back to Greenwich time

7:05 am. Just sent brother, mom, and sister-in-law off to Gatwick airport. Watching the dawn of my first day in London for the new year. Flatmates are deep in sleep but the quiet isn't vibrating eerily as in Kohima because the early weekend traffic keeps me company. No more Indian Standard Time or pikha cha (black tea in Nagamese, a pidgin of Assamese, Hindi and Angami) after meals or late-night guitar sing-outs next to the fire, a glass of Johnnie Walker Blue Label in hand, or 'na' at the end of every statement or family discussions concerning bodily functions or pigs squealing in fear in the distance or auto rickshaws or pan and red spittle on the teeth or Indian Cadbury Gems or playing gin at night only to lose all my money to my 80-year-old atsa (grandmother) or poori and papaya for breakfast or my uncle's stupid sirdar jokes or the smell of dettol in bathrooms or drinking fresh rice beer in Khonoma, our ancestral village, or watching my cousins wheedle and negotiate with the auto drivers or answering calls of nature by finding a spot among cardamom bushes or tripping over cows hidden in dark corners of Defense Colony market or sceaming at shopkeepers in Lajpat Nagar or falling asleep under the blinding mountain sun on my aunt's steps. I thought about London all of two times in the past three weeks, for about 5 seconds. Not a feeling of longing but a snapping of fingers that woke me from the trance of presence - oh yeah, I live there, don't I? - and then it would vanish and there was nothing except the outline of Mt. Japfu behind a lace wall of poinsettias.