Again ...

There is an often repeated colloquial wisdom that says you cannot go home again. This would of course only be true if home was an immutable place and not an animated multiplicity of sites that include physical and psychological places of belonging.


From mid 2006 till a week ago, south Delhi close to Nelson Mandela Marg where this picture was taken, became my home. And just like the many homes I've inhabited before, both tangible and intangible, I had to accept its beckon and immerse myself beyond the trepidation to run.

So I returned to south Delhi from Kathmandu, Malacca, Srinagar, Kumpong Chetty, to frogs in my bathroom with bags of stuff and baggage that I've tried to unpack before, but elsewhere.


In the beginning I ordered a plan drawn up in-between waking hours of copying and pasting my trials into empty and useless frames of contrition. I decided to fall asleep for real the night when the frog in this picture stayed the night and left before I awoke.


Somewhere in the middle of teaching graduate students about Amilcar Cabral's political theory I wondered how the frog was doing. And then I let it go, like I did before, and before that, and there I was, home again.


And she was there ready to teach more than just Cabral to me. Again.