Author Prajwal Parajuly returns to campus life in Sri City

After being gone six long months, I am back in Sri City. I have come equipped with cheese that stank up every plane I was on, chocolate that smudged half my white shirts and a nine-kilogram poker kit that I joke is my first-born.  

It’s been a good time away, but I have missed the students, the weather, and the mangoes. I have missed the marauding monkeys and the shuttle that conveys me to campus. I have not missed the department meetings because we continued having them online. I have missed the karaage that’s not exactly a karaage at Asagao, my favourite Japanese restaurant here, and I have missed the karaage that’s more like a karaage at the Zen Restaurant at Tokyo Ryokan, not my favourite Japanese place (but to admit which I feel guilty because the manager is a Nepali-speaking man from my neck of the woods). Out of a sense of loyalty to the Japanese establishments in Sri City, I ate ramen only once in New York. I am a good fanatic. 

One of the many charms of an association with a university that’s just stepping into its sixth year is being part of creating something new. This, of course, involves hard work. My colleagues and I have been tasked with developing a Creative Writing minor. We just recruited poet Arundhathi Subramaniam and academic Kai Easton into the department. We are also in the process of getting someone to set up a Translation Studies programme. Literature at Krea has had quite a year. 

But not everything needs to be big or life-changing. There’s also joy to be found in the smaller stuff. I, for example, am moving into a new office in a new building.

For the most part, the Krea campus looks good. The trees that line the avenue that runs between the residential buildings provide a canopy that reduces the temperature by a few degrees. The stretch, besides being aesthetically pleasing, is so well shaded that my follically challenged self can abandon his hat around here even if the sun is beating down. The newer buildings — like the one that houses the library — are properly charming in their part-Bauhaus, part-international, part-WTH aesthetics. 

But the main building looks like it was transplanted from 1950s Vladivostok. On the third floor of this almost dichromatic structure, in a busy thoroughfare, was my office. The space was all right — it was a good size, and my classes were all close by — but it received no natural light. 

I was ready for a change.  

And nothing screamed change louder than the new light-and-air-filled academic building, christened — what else but — the New Academic Block. It is here, to Office Number 335, that I have just moved with the five books in my possession. The swivel chair is still sheathed in plastic.  My new space has views of what I thought was the parking lot but will actually become a cricket field. It also looks out to a Mondelez factory, to spite which I shall give up sugar. 335 has a window that opens, unlike 333, which is massive but cursed with a window that doesn’t open. There’s a white board on which I have started making a list of column ideas. Below the desk is a cute steel trashcan with a green trash bag. I want to steal the trashcan for my kitchen. 

It is such a cheerful building, thrumming with life and colour and hope, as though students will metamorphose into Shakespeares and Picassos the minute they set foot here. The lounges belong in Riverdale. The chairs are the colour of M&Ms. There’s even a rooftop terrace where I hope to jump-rope in between tutorials. Today marks a year of my having moved here, and seeing tangible positive changes on campus makes for a strangely satisfying experience.

The culinary scene, too, has evolved while I was away. The Zen Restaurant at Tokyo Ryokan, which you will remember isn’t even my favourite Japanese eatery, has added Korean cuisine to its repertoire. With that, it has hit the trifecta: Japanese, Indian and Korean. It is more vegetarian-friendly than my favourite Asagao, which means nothing to me but would matter to my family. 

The one time I convinced my parents to make a trip to South India, they stuck to Chennai. When asked if they would like to visit Sri City, they smiled. We understand silences and vapid smiles in the family, so I let the matter slide. I hope to host them soon on the outskirts of Sri City even if we need to negotiate the delicate situation with the two bathrooms whose shared wall only goes three-quarters of the way up. At least they can stuff their judgy faces with the Agedashi tofu, vegetarian fried rice and edamame at The Zen Restaurant at Tokyo Ryokan. 

Prajwal Parajuly is the author of The Gurkha’s Daughter and Land Where I Flee. He loves idli, loathes naan, and is indifferent to coffee. He teaches Creative Writing at Krea University and oscillates between New York City and Sri City.