Where it all began

I was born in Alipurduar — my grandmother's hometown, tucked in the foothills of North Bengal where the forests are thick and time moves slowly. I didn't grow up there, but I returned every summer, and something about that town has always felt like it belongs to me. My grandmother was central to that. The town and she are inseparable in my memory, and both are held very close.

My earliest real memories, though, are from Orissa. That's where my childhood lived — my first school, my first friends, the streets I knew by instinct. My brother was born there. And it's where the scooter stories come from: my father at the front, my brother squeezed in, my mother and I sandwiched behind, a duffle bag strapped on, setting off for places hours away. Impossible by today's logic. Completely normal to us.

My father's job was transferable, which meant we never stayed anywhere too long. From Orissa we moved to Haldia, then Guwahati, then Kolkata — where we finally settled, and have been ever since. Each city was a beginning. A new school, new neighbours, new everything.

There was no social media then. For a long time, we didn't even have a landline at home. When you left a place, you truly left it. No way to stay connected to the friends you'd made, the lanes you'd loved, the version of yourself you'd been there. For a child, that kind of leaving is quietly hard. You learn not to hold too tight to places — because places leave you, or you leave them, and either way you have to keep going.

What didn't leave was the four of us. Through every city, every new beginning, my parents, my brother and I were the one thing that stayed constant. I think that's why we are — and I say this with full awareness and zero apology — a little clingy as a family. We love it that way. We earned it.

Utsav came into my life in the first year of college. We were — and still are — best friends first, and everything else second. Seventeen years in his company, and I am genuinely a more learned person for it. He is almost entirely my opposite in temperament, which is probably why it works so well.

He also, quietly and without making a big deal of it, changed how I travel. I used to plan everything — itineraries, timings, lists of things to see and tick off. Utsav introduced me to a different kind of trip. The slow ones. The "do nothing" days. The kind where you find a spot by the beach or the pool, order a cocktail, eat good food, and simply stay there — for hours — watching the water and feeling no pressure to be anywhere else. His ideal holiday is exactly that: sun, sea, something cold in hand, and nowhere to rush to. I resisted it at first. Now, especially with the years, I understand it completely. Those trips don't just relax you — they detox you in a way that a packed schedule never can.

But I haven't changed entirely — and I wouldn't want to. The adventure person is still very much here. The one who plans the itineraries, chases the experiences, wants to see everything a place has to offer. We do those trips too. And honestly? He comes alive on those as well, even if the itinerary wasn't his doing.

He also opened up food for me — properly. Utsav is a true foodie, and travelling with him means every destination gets explored through what it cooks, not just what it looks like. I've eaten things I never would have ordered alone, in places I never would have found on a tourist map. Food, I've learned, is one of the most honest ways to understand a place. And that lesson came entirely from him.

When he joins our family trips now, something shifts — my parents' faces light up. Because for them, travelling together is how you build a bond. It always has been. Watching that extend to him, watching the four become five, means more than I can quite say.