Homeless in Homeland

“Didi tum to yehan ki nahin lagti, tumhara ghar kahan hai? ” (Sister you do not look like a native of this place where do you hail from?). No this was not the first time I was facing a question like this. In my almost forty years of life I have been subjected to similar queries innumerable times and every-time it has left me pondering. India is a country so intensely united and yet markedly diverse. It's diversity in language, food, clothes, festivals and etc need no elaboration. It also has diverse races of people who are identifiable and can be attributed to specified geographical regions of the country. Thus the question to a wheatish complexioned north Indian from a fair looking Uttaranchali must seem natural to most local inhabitants. Yet it leaves me reflective and contemplative. I have spent almost two decades of my life in a beautiful town in the southernmost part of the country. Me and my siblings identify more with the people from there than with people from our own native land. Our familiarity with which is only limited to stories of their days there, from our parents and our annual summer holiday trips. Which were later not even annual thanks to the board exams…competitive exams…, and holidays that could not be synchronised as amongst half a dozen siblings some of us in college while the younger at school would have exams and vacations alternatively, leaving our parents no choice on their annual trips. They had to be content with my father making the mandatory trips and my mother would stay back and ensure we did our exams well.
We still enjoy south Indian food, invariably wear south silk sarees on all family weddings. Fondly remember our days there and look for an opportunity to go back there.

After my marriage I moved to my husband’s home, right from the seashore down south to the foothills of the Himalayas up north. Personally for me it has been a beautiful journey, the ups and downs on the ride up the hill have been memorable, enriching and learning experience. My husband is often surprised when he hears me humming the kumaoni folk tune (no I am not much of a singer although) as I make his favourite rawa dosa for a sumptuous Sunday breakfast.

We love the hills and seem to have never got enough of it. Having spent more than half of my life and more than a decade of it here when I am still asked this question by a curios salesman “didi tumhara ghar kahan hai……” I almost feel homeless and abandoned and wake up to the reality life is temporary and my permanent home perhaps lies elsewhere.