It's hard to explain how being here (but not specifically right *here*, so i guess only meaning *here* as *far away from there*?) calms something in me. I carry all this knowledge of Life Outside in my heart, but I have almost no space for it in my regular life in Canada/America, where Westernness just overwhelms everything else.

Last night I had dinner at a Bangladeshi home and after dinner they all sat together and sang. This was so familiar to me. Growing up, this is what my parents' friends and family would do at almost every gathering. The dynamics were the same: the back and forth, people being urged to sing and demurring, and then being convinced. Everyone joining in eventually.

But my family sang English songs - Harry Belafonte, etc. while these people sang Bengali classical songs and Bollywood favorites - the latter a nod to me, wearing my kurta that my mother and sister picked out for me in India last February. I texted my sister, "they want me to sing, what am I supposed to do, sing 'Kingston Town?'"

I texted my mum, "these people are speaking Bengali and I can't understand any of it! It's your fault, why didn't you teach us Hindi, I'm a fraud, all I have is this dress" and she texted back "I'm sorry! My parents didn't speak it either!". I knew that. She didn't belong there and that's why she left, and now I don't belong there, but I don't exactly belong at home either. So we are always a minority and I always feel slightly out of step with whatever is around me. and I can't figure out what to do about it.

The older I get, the worse it feels. As my mother's community gets older and older, we'll lose all the connections and that will be that. The song my parents' friends used to close with, the old drinking song, 'show me the way to go home', feels truer than ever.

10:08 a.m. - 2015-11-16