So I grabbed my suitcase, hastily packed from yet another short-term abode and dragged it up the remaining stairs to the terrace, banging against my calves. Within two minutes, my clothes were inside the single mirrored cupboard. My two books were on the shelf alongside Johnathan's two books of collected Tagore poems. My grandfather's dogtag from WWII hung off the handle of a decorative jug.
I look around.
A large room, a double bed in the corner, the doors and windows covered with soft bamboo blinds giving a shaded stillness. Fan whirring. I lay on the bed gazing at the ceiling, listening to the ever-present honking of car horns below, far enough away to lose the impact of the frustration and persistence they represent.
I lay back. Calcutta.
What am I doing here?
My mind goes - as it has done repeatedly and pointlessly for months now - to the last few years of my life, in a futile attempt to find the thread linking all the pieces together.
Israel, London, break up, India, ashram, breakdown, London again, France ...
Somewhere the thread snapped.
"Move on, move on. You have to move on," everyone but everyone was telling me. Yet I was frozen in a dark terror, riddled with fear, nerves shattered, mind stonewalled, seeing nothing but black.
Until ...
It was an odds against all odds. My CV posted on an Indian job website, a call to my parents' house one snowy morning after Christmas, a swift interview, a lengthy visa process and a few months later I am the new international editor for a newspaper start-up in Calcutta ...
And so a new thread begins ...
I look around.
A large room, a double bed in the corner, the doors and windows covered with soft bamboo blinds giving a shaded stillness. Fan whirring. I lay on the bed gazing at the ceiling, listening to the ever-present honking of car horns below, far enough away to lose the impact of the frustration and persistence they represent.
I lay back. Calcutta.
What am I doing here?
My mind goes - as it has done repeatedly and pointlessly for months now - to the last few years of my life, in a futile attempt to find the thread linking all the pieces together.
Israel, London, break up, India, ashram, breakdown, London again, France ...
Somewhere the thread snapped.
"Move on, move on. You have to move on," everyone but everyone was telling me. Yet I was frozen in a dark terror, riddled with fear, nerves shattered, mind stonewalled, seeing nothing but black.
Until ...
It was an odds against all odds. My CV posted on an Indian job website, a call to my parents' house one snowy morning after Christmas, a swift interview, a lengthy visa process and a few months later I am the new international editor for a newspaper start-up in Calcutta ...
And so a new thread begins ...
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