By Tejaswinee Roychowdhury
It’s my last evening in this city.
I’ll miss waking up to the gurgling coos of wild spotted doves marching on the window ledge by my bed. It is the only thing I’ll miss of what used to be home.
That’s a lie.
I’ll miss the scent of the river too, and the loud bird conferences after the sunsets. I’ll miss the lush banyan and mango trees; I’ll miss the love and the wrath of the west wind. I’ll miss my cosy little room in the heart of it all, and I’ll miss its solitude that made me into the woman I am today.
Funny, it’s the people I won’t miss, especially their bickering and their caterwauling. I barely got to know them, and yet, it is them that I’m leaving to nest among everything I will miss.
And I have no clue what to make of this peculiar dilemma.
Tejaswinee Roychowdhury is an emerging writer from West Bengal, India. Her work is published/forthcoming in Usawa Literary Review, Bullshit Lit Mag, Active Muse, Third Lane Magazine, Kitaab, Borderless Journal, Funny Pearls, The World Of Myth Magazine, and elsewhere. She is also the featured (and interviewed) writer in Issue 2 of Alphabet Box. When not writing, she is a lawyer and as of November 2021, she has also been serving as an Assistant Professor at a law school two days a week. You can find her tweeting at @TejaswineeRC while she chronicles her list of publications at linktr.ee/tejaswinee.
The Birdseed 