Other places

I came back to Mumbai today. It's been a tough day. It's always a tough day when One returns to daily life from the safety and love of ones home. 

This trip to Ahmedabad was my longest till date. Ever since my parents have moved and my sisters gone abroad, my family being scattered in different parts, my sense of associations have shook with great magnitude. I don't know how many people are second generation immigrants, but I am. My parents belonged to Orissa, both different regions of the state. Both having moved a lot throughout their lives, for their parents shifting jobs, their education etc. I guess moving around is sorta in my blood in a way, feeling unsettled has been passed on in the genes. I've lived in Mumbai my whole life, I naturally assumed it to be my home. But over the span of this year I've realized how little I know of my own city. I can't relate to the characters in novels who know their cities and towns like the alphabet. This city is massive, with so much history, so much mixed culture and a large population being immigrants from other parts of the country. The diversity often has me confused. 

After studying architecture for a year, I've come to learn a lot more about the city, it's networks, it's people and its history. And how each individual gets defined by the place they live in. Each city has its own personality I believe, you see it in its roads, it's trees, it's seasons, it's buildings, it's people and it's many connections.

A year ago I made the choice of adapting and living in the city I've called home  and not moving to an unfamiliar place with my parents. It was probably the hardest decision I've made in my life, thinking of the day I waved goodbye to my family still makes my eyes hazy and my heart shake a little. I remember stepping into the rickshaw when my mom covered her mouth with her hand and wiped a tear and my dad stood there waving, trying to be composed, and how I put on a brave face and smiled as the rickshaw moved away, far away from them, for a very long time. I remember how immediately the air felt hostile and the faces strange. As if my entire associations had been torn off from my 17 years of a life in this city. 

The coming months felt shocking as the sadness of being on your own, taking responsibilities, cleaning up your own mess and the immense burden of a new education and it's unmeetable schedule weighed upon my shoulders, and slowly I felt myself readjusting, to the city. 

Feeling like a stranger, an outsider trying to figure out my way home. I moved thrice in this period, which increased my unsettlement even more. The realization of not belonging anywhere dawning like a cloudy sunset each day. And let me tell you, when you've lived your life in a city your parents made home for you, when you're estranged from the culture of your birthplace, disconnected from all the relatives who were supposed to tell you stories and give you history lessons about your ancestors, you tend to feel more out of place in this world than ever. You know little about places you're familiar to and places your lineage belongs to. But never enough to embed in your identity, your persona.  I think people like me, never truly find where they belong, we never experiance a kind of permanency, our experiences are too diverse to make a giant autobiography to even call one lifetime. It's as if many different people are learning different things and fail to emerge as one human being. 

The first few days of returning to Mumbai are often accompanied by staring at the walls missing the smell of home, where my family is, thinking of times with them and realizing your family will never be in the same place for a very long time. You'll live this fragmented life, and as interesting and educational it is to be independent and be in a college you love , you can't help but be homesick to a great extent for a few days. Until the routine life brings everything back to normal. 

Today I wondered, what if I hadn't decided to stay back? What if I'd given in to my dads wishes and agreed to move with them. How would Ahmedabads identity change mine? When I go there for a limited time I often take in as much of this new air as I can, try to learn more about this new pleasant city and wonder what it'd be like if I studied there. Who'd I have met? What stories would I gotten? What sense of place would I have in that reality? I'm sure in some possibility I did move there and a version of me exists who battles with the opposite question. 

Honestly I do think I'd be more soft if I wa s there. I'm still quite emotional being on my own too, but there is a resolve, a "get your shit together " attitude I've acquired here, which I wouldn't staying with family. I'd still be strong but in a different way. 

I'd not be talking about work on the phone with mom and ranting about not getting sleep, she wouldn't be telling me to buy fruits all the time, id probably have one of the bedrooms made into a studio and work there with loud music blasting all night without worrying to disturb the roommates. We'd Skype my sister more often. I'd not travel on my own much, the car would be around and my experience of the city would be drastically different than it is on foot where you can feel and see the nuances of the environment around you, something that isn't possible through the glass shield of a car and the comfortable air conditioner. I'd have a lot more books bought than borrowed. Maybe I'd meet someone in college and we would hit it off instead of staying in touch with someone in Mumbai and becoming very close with them. 

The possibilities are innumerable, but something tells me, for an immigrant like me, no matter where I'd go, my drive to find a sense of place, belonging, home and identity would not be altered in any version of me.  Whatever it may be, I urge you to just reflect on the way your life and you may have turned out if you'd  made one decision differently, the purpose not being resentful to your current life or choices but just attaining the knowledge of the many versions of you that exist in this universe. All in curiosity.