I was sipping iced coffee in the Coffee House; The same coffee house that had witnessed the famous addas that led to films, books, music. So strange to think that an afternoon conversation with hot chai could build the steps to the threshold of your career. The city of joy has always had an aura. One that makes you dream and want to sit there eating chicken rolls and phuchkas and breathing in the scent of books and history. It makes you want to conquer the world and lets you believe that it's possible, but at the same time it makes you stop and marvel at the beautiful little things that fate provides. Like the blue window my sister had taken a polaroid of. Kolkata is literature, it is cinema, it is music, it is art, And it is home. A home that I never quite felt anywhere else. A home that harbours a different kind of family. One that I could never fully meet but also one that has never felt incomplete. All of those conversations with my mashimumum, all the stories she'd told us. I'd never heard those stories before and I'd wished so hard that I had learned those carefully crafted words from more voices, I had wished for the ability to go back in time. And of course, I still do, but now I am glad that I at least got to see the world through her eyes and most importantly, I got to eat the gurer payesh that she had made just for us. Walking through Goriahat, I always found it hard to believe that so many beautiful, wonderful things could exist all at once. It had seemed wrong to me, that we were allowed to be a part of this world. At the time, these thoughts just faded away, and the same happened at the Coffee House. I was bursting with pride at having taken this picture. And so the beauty of this city decided to play a game with my childish mind. It had decided to keep a piece of me in itself, like a picture in a locket, and I am forever grateful. The polaroid still hangs in my room, A quiet reminder of home.