𝐴𝑟𝑢𝑝 𝑆𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑎𝑟 𝐴𝑝𝑢

  Kolkata — The Journey That Quietly Changed Something in Me Some journeys give us photographs.  Some give us memories. And a rare few return us home as slightly different people. Kolkata was that kind of journey for me. It was my first journey beyond Bangladesh, yet strangely, I never felt that I had travelled very far from home. I had crossed an international border, yes—but Bengali was still being spoken around me. Tea was still an excuse for conversation. Rice, fish, sweets, arguments, politics, faith and humour still occupied their familiar places in everyday life. And yet, almost immediately, I could feel the differences. That fascinated me. Perhaps that is what made Kolkata so memorable. It was neither completely foreign nor completely familiar. It felt like meeting a distant relative for the first time—someone whose face reminds you of your own family, but whose life has followed an entirely different road. I arrived as a traveller. Somewhere along the way, I became a...