"There is a particular sunset moment that I replay often in my mind. The heavens are a violet pink, an incomplete oil painting across which the sun burnishes and then falters down. I have climbed a hill, using my hands to steady myself, and there are shrubs of green sprouting between the uneven rocks. I can see cows in the nearby rice fields, a patchwork quilt of green, and I feel an immense sense of pride."
"I visit this hill every time I am in Sylhet. It is my homecoming. My grandparents Dhadha and Dhadhi lived here. Their eldest, my father, left in his early 20s, but the ripe coconut trees and paan sellers still remember him. I couldn't name a road in Sylhet, or a region beyond those of my ancestors, but I can read and write Bangla, which is not so common for those in the diaspora."
The narrator recalls a childhood sunset on a hill in Sylhet, feeling pride upon seeing her grandfather's tillah and the nearby rice fields. She visits that hill as a homecoming and remembers her grandparents Dhadha and Dhadhi. Her family migrated after the Second World War, and cultural practices persist in diaspora kitchens through foods like lao bottle gourd, shatkora, and shared tropical fruit. The landscape has changed: a primary school and library replace grazing land, a tuck shop stands where her father once visited, and local fushkonis suffer neglect as people migrate and rivers dry up. Language use now mixes Sylheti, Bangla, and English.
Read at CN Traveller
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