It’s always been hard for me to visit my hometown. Growing up, I was never a fan of having to visit family back in India. The easy excuse you could use for this outlook could be that I found discomfort in leaving the familiarity of my home in Canada, my friends and just my general routine.
God, was it so much more than that.
Every time my parents and I would go to visit, I’d get this knot of tension in my stomach. It grew tighter and tighter as the flight went by, and as we landed, the knot had completely choked me out. The feeling of dread remained because I felt like an intruder.
How do you explain the feeling of being a foreigner in a place that is meant to be your second home?
Don’t get me wrong, I loved seeing family I hadn’t seen in years, I speak the language (albeit, not all too well), and I love all things to do with my culture. Yet, there was this persistent voice in the back of my head telling me I didn’t belong.
The first time I heard that voice, I was 15. It was my third visit back home, and we were in Punjab, visiting extended family. I don’t remember what everyone was talking about, but I remember not being able to understand every little thing being said. I remember thinking about how out of place I was, and I remember feeling small like I was looking at things unfold from an outsider’s perspective.
It felt like I was floating outside my body, looking down on myself and just seeing this sad, pathetic girl who could not, for the life of her, connect to anyone or anything for that matter. Despite what felt like all my efforts, I was completely and utterly failing at being a “good” Indian.
I was uncertain of what I felt more: guilt or shame.
Growing up in Canada, my parents and I have done the best we could to stay as close to our culture as possible. However, the influences of Canadian culture are bound to be present.
I struggled with this in-between for as long as I could remember. I endured this self-inflicted guilt for not being as in touch with my background as I would have been had I been born and brought up in India.
The summer of 2022 changed it all.
It started out no different than the rest.
The whole flight to India consisted of anxiousness, a tensed-up neck and crying. An embarrassing amount of crying. It had been around four years since I last visited, and I hadn’t talked to any extended family in a while. I felt I had exaggerated the awkward distance already there, and now it was time to face the music.
I’ll be totally transparent, the first couple of nights there were rough. Extremely rough. A looming sense of isolation settled, and it settled quicker than ever.
But as the days went by, something began to shift.
I started to spend more time with my grandma. She would tell me stories of herself as a child, how the world, the country, was in her youth. She spoke of change being a necessity in life, never anything to fear but to embrace instead.
She spoke about how she was afraid of change when her daughter immigrated across the ocean to Canada. She said that as soon as I was born, that fear vanished, she knew my mother had done the right thing. She embraced the change, and she embraced it for me. I started to realize that the only thing getting in my way of finding a sense of belonging was me. And I knew if there was any time for me to work towards that feeling, it would be now or never.
From that moment, I started seeing this trip home in a completely different light. It wasn’t just to see my extended family. It was to experience the hot, humid air during the bright afternoon, to laugh and play with my toddler cousins who I met in person for the first time, to spend the mornings with my great-grandmother, just sitting in a comfortable silence and just to not take any moment for granted.
This became more to me than just leaving my home in Canada for a month, it was about finally planting roots and establishing my overdue home here, in India.
This summer, I returned home after years of self-governed exile and was welcomed with open arms and an open mind.