Who you are is directly tied to where you are. I feel that
more strongly every time I come home to Hyderabad.
Very little is spoken of the rootlessness immigrants feel. However
well we adjust, however grateful we are for our homes of choice, that
indefinable sense of loss is always there. The loss of dreams and aspirations
one always has with their place of birth. I will not even attempt to verbalize
what refugees must feel- that pain of losing all semblance of a home must be devastating.
I can only speak of what I feel. I am blessed to have homes in my two
countries. And yet I don’t know where I actually belong. It takes a few months
in one to start missing the other. The political situation in both countries
just makes things more difficult. Which is worse? Where can still *stay* my
home?
This restlessness is exacerbated when I travel back from one
home to another. It takes a while for those roots find their way from my heart.
It takes a few days to adjust looking for pens or spoons in places that exist
in the other home. It takes another few days to get into the clothing, driving
and behaving of the place. Takes a week to become the individual that belongs
there.
It makes me think of how blessed are those who live their lives
calling one place home. To grow and change with their city of birth, connected
to all friends and family; and may be become the focus point for those that
have moved away. I don’t think ‘aloneness’ is something they would identify
with.
‘Aloneness’ has been a distressing development for me. It is
the realization that your situation is so uniquely yours – your hopes, attachments,
fears – that you are alone in dealing with them. Visiting family and friends I
have grown up with is essential to my mental health. Yet each visit here seems
to bring new sorrows now. Change marches on, slaughtering anything in its path.
Styles die, rituals become outdated, connections fade away., loved ones pass
away leaving an unfillable void. Even traditional homes that had brought that
stab of joyful memories are cleared away for some mammoth eyesore. For those
who live here it is the endemic growth of a city. I come in a year and see a
stark change, and struggle to belong to this rapidly changing society. The
comfort of people and conventions you have known all your life seems to be
whittling away. Hyderabad was my default setting. The peace that I would feel
once I stepped out of the airport is still there, but I find myself counting
days to be back home in Orlando. Even with its very real, all-encompassing
aloneness. So, is this still where I should be?
