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Early October 2018, I was struggling to make little sense of the past two years I had spent in university. Disillusioned by academia and everything institutional, I did what I do best and diligently occupied myself in healthful restorative bore. My days played out similarly to the atmospheric hue that contains "Mrs. Dalloway"’s world, nestled in the snail-paced world of Virginia Woolf’s writing. It all changed however at the drop-of-a-hat when the e-mail of acceptance as Art Mediator for a contemporary arts festival, the “Kochi-Muziris Biennale” came through. Two weeks later, I reached Kochi on a customary sultry day, immediately regretting the leather jacket I had in my bag. While this regret stayed with me for the next five months, I grew accustomed to the stench of fish over time. The taxi ride to Fort Kochi granted me with a scenic view of small backwaters, clusters of old-style buildings, and close-ups of fascinating bridges that firmly held islands together. The differentness of the place however compelled me to think of how far I had come from my native place – far up north-east of the country. In Imphal, the world’s only women-run marketplace — a mere seven-minute walk from home — always had fish to sell from morn till eve. While I recollected the names of fishes that teemed the rivers back home — Rohū, Ngamū, Tūnghanbi Ngā — I could overhear bits of the taxi driver’s phone conversation. He spoke in the language, Malayalam, which was foreign to me then. The island of Fort Kochi is a small water-bound region along the south-west coast of Kerala, large enough to experience a lifetime. I was yet unaware at that point of time that the island had been privy to one of the earliest sites of cosmopolitanism that thrived more than a thousand years ago. Spices, coir, information, and love were commonly traded only a few kilometers away from Fort Kochi at the ancient harbor seaport of Muziris. I finally reached my place of stay, which turned out to be a dilapidated hotel converted into a makeshift hostel. The walls surrounding the courtyard bore the last remains of writing and advertisements. I winced more than once, wondering how the rooms would fare. As the second person to arrive from a team of twenty, I chose a comparatively cleaner room to others, one big enough to breathe easy in. A neon light bulb disseminated a warm pink glow that veneered the musty walls and rendered spider webs elusive. The room was bare except for two wooden beds, a mattress, and a pillow. Feeling suffocated and cramped, I walked around for quite a bit right after setting up the room. Opposite the hostel is an old white Syrian Church with glass-painted windows. I took the left and walked towards a long wide road flanked by huge rain trees emblematic of Fort Kochi on either side. A prospective traveler might have had a well-formed intention to hunt for adventure and explore. I made a leap into the unknown hoping to stumble upon something new and profound that would wash over me and perhaps evoke a je ne sais quoi. What I did not expect to find was a new home within this culture of receiving others that existed in the community since Muziris. In Venice it’s biennale, in San Francisco it’s biennial, and in Kochi, it’s Binnale. Here I am back in Kochi for the fifth time since 2018.