Going Home to Come Home

Uprooting and Rerooting leaves one well............. rootless.

One stands in the middle of the new city that aims to become home, looking at the mass of people moving around, at people sipping coffee, at the easy conversation that seems to be there on most tables and knows that you are not “in” yet.

Yesterday, met two old friends who had come back to Bangalore after months of being away. Both are local Bangaloreans, kids who grew up into discerning adults in the evolving city.

For one it was the first time she came back -  ‘home’ post leaving. Only to realize that .. strangely now she referred to her new city as ‘home’.  Damm this was confusing. Why confusing? Because for the entire time that she was in the other nation – Bangalore was home. It was not where she lived but it was definitely what home was meant to be.

Hmm made me smile. Happens all the time doesn’t it.  For me home is Delhi. It will always be, the city that I will know better than any other, because I come from there,  know its pulse and have given myself the  self granted right to call myself a Delhite.

I live in Bangalore. Its home.  But in the limited sense of the ‘house’. It’s the home that for me means that my routine is here, I live here, but as I move around the city, despite the fact that by now with each place I have my own story and own history, at some level I feel a liitle it of a faker.

I know know.. at a deep level, that I don’t have the pulse of the city in me. That I don’t speak the language, that I in a gathering, everyone will know that I came here from somewhere else. Yet this is home.

A strange phenomena however is the need to come back to the original city, to fall in love with the adopted one with a far greater intensity.  Seen it happen a number of times.

-       Delhi person goes to London. Likes it but secretly knows its not India. Comes to Inida and misses London more than before

-       Someone goes to America,  and appreciates the chaos of home, the life it offers, comes to Pune, sets up home and misses America.

-       Am sure the list can go on and on

I love how the mind has an ability to magnify the parts we love and fade out the noises of things we wanna fade out.  Come home for a break, and these come whom bam slam into your face and then ouchies!! You remember why you wanted out in the first place. And hey wala. The new city looks like a place you want to head back to right this minute!!!!!!

Smarty pants me with all this insight and wisdom, no matter where I am going to go shall fall into the musings little Indian mouse, missing the street food, the noises of the fans and traffic, the blending in, and not cleaning my dogs poop once he poops.