The Curious Case of Vanishing Venues

"Do you ever get bothered by the absurd things happening in the world?"
"Only until I remember the absurd things I’ve said in arguments. Then I figure, the world’s doing just fine."

For reasons still unknown to science or magic, my husband and I have long held the rare gift of making businesses vanish. Not in any dramatic, mafia-esque way. No threats, no scandals, no Google reviews. We simply show up, and things unravel.

It started innocently. An ice cream parlor in our hometown, where we had our first date, served us two scoops of romance and then quietly ceased to exist a couple of years later. Meant to be sweet but, apparently, bittersweet.

Then there was a charming little café I remember for ambience, rain, hand-holding — a complete cinematic package. We left glowing; they shut down within months. Fast forward a few years, and our wedding venue folded not long after we made our eternal promises.

The pattern continued. A delightful pub in another city, where we once spent a lovely evening over drinks, closed its doors before our hangovers wore off. Even a prominent chain hotel, with infinity pools and infinite breakfast buffets, filed for closure distressingly soon after our stay.

And these are just the ones I remember.

The other day, in a fit of artful overthinking (my cardio of choice), I tried decoding this darkly comic trail of closures. What if we’re low-tier members of a secret magical community with poor impulse control? What if, unbeknownst to us, we possess a dormant superpower that occasionally leaks into the real world?

What if signs have been sent from across galaxies, trying to reach us, but we, being millennial and mildly lazy, just haven’t scrolled far enough?

Honestly, it tracks. It aligns with the well-established stereotype of Bengalis knowing black magic, though in our case, apparently, it’s more closure magic. A polite kind of chaos where there are no casualties, just capitalism gently folding in on itself wherever we go.

My train of imagination was running wild, delightfully far from the mundane reality of life, when my phone pinged. My house help had messaged that she wouldn’t be coming.

Devastated, I wandered into the kitchen only to find a different kind of community. A sink full of dishes, glistening in their passive-aggressive glory. That wasn’t the kind of sign I was looking for.

I turned, picked up my favorite mug from the shelf, and whispered to myself with the gravitas of a tired wizard, “Well, time to make the coffee disappear.”

(A small footnote from the universe: Maybe we don’t make places disappear. Maybe we just notice when they do. Maybe the magic isn’t in the ruin, it’s in remembering what those places meant. And in always knowing how to make the coffee vanish when you need it most.)