Back home

http://theviewspaper.net/back-home/

Written when we had 'decided' to move back to India. :/

I remember a British neighbour I had befriended when we moved to New Jersey. We were both feeling our way around in this country, getting licenses and discovering stores. She left within a year. She said it was “too different”, and that people here “do not even understand English”. I was amused. But I now realize how significant what she said was. Different cultures have different languages, however similar the script and words are. It seems disorienting when other people understand a thing differently because of what their cultural compass dictates. So here I am today, struggling to make sense of my own confused feelings. I really do enjoy the ease of life here in the developed hemisphere. But I am also aware of the thrill of sheer joy that courses through me every time I think that I have to start packing for India. I have been a weasel and have accepted the citizenship of USA. But happily that has had no effect on anything within me. I had always assumed that taking the oath would reset my DNA in some insidious way. I go back to India on a reduced status of PIO, or its glorified version of OCI (it does sound better with the word ‘citizen’ in it!).

However, what is confusing me is a sense of déjà vu, a feeling of distancing myself again from people I love; of starting anew again. I have no home to start off from, and it is a new city. I am leaving friends that have filled the void of family and leaving a country whose founding ideals I cherish (Freedom does ring here, not correctly all the time, but it does ring). But I am so content!

Is being born in a country enough to permanently make you its own? I doubt it because, I know of many who moved to the West in adulthood and have that disgusting, warped personality of a tree, that neither knows its roots nor its flowers. I cannot call them Indian, and I am sure they do all they can to avoid that association.

I have lived here like an outsider, which I am. I have enjoyed it, most certainly. I have learnt about different cultures. But most importantly, I have learnt about myself. I think every Indian should be sent abroad for sometime to develop patriotism! You realize what a phenomenal country we are, and how resilient and progressive we are. I have learnt more about what it is to be Indian than I did in India itself. I think if you are proud of your heritage you will put your best foot forward when you stand as its symbol, and then the best becomes a part of who you are. Also, I have made friends for life from all over the world. But all those friends, each and everyone, is loyal to the country they were born in. I think that has unconsciously been a make-or-break issue with me. My Indian friends, of course, envy me for going back home! My American friends think I am crazy to be going back because, to them this is the ideal place to be. My Egyptian friends think it would be understandable if I was going to Egypt because that is the best place in the world. And I admire them for that. They, in reality, in their own way, understand perfectly why I want to go back. Home is always the perfect place to live.

So what is it that I love in my country? There is dirt, power cuts, corruption, a severe lack of civic sense, language changes from state to state. But life is so much more than matter of convenience. It is living to be yourself, to live your hopes an ideals and work towards to your goals. It is living when your day has meaning for yourself, and for others. And you cannot come into your own unless you live somewhere you can call your own. A place is your own where you find that sense of belonging I spoke of in my blog. It is a place where people share one’s values. Who understand your jargon, who need no explanation for what you wear, or why you cry.

To be specific, what I love is that ability to stop the car and just ask anyone on the road for directions. What I love is the security of knowing you talk to the autowala or the driver next to you in a traffic jam. You can yell at them or ask to borrow the cell phone. What I love is that if my neighbour’s child is misbehaving I can be the ‘aunty’ and scold him without the fear of prosecution on weird charges.

That involvement in each other’s life is what a community is based on. Of course it is not a perfect community. And sometimes when it is manifested in nosy gossip it does get intolerable. But I would not trade that feeling of familiarity for anything in the world. And certainly not for what passes for ‘politeness’ here. I have lived with the silence of neighbours which is broken by that very artificial ‘Hi’. I fail to understand what kind of people crave this distant coldness. Psychopaths, maybe. A stranger is not a danger in my home; rather, someone to be helped or welcomed, unless proven otherwise. Here it is the other way around. Of course the Americans are lonely people. How can you make friends if you start off with mistrust?

So excuse me if I am not falling apart because I will have to deal with unruly traffic, or with someone selling me ‘fresh’ vegetables a few days old. I will have that unique, wonderful option of venting with my dhobi, or dropping by unannounced for ‘chai’ at a friend’s home. I cannot wait to be home!

Travails of travel

They say travelling opens the mind. I drove across northern USA from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific. And I know for sure it does nothing for the mind. It does a lot for the heart.

The drive, as it may be called for want of a better word, was not a vacation as much a celebration of a new start in a new place. We human beings do need to feel a 'new beginning' so many times in our lives, we tend to forget that each sunrise is a miraculous new beginning that heralds new experiences. How do we forget that no two days can ever be alike, unless we make it so?

