At the beginning of the summer of 1986, my parents separated. My mother and I left the flat on Gurusaday Road where I’d lived all my life, to stay with my grandparents on the opposite bank of the Hooghly River in the district of Shibpur. As we sat in the taxi, Ma told me that at the end of the hol
Read MoreShe had trouble recognising her son when he visited. This wasn’t entirely accurate, he acknowledged; Bernie was either known or new. When he arrived at the nursing home, a carer would greet him and indicate if it was a sunny or cloudy day; it referred to his mother’s powers of recall, but those
Read MoreI was in the air when she died. Gliding over the Black Sea, too far above the clouds to see the glistening blue breaking up hours of land mass beneath my feet. Struggling to sleep with a deflating neck pillow and a restless mind. I was three hours into my first leg when she drew her last breath.
Read MoreThe first time I realised Maami had her own voice, could make her own decisions without the help of my father, was the day Bami brought home a new wife, and Maami kicked against it with such vehemence that surprised me. This happened a day after Aunty Suliya came from Iseyin to seek Bami's financ
Read MoreIt was a foolhardy thing to do, indicative of the brothers’ lack of experience with high volumes of water. Indicative of hubris, too, if boys that young can be accused of hubris. But perhaps it would be more accurate simply to call it innocence. It had been a long winter followed by a rainy Mar
Read MoreThe man loves his three hats. His wife, she doesn’t love them; to her they are just a chore. They lie wherever he leaves them, and she must pick them up, put them back where they belong. Again, and again. Over the decades, she must have picked up those hats hundreds of times. Thousands. But the
Read MoreResting my forehead on the tiny, wheezing fan in my 38°C apartment, I watch sunlight dapple and blur through its bars and make white the yellow and perhaps someday this city will quieten. Maybe it was the heat then, too. Maybe it was this glimmering tongue of a city that I was so sure would swallow
Read MoreJack Rosenberg blew into our lives when I was twelve; any way you looked at him (up, down or even sideways) you saw cash. On Long Island, he was one of those super-rich snobby neighbours who only nodded hello, because he didn’t want to waste a whole wave on us. When we ran into him in Florida, he
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