Fragments from a journal left open to the wind
The room smells like old coffee and eucalyptus lotion.
The window doesn’t shut completely, and the air leaks in like a reminder.
He wakes up some days without knowing what day it is.
"I think I dreamed in my mother tongue last night. I woke up halfway through a sentence I couldn’t finish."
Someone asked about his festival. Diwali.
They smiled. He smiled.
They said, “Like Christmas in India?”
He nodded.
It was easier that way.
Later, he wrote in the margins of a reading assignment:
"Not everything has a western equivalent. Some things just are."
He is doing well, objectively.
Grades, deadlines, funding mostly in place.
Nothing’s on fire, but nothing is warm either.
Last week, he walked into a small cafe and ordered tea.
The woman at the counter asked for his name.
He told her, slowly.
She repeated it once, then again — almost right.
He smiled like that was enough. It was, and it wasn’t.
"Maybe I expect too much from strangers. Maybe I expect too little."
The friendships are functional.
People remember your major, not your birthday.
They ask if you’ve finished the reading, not how you slept.
It’s not their fault — no one owes intimacy.
But still.
"Sometimes I want someone to ask me who I was before I came here. Not what I do now."
His roommate plays loud music sometimes.
It helps — fills the space with rhythm when his mind starts echoing.
The other day, he danced in the kitchen while frying onions.
It was brief, awkward. Joy cracked through like light under a door.
"I think I’m allowed to be happy here, even if I don’t always recognize it as mine."
He sends voice notes to his sister.
Some get replies, some don’t.
Time zones are real. So is forgetting how to talk freely.
There are days he skips dinner to save a few dollars.
Then spends that saved money on a book he might not read.
He tells himself it's balance.
"What is essential? What is indulgence? I don’t know anymore."
Memory is cruelly precise.
His father’s slippers by the door.
The sound of water boiling for tea.
The soft slap of clothes drying in the breeze.
He smells detergent here and thinks of home.
Not the place — the feeling.
He walked into a seminar late once.
The professor said his name right.
Didn’t look at notes. Didn’t ask for spelling.
It stunned him more than the lecture.
"Why does being seen feel like a surprise?"
There’s a park two blocks away.
He goes there sometimes just to watch people jog with dogs, or mothers hold children’s hands too tightly.
He likes observing a world that doesn’t look back.
There’s peace in being irrelevant.
A quiet that doesn’t demand performance.
"Here, I can fall apart without disrupting anything."
He once stood in the supermarket holding a bar of chocolate for ten minutes.
Calculating calories, price, mood, guilt, longing.
Then put it back. Then picked it up again. Then walked out.
"Some days, even pleasure feels expensive."
He used to write poetry.
Now he writes abstracts.
But sometimes, on the bus, between Spotify ads, a line will appear.
And he’ll type it into Notes, then never return to it.
It’s enough, somehow.
ஓடும் நீரைச் சுற்றி இருக்கும் குடிசைகள்
ஆனதோ மாபெரும் மாளிகைகள்?
கந்தல் உடையும் மனிதர்கள்
ஆனாரோ ராஜ உடை உடுத்தும் ஜமீந்தார்கள்!
ஆனால்,
பின்தரையில் விழும் உன் நிழல்
ஆகுமோ முன் நீரில் விழும் உன் பிம்பம் போல்?
He calls his mother on Sundays.
She asks if he’s eating well.
He says yes. He doesn’t elaborate.
Neither does she. That’s the language they’ve agreed on now.
"Some things are too sacred to translate. Even into your own language."
He is not sure if he’s becoming someone or just shedding old versions of himself.
It’s hard to measure growth when you feel suspended —
not sinking, not flying. Just… moving.
"Maybe the point isn’t to arrive. Just to keep choosing."
There’s a corner table in the library where sunlight hits at 4 PM.
It feels like a secret. Like something that belongs to him.
He reads there on days he feels misplaced.
He never tells anyone.
"I am not unhappy. I am not okay. I am just... aware."
Some days, he imagines what it would be like to return home.
To be greeted not with questions, but with familiarity.
No explanations. No context. Just presence.
Other days, he doesn’t want to go back at all.
There’s something noble in the loneliness.
Something holy in learning to be alone without feeling abandoned.
Tomorrow, he has three meetings, a paper to submit, and no groceries.
But tonight, he sits on the floor with a bowl of rice and some pickles from a jar mailed months ago.
He plays music he loved in high school.
It sounds both ridiculous and perfect.
"Maybe the boy I was and the man I’m becoming can meet here — just for this song."
To be continued...
Note: English with the help of AI, and emotions with the help of a human.