When I first got this blog together in 2015, it was from the small room upstairs in grandfather’s house, with his beloved Hindu shrine on one side, and a desk against the wall on the other.
I had been living there since around March, after years of conflict and fear had peaked with my brother and parents. During the first few months, staying in another part of London was like existing without someone’s knee pressing down firmly on my throat; gone were the days of sidling down the same streets towards the prison-like secondary school I had survived for 7 years. The walls of the house I was in no longer quaked and quivered with the sounds of shouting and threats. I could walk down the stairs and pass by a room and not worry about waking some kind of wolf.
I could breathe.
When I was working 12+ hour shifts in events to save up for… safety? Survival? Travel? I would be at that desk, researching travel blogs and looking for my niche, before creating this website and thinking about all the life I would give it. I’d hear my grandfather slowly coming up the stairs at the same time everyday, when I’d put my laptop to sleep, and move over to his bedroom whilst he prayed. From his bed, I’d lie there taking notes on books on toxic families and how to recover.
By the evening, my grandfather would call for me from downstairs that Eastenders was about to air. “Squid!” he would call me, because of the joke I made about having no backbone after living with my parents and brother. I wasn’t a fan of Eastenders, but I watched it with him because there was something comforting about watching families that were more dysfunctional than our own, under the warm hues of his various lamps around the room. There was something nice about sitting in silence and being with someone because you wanted to.
I think since I was ‘tricked’ into leaving Brighton where I went to university, that was the last place I truly felt safe, and like I was at home. Like, proper ‘home’; a place with routine, a place with foundations, a place I could really BE and build myself back up, and not have to worry about the usual storms.
Until it became something else, and I left that place, too… and the person within, who opened his doors to me, who shared his food with me, who shared his advice with me… whether I wanted it or not.
That place connected me to my cousins after decades of not being near one another, not really being family, at all. Everything came with complications and difficulties, but I think at the time I could see that was balanced out with a lot of good. Here in the future, I can understand that with a great sense of clarity.
And so so much more pain.
My grandfather is a fiercely independent man; he lives in his own house, when my grandmother wasn’t around, he would make his own meals. His main lesson he hammered home at me continously when I was staying with him, was to never rely on anyone. He took immense pride in coming to the UK from India with little to nothing, and building a life for himself. He lives on his own terms, more assured of his beliefs than anyone I’ve ever met. He’s a man who knows everything. Who can do anything. He’s a man who I always knew would live forever, and outlast anyone.
Yesterday was the 8th of January, 2026.
And over the course of the last few months, as I’ve been reclaiming this little corner of the world wide web, as I continue to compare and contrast the past and present, I thought about what was logged here. How my first posts were about being scared to leave behind the London I was in at that point, with my grandfather. My second post, about my cousins and uncle, who I didn’t want to leave behind.
And then I left it all behind on the 8th of January, 2016.
Ten years later, after finally feeling the freedom of being in another place and away from my issues and being so immersed in this blog, and coming to terms with my time travelling abilities, I thought about posting something on the 8th. To commemorate the past, to acknowledge the story I never told back then… and to reconnect with the family I left. Hopefully without the shackles of depression and survival on that had been choking the life out of me since I returned back to the London I never wanted.
On the 8th of January, 2025, I entered the hospital room my grandfather laid in, surrounded by the cousins I hadn’t seen in so long. I took one look at him before I couldn’t hold myself together, unable to breathe, or function. All I could do is cry, sob, and find myself collapsing in the arms of my little cousin sister, who wasn’t so little anymore.
It’s a strange thing to be thinking, before I type it, in a travel blog that is all about my escape, about my freedom, about going away somewhere else:
I wish I never left.
I wish I got to say goodbye.
I wish I was by your side for your last night.
I wish I got to tell you how thankful I am for that year in 2015. I wish you knew how much it meant to me, to have that little corner for a few hours a day to create this thing. To plan that trip. To save all that money and be able to go to all those places, even though I really wish I never left.
Thank you.
Thank you for listening to me, when I never thought anyone would. Thank you for all the advice and lectures and trying to fix me, in your own way. Thank you for that room, which I’d wake up from and watch out the windows as you ripped up pieces of bread to feed the birds every morning. Thank you for letting me watch Eastenders with you every evening. Thank you for the opportunity to sleep on the floor whilst my cousin rocked the room with his explosive snoring, and letting us try to make Thai food in the kitchen, and just end up with a wok of burnt rice and smoke in our faces.
Thank you for that moment all those years ago, when I was suffering so much in secondary school, and I brought you down some of the ideas I had for my stories, and acknowledging how much talent I had.
It’s not strange to be thinking this before I type it. I know it’s not what you would want me to say, or feel, or write. I know somewhere in my mind is a tiny nook where the dragon of shame and guilt can’t reach, and I know I shouldn’t inflict myself with so many “shoulds.” And that right now, I should be kind to myself. I should let go. I should recognise that I’m new to all of this.
But I should have been a better grandson.
Now I’m far away, again. In this little studio flat, on my own. Typing through a river of tears, struggling to breathe. Thinking it’s not fair; you should have lived forever. You were more alive than all of us. More than me, struggling to find a reason to live, trying to find some sense of self, trying to cure all my weaknesses.
I can’t help but think it should have been me, instead.
Thank you for the small moments in 2015 when I was beyond that.
I’ve been so alone… for so long. It feels like it’s all I’ve known.
And now you’re gone… I realise I didn’t have to feel that way.
Now you’re gone, it’s dawning on me…
What will I do without you?
