I started writing "Of things I left behind" series because I was missing everything and anything that reminded me of UK. I don't know if it was telepathy or coincidence, but PG wrote a blogpost recently which says all the things I wanted to say, only more articulately.

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Perhaps I'm just in a very nostalgic sentimental phase of life, but the kitchen brings back such fond memories. Mornings and afternoons and evenings and nights spent gossipping over boiling pasta, analysing love lives over mugs of hot chocolate, talking about friends and fun from back home over community dinners - D takes care of aloo, P takes care of rice, R handles the veggies, J does the parathas, P does the dal - singing along with James Blunt over a mop and vaccuum cleaner, stuffing an overstuffed fridge with labelled green peppers, screaming noisy crass meaningless hindi filmi numbers in chorus on a tipsy freezing cold night. Making brownies from scratch, making pizza from scratch, making oatmeal cookies from scratch, making 5 kinds of stuffed parathas from scratch, making Aunty Daisy's lemon pudding from scratch, pancakes and honey, rolling puris with a coke can, tossing spagetti on a wall to check if it's done, poking around in the cake and then wondering why it isn't rising, visiting mums and feasts, birthday parties, late night movies on laptops that weren't loud enough, photography sessions that went on for hours, last minute essay submissions, makeover sessions, kitchen wall collages, christmas lights, diwali diyas. I do the cooking, you do the dishes; I do the clearing, you do the wiping; I do the mopping, you take out the garbage; and then we sit together and look at holiday pictures and tell stories and exchange gifts. Or we gush about clearance sales and parade our exploits. Then there's the cute guy at the bank, and the tutor with a smile to die for, or the very hot lab partner, or the fellow who gave you the look in the computer cluster, or a cheating boyfriend, or a long distance relationship gone sour, or a story of unrequited love, or an all-the-way-from-middle-school-to- now crush that went her own way. And you dream. Of a Harvard PhD, a world-tour, a cafe-cum-library, living happily-ever-after.

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Miss you guys SO much! (MUAH! HUGS!)
I want to go back! I want to do it all over again!