I know it is weird to divide my almost three decades in the city into before, during, not-quite-over, and after the pandemic, but I find myself increasingly slicing and muddling my life into these time frames. Conversations, memories, friendships, the logbook of losses, mood swings, even dreams, appear to be structured by these frames. This piece reflects on my years in the city and grapples with the relationship between longing and loss, forgetting and remembering, even as I know well that this relationship is unstable and contradictory and can never be resolved. This relationship does not dwell in the realm of my imagination. I live and feel it, and I will forever draw and redraw its contours and trajectories, mourning the impossibility of returning to that which is lost, and often not knowing what it is that I long for. There is no cure for this affliction.
Chiragh Dilli 