The day has become unexpectedly peopled. It is as if I am making up for all the lost time with my friends in Delhi. I tricked myself into believing that it was Mona I missed the most, whom I absolutely couldn-t do without, yet, here I am, back in Delhi, unable to repress the eagerness with which I am re-encountering my friends. Their energy replenishes me. I wasn-t starving, but I didn-t truly acknowledge enough how, in my 45-day absence, I had begun to hunger for the intimacies I had evolved over almost a decade, preoccupied as I was with laying claim to my fiancé-s home town of Tramin, planting my flag there in order to stake belonging.

The Paris Review has a section called -One Word-, for which, as the title suggests, they invite select writers to meditate upon precisely one word. Were I ever to be asked, I feel sure I would choose the word, -to colonise-. It-s an infinitive that got assimilated into my vocabulary subconsciously and now articulates itself in a manner that is astonishingly casual, despite its hierarchical undertones.