Like all journeys,our odyssey (yes, in an Odyssey too!)began with pangs of separation. Leaving friends that have been the scaffolding of my sanity and the joy of my heart was more frightening than sorrowful. It was so heartening to hear each one of them tell me it was for the best, and remind me that distance is never an issue between friends. Because if even one had said 'Oh no , why are you going?' I might not have made it. Of course New Jersey was far from perfect, but my friends there are perfect by far.

Everyone does need a change, a break, a vacation. It could be a TV time-slot, it could be jog around with your pal, it could be a few month's hiatus from routine. A change recharges our mind and invigorates our soul.

I do not know of anything that could re-enliven you like a trip to a totally new place. Not with a tour guide, or with five star bookings, but on your own steam, and on your own time. What makes it refreshing is not the change of scene, it is the stripping of paraphernalia we collect and the provisions we deem essential. We really do not need the gold, the crystal, or the fancy crockery. What we need is food to fill us and water to quench and clean.

And of course petrol to fill the car! One of the most terrifying moments of my life was up in the mountains that we did not expect to climb, and realizing that we were out of gasoline,not knowing how far we had to go, and my husband rolling the car down the unfamiliar steep slopes on neutral gear to conserve gas. An experience like that redefines stress. Now if someone tells me they are 'stressed' because of their kids' extracurricular schedules I am going to choke laughing! Stress is not that rushed feeling when you have planned- well or otherwise- on things to happen. Stress is the feeling when you cannot take a breath in (or out) because you do not know if you can deal with that 'worst case scenario' if it does happen.

We managed to descend from the mountains without incident, and reached this adorable little store/ home /gas station in the middle of nowhere. (Town of Emmet- population 10). It was the quaintest, sweetest ramshackle cabin out of a fairytale. Had to have been angels. God does not test the unprepared.

Of course we were unprepared! We had the route mapped roughly, we had the iPad, we had overnight reservations in nice hotels and lodges. The rest we would take as it came. That, we thought would add to the experience. I do not much care for what it did add! A lot of nervous checking of signals on the cell phone,rechecking navigation, realizing that we were not mentally conditioned for long roads through deserted lands, and the nagging fear of what if the car..( God forbid, here!). Though it ensured our comfort, and did really, really well, the Honda Odyssey van is not made for cross country roughing it out. Small roads at edges of waterfalls, or after sunset drives across Grizzly country are not exactly comforting unless you are driving a humvee and have OnStar.

Of course I would rather drive across the US than any other country. The blessing of GPS on the iPad is worth more than words can express. The rest areas give a traveller not only a chance to get the blood moving into parts of the body that have lost feeling, but also gives the chance to interact with other people. Some states of course have a better hospitality: South Dakota had scenic rest stops, Idaho rest areas offer free coffee, Ohio has huge service areas; and Wyoming should not be called a civilized state. I cannot believe there can be such barren, uninspiring stretches of empty, depressing landscape that we encountered in Wyoming.It had green of course, and the undulating hills, but the feeling it gave was of a dull, dead place where life cannot blossom.The Exits that are pointers to settled life for highway travellers just end up in dirt roads that lead to nothing.Even the Badlands were not that bad. Barren rock has a magnetism all its own.

But inhospitable Wyoming also holds a part of the gorgeous Yellowstone National Park. We drove through quite a few protected areas, but the raw beauty of Yellowstone is hard to match. One can revel in the flawless lakes, and then walk a quarter of a mile to beds of boiling mud!

We drove on roads through grasslands, hills, mountains, volcanoes, glaciers, forests. It was glorious and awe-inspiring. But at the end of each day what we needed was to stop. Not just to rest and recharge, but to make connect with our fellowmen. To say hello to the friendly hotel receptionist, to sit down for dinner. And yes, to switch on the TV (and laptop!)

Like everything else in life, the travails, of course, came with treasures. The small towns we went through are unforgettable. The warm people we met gently reinforced my belief that we all are exactly the same. The memories we have are priceless. The splendour of virgin lands on this continent have to be seen to be believed.The joy one feels in renewing one's connection to the land does not diminish us as humans. Knowing we share a home of such beauty with flora and fauna of such diversity elevates us to being more than mankind. We become earthlings. I did not learn anything of practical importance. I saw, heard, and felt. My mind probably learnt the names of new places, but what my heart learnt was of more vital importance- that it is not the earth that belongs to us, it is we who will always belong to the earth.