I’ve been an expat for most of my life. It’s a term that’s been used and abused to describe my kind. Expat is code for ‘this is a temporary arrangement so don’t get comfortable’. And so I’ve been on the lookout for a place to call home, a place where I can belong, quirks and all. A few years ago, I came across a riveting talk by Pico Iyer where he asks a very simple but loaded question: where is home? And I thought to myself, where indeed?
I was born in the sandpit of abundant riches and given the sheer number of years I’ve spent here, this is ideally where home should be but it has never felt like one. This is the place I spent my preteen and teenage years navigating the vagaries of life. I felt the sting of foreignness and the comfort of community in equal measure. This was also the place where I rekindled my love for the best form of escapism: reading. The sandpit broadened my horizons, literally and figuratively. I found my place in the world, far away from the confines of my tiny hometown.
I’m from a tiny Indian beach state. It’s where I spent my childhood swinging from banyan trees, building sand castles, riding my bike and fearing the wrath of the nuns at my very Catholic school. Over time, the biennial pilgrimage back to my hometown felt less like a holiday and more like a chore. I felt like a fish out of water. Things moved at a glacial pace, there was no concept of personal space and public transportation was a joke. The occasional insufferable relative was the cherry on top.
After years of mindless paperwork, I am now the citizen of a country that colonized my little hometown for 450 years. And yet, calling myself a citizen of a country I only spent 8 days exploring feels pretentious. It was a thrill (and a challenge) to roam its hilly cities. The only thing connecting me to this country was my surname and a shared interest in a tiny Indian state – my hometown, their former colony.
Three countries that have heavily influenced me but zero places to call home. During my travels, the longest I’ve stayed in a new place is a fortnight and that’s not enough time to gauge whether it can be a potential home someday. There have been many hopefuls – a Spanish coastal town, a Turkish city and a tropical island but I’m still looking. They say home is where the heart is and mine is all over the place.
And so the search continues!
Jade's Blog 