There are times when you hear a line and it resonates with you so much that it permeates your thoughts for days. It brings to the forefront the sentiments that you have been carrying inside you for a while. On a recent drive home from work, I was listening to Terry Gross interview Anthony Shadid where he spoke a line that has stuck with me since. “It is hard to be of two places”, Anthony said when asked about his grandparents home in Lebanon, where he has decided to rebuild and live. I can’t say how true that is and perhaps for many first generation émigrés to USA.
Next year will mark the 25th anniversary of my arrival in the US. I could perhaps write a book about my experiences here in the US but not a day goes by when I don’t find myself to be of two places and how hard that has been. There is a daily struggle between the two you. One that is Indian to the core and the other that lives in America. It is almost like your body is in once place and your soul is stuck on the guava tree that you used to climb on hot sunny afternoons.
Then all of a sudden you see your 3 children who were born and brought up here and you envy them, because they are really not of two places. They may understand where you come from but they never grew up where you did. It’s hard to explain but not very hard to understand.
The recent uproar over the mismanagement of commonwealth games has created an opportunity for a lot folks to demonize India as it highlights the inadequacies and exposes the ugliness, greed and ineptness of some but you don’t hate your mom just because she is imperfect. She is someone who gave birth to you and you carry those imperfections whether you like it or not.
I am as guilty as anyone who has moved overseas at a young age to scoff and shake my head at the daily misery that people endure whenever I visit home and swear that I will never return, yet I am the first one to catch a flight back home to absorb the culture, the richness the realness of the people. Some call it “Khoon ki Pukar” (call of your blood), some dismiss it as a need; “you have family and roots”. I have to confess, I miss the closeness, I miss the culture, I miss the holidays, the marriages and every other cultural event good or bad. It is an entirely different feeling to light the diya’s around diwali back home than do it in a synthetic community center in San Jose surrounded by people who wear their silky kurta’s and sari’s that came out of an attic the night before smelling of mothballs or look over your shoulder during holi and wonder what your neighbors will think. It’s hard to be you. I am lucky to be working at a very diverse place where our cultural differences are easily understood but yet you somehow feel like a guest.
