Where you are is who you are

 

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 Styles die, rituals become outdated, connections fade away., loved ones pass away leaving an unfillable void.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?