Twenty-six essays on going back.

To a hall at Presidency College, to watch his father defend a doctoral thesis at an age when most men have stopped explaining themselves. To Tirupati after ten years. To Udaipur, to say goodbye. To a Lego set first built by a boy who no longer exists.

Written across eighteen months and published on a blog nobody was asked to read, these pieces move between English and Tamil, between Sangam poetry and a broken printer, between the merchant Kovalan speaking from the far side of an epic and a woman waiting at a crossing that was never built for her.

They are held together by the oldest instrument ever used for keeping a record: a thread with knots in it