My heart ended up being broken for doing the things I also have. Loving too much. And trying to find such love.

We spent my youth a late 70s youngster. I happened to be overweight and buck-toothed and lied compulsively about an absentee dad whose sepia-stained portrait hung in a wet mezzanine flooring puja space, along with rows and rows of buxom goddesses and venerable, bare-bodied male gods whom balanced mighty bows and arrows to their broad-shouldered backs, whose kohl-lined eyes brimmed with a million inexplicable secrets.

We knew absolutely absolutely nothing about love — any kind of man-woman love, quite genuinely. Truly the only male figure around my growing up being my septuagenarian, grouchy grandfather and their faithful Oriya Man Friday, Kalipada mama.