but solitude for company. Solitude - I then learnt - can teach you a lot of things. It changes the way you look at things, also the things you look at. For three weeks I had lived on that bed, with enough energy to walk to the toilet with blisters beneath my feet, returning only to collapse in exhaustion. The window showed me a square filled with normalcy - a temple, a lane, children playing, cyclists, stray dogs, vegetable vendors, a row of single-storeyed asbestos-roofed homes. The temple bell and my pagla kokeel. Matrukrupa is one place of which I have nothing but memories... no photographs, nothing.

Now I can't help wondering how different my life would have been if chicken pox had not happened - two persons would perhaps still be there, and one person perhaps not.

...in that case, I am bloody happy that it happened!