Day 8 #100daysofhappiness2023

I got in a good session of study today. I am of course still extremely slow. No, it's not because I have to revise bachelors. I'm just lost with everything at the Masters level. I find it hard. I'm trying but I'm also struggling. 

I calmed down a bit, even wasted so much time because it felt like okay this is not the only thing I'm deriving my value from. Its an effort to keep remembering it but this trip helped. 

I thought a bit in between about what home means for me. I'm getting used to the edges of the idea that this room is my home. If I think deeply, it feels rough and unreal - I have to make myself comfortable here? This is not a place to sleep and rest only but a place to be me. I've been here for a month already and there are physical markers of me. The street is darkened at the place where I dropped the cough syrup bottle when I was sick, my bike has a spot in front of our apartment where I don't chain it to a pole anymore because it seems safe enough, I know there is a pleasant and kind bus driver who drives the Alexander Station - Kralingse Zoom route at nights around 9 pm, the elderly woman cashier who puts a lot of makeup at the supermarket downstairs speaks only Dutch and that the ice cream cafe place has two slot machines hidden well behind at the end visible only if you walk the whole length of the place. Is it an indication that I'm settling in? Or my mind is telling me to? Pieces of me are left behind in Lodhi, in the puchkas of Hazra more, in Baa's room sleeping in the heat, with faiba learning embroidery (again in the heat haha), in my room where I read, in my living room where I watch TV with M, maa, N, of having good food and conversation at Bhatta house. 

I remember this from the first time I'd moved from home. I'd not completely emptied my water bottle completely in days this one time after a short trip back. In this really weird, creepy way it was my way of making sure that the new Calcutta water would always remain mixed with the original Jamshedpur water and by this science I'd always have that with me. Kid logic haha. Maybe that's why I haven't even cut off the tag from the festoon decor I carried with me. Think I want to let it stay untouched for as long as possible. Sure, yes, I'm going with that because it also sounds deeper than saying I was too lazy to grab a pair of scissors.

Now, I'm planting my pieces here too. I'm building pathways and attachments here to different cities. Its a strange thought and I almost resist it. I'm living here, in this moment, and like it or not this land of bland and cold food and where nothing has felt right for so long is my home. I plan to buy boxes and groceries and pretty bedsheets to make this home beautiful and comfortable. I still can't call it my home. Yet, I'm trying to change these 4 walls to resemble it.