Even though it wasn-t too spacious; even though the beds were not conjoined but separated by a bed-side table; even though the nail that held the shelf at the bottom of the wall-mounted mirror had given way, so it sagged and couldn-t therefore be used to stand anything; even though there was only white light, which I-m convinced I-m allergic to, and the conventional desk was more a long shelf attached to the wall upon which hung the television, I loved the room that housed me during my last three nights in Kolkata. When I got in last Friday, I was being hosted at a guesthouse on the 20th floor of the third tower within a bizarre, pretentious township in the eastern part of the city. The view from one end was somewhat spectacular, dozens of water bodies and numerous intervening patches of green, but what I saw from the window in my room were aspirational, landscaped lawns that felt disconnected from everything around it. I felt stranded in the middle of nowhere. Every familiar Kolkata institution was miles away.

After two nights there, I was elated to leave. I decided I-d never agree to stay there again, come hell or high water, even though the room was large and the bed massive. At 8.30 am on day three, I exited the Urbana township and made my way to Howrah station, with a pit stop near Gole Park so I could drop off my bags at The Residency, where I-d booked myself a four-night stay at an excellent, enviable rate in the room I would come to love. I dropped off my luggage, checked in, headed out to Howrah station to catch my 10.10 am train to Santiniketan. I-d decided on Saturday to spend a night at the campus of the university instituted by Rabindranath Tagore. It had been a long-time dream. One day was too little time for a multi-acre, historic university, this I knew, but this trip was more like a recce for my forthcoming trip in February next year. So I allowed myself to explore it at ease, mostly choosing to spend my time at an exhibition at Nandan Kalabhavan that featured photographs from various archives as part of the fine arts department-s ongoing centennial celebrations. I spent the night at Ratan kuthi, a guesthouse built with funding from Ratan Tata. I loved that there was a portrait of Tagore in my room, but everything else felt wrong. If the bed could be repositioned, there-d be enough space on one side for the cupboard, and on the other for the dressing table. The domestic itinerant in me felt tempted to redecorate, but I talked myself out of it. I dealt with the white light like I do in all hotel rooms now, I plugged in my copper-wire-strung LED lights into the USB port of my phone charger and hung it near the bed-side table so it functioned like a night lamp. I managed to create an atmosphere.