Ma won’t make poha for us on Sunday evenings anymore, and even on the rare occasions that she does, she won’t serve those golden-yellow grains alongside a glass full of steaming hot milk. I no longer ride behind your metallic cycle on my pastel one every school morning. I go by car, the one you scratched with your badminton racket. 

Nobody can sing me to sleep the way you used to, and no one likes to call strangers past midnight; they think it’s kiddish. Maybe you found it kiddish, too, but you called anyway.

Do you not remember how just yesterday you were packing your suitcase and how today you’re already sleeping on new pillows in a new house with new roommates? Every morning I wake up and am reminded that you’re in a different country on a different continent surrounded by different people, and that makes me feel pain like nothing an X-ray could ever show. 

Ma will stop serving poha and steaming hot milk altogether. Papa will start reading the newspaper on the mobile app. Dadi will start calling me her favourite. I want to tie a rakhi on your wrist and not just ship it to you—can you just come back home? Twice a year for just two weeks is too little. Too little, bhaiya. It is too little.