Home, where are you? (2024 - Ongoing)

Until the age of eleven, Bengal was the only world I knew, marked with the stillness of the afternoons, the sound of palm leaves in the wind, and the gulmohar trees that signaled the change of seasons. My mother would send greeting cards to her sister, painted with boats and quiet countryside scenes.

When I left, those memories became more precious but also less real. I began to see that the Bengal I carried with me was different from the Bengal that existed in history books or the eyes of outsiders. Colonial rule had reduced it to a place of poverty and despair, stripping away the complexity and intimacy that I knew. Living in Canada, I felt that distance even more. I wanted to tell the story of Bengal as I had lived it, which was neither exotic nor broken. 

"Home, Where Are You?" is my attempt to find the Bengal of my childhood.