Home, Sweet Home

 

“Home is now behind you, the world is ahead.”

Midlife is good; midlife is wise. I speak for myself here. At my early 40s now, I am less judgmental, more confident, somewhat immune to hypocrites and try to see the brighter side of everything.

Once upon a time, when the adrenaline rush was stronger and my locks were still untouched by gray, I had a strange reservation for those who moved abroad and settled down in other countries.  One by one,  many of my close friends and acquaintances went away. After sometime, my younger brother too moved out and set his home in Australia.

The Expat Insider 2021 survey by InterNations reveals that 59% of Indians working abroad relocated for their career, a much higher share than the global average (47%). Close to one-quarter (23%) found a job on their own, 19% were recruited internationally, and 14% were sent by their employer. 3% moved abroad to start their own business, which is still a slightly higher share than the global average of 2%.

Statistics and data apart, I tried to talk with some of my close NRIs (doesn’t it sit glamorously on the tongue?) and drew a few conclusions. While all these may not hold true for all, I am confident that many will be able to relate to a few observations.

Mothers do everything within their capacity to get a care package delivered to their sons/daughters settled abroad. Be it a carton of thepla for X Patel in Denver or a dozen citrus lemons (kaji nemu) for Y Saikia in Adelaide, the packages usually clear all airport barriers to reach their destination, fully sealed and lovingly packed.  This goes without saying that everything in such a package will taste light years times better than any hypermarket food that has not traveled from the familiar kitchen of the recipient’s childhood. Now, there are two strategies to deal with such packages – one, it is devoured at once without leaving any traces behind and second and most common, the recipient becomes a magician who works miracle with the expiration dates to make the contents last for as long as possible.

Yes, there are bouts of homesickness. My friend in Zurich spends the entire Durga Puja time mopping tears of loneliness. One ends up shaping memories that will stays alive forever. You might have moved abroad because of the extreme weather when you had to sweat it out in crowded shops or jam-packed buses. The pot-holed streets or the snail-paced official paperwork might have pissed you off. However, if you explain to people from another country where you live now, you find that your descriptions of the place where you were born and brought up are laced with fondness and nostalgia; you may be surprised to feel the appreciation you have for those streets back home and the nasty weather you had complained about!  Maybe distance indeed makes the heart grow fonder – especially when you are born and educated in India and you are cheering for, say England or Australia, in a one day cricket match.  

And when you get a few days off and fly back to the place which you once called home, it strikes you how little everything has changed. Your life must have been changing at a non-stop pace, and you are on holidays and ready to share all those anecdotes you have been piling up. But, at home, life is the same as ever. When someone asks you about your new life, you lack the right words to convey all you’re experiencing. Yet later, in the middle of a random conversation, something reminds you about ‘that time when’…, and you have to hold your tongue because you don’t want to overwhelm everyone with stories from your ‘other country’ and come across as pretentious or bombastic.

You have two library cards, two SIM cards, two bank accounts. And two types of coins, which always end up mysteriously mixing when you are about to pay for something. The two worlds will probably become more and more of a blur over time, but there will most likely always be mail sent to your parents’ house (of the credit card that was somehow never surrendered, or the mobile bill for the old number that you still refuse to part with) or a bunch of boxes stored in a friend’s garage or in the extra locked bedroom of the flat which you had given out on rent.

Then there will be ‘guilt-pangs’. A parent had a fracture, and you were too held up making a life abroad to travel back to take care of him/her; and you mother will anyways tell you not to drop everything and rush back home for trivial matters. You will end up thinking more frequently about the expression on your mother’s face when you could not make it home on her birthday, but you promised to come by the week after. Now, imagine this face when you are trying to explain that you are not coming home for your sister’s wedding because you could not get time off from your crazy work schedule (or, in reality, because that road trip with friends was just impossible to say no to). Rest assured, there’s going to be guilt, and you will learn to focus on quality instead of quantity as the years roll by.

It is as if you are watching out through the window of the car you are driving and  everything moves really slowly in the distance, while in front of your life passes by at full speed. On the one hand, you receive news from 'home'  - birthdays you missed, people who left without you getting the chance to say goodbye one last time, the café of  yore which suddenly shut shop without you having been able to have a last cup of watery coffee, celebrations you will not be able to attend.... On the other hand, at  your new country life picks up speed. Time is so distorted now, that you learn how to measure it in tiny little moments, like a video call with school buddy. A name, a song, a smell - the smallest trifle can overwhelm you with homesickness. You miss those little things you never thought you would ever miss and you would give anything to go back to that place, even if it were just for an instant. Or to share that feeling with someone who would understand you in your new home..

And in the process, you perfect the right balance between bonding and letting go, a perpetual battle between nostalgia and pragmatism. Even though hardly anyone is good at putting the 'good'  into 'goodbye', farewells do get a little easier over time. Maybe it’s because you know that you can go home and curl up on a futon that smells familiar – no matter where you travel to and from. Maybe you learn  to temporarily turn off all emotional organs, and you realize that after a 'goodbye' there is always a 'hello'.

"It’s a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same. Even smells the same. You realize what’s changed is you." (F. Scott Fitzgerald)