On my way home from the gym this afternoon, I looked up at the chawl next door. Something I don’t usually do. The chawl – inhabited by more people than I can imagine I am sure – is dilapidated and sometimes I am genuinely concerned about its safety. What if the rotting wooden beams and banisters give way one monsoon and the structure comes crashing down?

Apart from being decrepit, it – at least its surroundings and parts of the balconies and corridors that I can see – is filthy. More reason not to look in that direction.
But this afternoon I saw something else.

A pink teddy bear – with a white satin bow around its chubby neck – was being put out to dry on the clothesline outside the first floor balcony. It was hanging by its ears – with two large clothes pegs attached to them. It was sopping wet of course.
A woman was making sure that it was firmly in place while, next to her, stood a girl. She was too small to look over the balcony banister and was peering through the rotting wooden beams, putting out a hand to touch the teddy, as if trying to reassure it that the ordeal would soon be over. Or was she reassuring herself?

Half-an-hour later, when I was rushing out to work, I looked up again. The girl was now accompanied by two boys, all of the same size. They were squatting in the balcony, huddled near to where the stuffed bear hung solemnly from the nylon rope. One of the boys put out his hand now to pat the toy on the head and it bobbed a bit.

It reminded me of when, as kids, one of us would fall ill and the others would come to visit. There would be hushed voices, soft footfalls, uncertain thoughts and the over-riding wish that the boy or girl would quickly get well so that we could all play again.

Twenty months after staying in Bombay, I realised what I miss most about staying at home – home, of course, always, is New Alipore.
When I had moved into my hole-in-the-wall house at Mahim (similar holes-in-walls around me are occupied by full-sized families) I had woken up to the smell of pork vindaloo one Sunday morning. As I woke up and lay in bed, miserable and cranky, I was surrounded by the most delicious aroma of something I had never tasted and yet I knew exactly what it was (courtesy, painfully detailed descriptions by I of course). And such aroma is not the first thing you want to resist when you have just woken up!
But resist I had to.
Now, 20 months later, I was walking towards the gate of my building when another such aroma threatened to waylay me. It smelt distinctly of maangshor jhol – the kind we would have on Sunday afternoons when everyone would be home and Ma would be in the kitchen since morning, only to emerge holood-smeared, exhausted, sweaty and triumphant.
Am sure it could not have been maangshor jhol that I had smelt now, simply because there are no Bengalis living there. But whatever it was, it made me realise what I had missed most in the seven years that I have lived away from home: The wafting smells from the kitchen.
I would follow my nose in there, pick out pieces – in various stages of being cooked – from the kodai full of bubbling and spitting curry, lift the covers of all the vessels to see if I had missed out on anything and often leave with a bowlful of whatever was being cooked, blowing on my fingers as the steaming food stung them.

Then, it had just been the food. Now, it seems that, food apart, the aromas from the kitchen meant that things were fine – it was like a hug that said: "Everything's alright".

My own kitchen, of course, gives off no such aroma.