As a child, I enjoyed trips to the ancestral village, except for the times I visited during the monsoons.

You couldn't go out. The roads turned to mud; the mosquitos became ravenous; and the snakes venturous.

Consequently, there was little to do but to read moth-eaten books.

In the village, during the monsoon, the kumro (pumpkin) is the savior. After a few days, it is the arch-nemesis.

The question we asked: "what's for lunch?"

It was a rhetorical question, for every single day there would be another sliver of the wretched kumro made into ghonto.

In my early school years, to reach my ancestral village, we'd have to go by bus and then bullock cart. And during the rains, we'd walk the last kilometer barefoot in lateritic mud with sandals held in one hand.

It was all straight out of "Samapti" or Saratchandra's "Srikanta".

If you were a special visitor then villagers would catch a Rohu fish for you from the ponds using nets, but this took time since it was a process definitely more involved than going to Trader Joe's and picking up a swordfish steak from the freezer section.

I enjoyed those trips. I went on long walks. I learned how to fish. I heard ghost stories. I sat on hammocks for hours, reading morning newspapers delivered no earlier that late afternoons.