"Your seat..."

Wow. All of a sudden, my heart is so full.
I have been happy in Kolkata since arriving, but I always kind of felt like a little something was missing. I was having the hardest time figuring out what it was, too. I mean, I had my babies and the sisters and the chai and friends and Tirupati's was back and I was making new friends. What more could I possibly expect out of Kokata? Well, this morning I found out what it was.
Today, Thursday, is the volunteer day off, so there was no breakfast at Mother House. I went over to the little lane with the Juice World and the chai stands and ordered banana toast and chai and sat down. After a little bit, Baloo the Juice World boy sat down next to me and told me that Anil was not coming back to Kolkata and that he would be staying in Varanasi. My stomach sank. I had been waiting for Anil to come back this whole time. I was waiting for the day when I could sit on the bench outside the shop with him or on my seat inside the shop for hours. I was waiting to talk with him, to listen to him shouting in Hindi to the chai wallahs, to sit and watch the world from the safety of my little Juice World bubble, knowing that if anyone I didn't want to talk to or sit near sat down next to me, Anil would take care of it. I was waiting to hear about how the past year had been for him, what his struggles and victories were, what was in his heart now and for the last year. I was waiting. And now he wasn't coming. I was pretty upset.
Baloo left me to sit there and contemplate over my cup of chai and walked back to Juice World. I sat, wondering if it would be worth it to call Anil and beg him to come back for just a little while or go visit him in Varanasi or if I should just let it go and accept that he wouldn't be coming back. A few minutes into my musings, I hear Baloo shouting "Ooooh, Anil has come! Ey, bhaiya!" I look up, and standing just a few meters from me is Anil. My best Kolkata friend. I shouted happily, clapped my friends, stood up and walked to him. And everything in my heart was right again. Kolkata finally felt like it was supposed to. Dirty, uncomfortable, hot, poverty-stricken, but home. Anil is back and I am home.
My heart is so full.

On a less exciting, but still exciting, note, I am going to be in a Bengali film. I have a friend who is trying to break into the acting business and the movie he has a small part in was looking for a few foreigners to be tourists in the movie, so he asked me and a few French volunteers if we wanted to be in it. The answer was obvioulsy, "Yes!" I don't know what the name of the film is, but it's supposed to be released in about three months. They took our email addresses, so when I find out about it, I'll let you all know.
The filming itself was fun. We were only onscreen for maybe a minute, but it took almost the entire day to shoot the rest of the scene we were a part of, so we spent a lot of time sitting around. I made friends with the actors who were playing the villains in the film. One of them, Tiger, only spoke Bengali so we used another of the actors, Manoj as a translator. I feel so important having friends in the Bengali film industry! It was a fun day.

Gosh, okay, I better go. Anil made up my seat in Juice World for me so I need to go fill it.