> But the sense of aloneness is something I never knew I had until I went back to India.

I only lived in Bangladesh until age 5, and have spent nearly my whole life in America, but this sense of loneliness hit me really hard when I had my own kids. I remember being surrounded by aunties and cousins at their age, and my kids aren’t. Just in the last year we had a critical mass of neighborhood kids move in, but for my oldest, it was a very solitary childhood until age 8 or so.