Part 24

England felt old and familiar in the way that
America seemed new and strange. April grey,
like a blurry photograph, literature and history
popping out of the incessant drizzle, scratching

the learnt distress of a colonial past, a question
stuck at the back of my throat. I straddle zero-
degree longitude, splitting myself between east
and west. Isn’t a line both a meeting and a

separation? Both imagined and real? I file past
the Kohinoor like a thousand others, in silence. I
stare at a white peacock in Leeds. In Shakespeare’s
garden, a bust of Tagore stares back at me. In the

British museum, I see bronze statues from Tanjavur,
a thousand years old. The Thames sees me from
under its bridges, a winding poem in rigid meter
and rhyme. I look up at an Egyptian obelisk,

curious like an aubade at sunset. The first of
many I would see. Elsewhere. Everything is
entangled. There is no other way to be. Back in
New Jersey, they look down at my visa. Why are

you here? The line. Both crossing and belonging.
They are not interested in my trip to England. I
live here, I say. That is not the answer they want.
So much that is so right is, almost always, so wrong.