Don’t retreat, retract!

Home in white

As soon as I stepped out of the plane in Detroit, the crystalline coldness of the Michigan winter swept right over my body. And in a startling twist of expected reactions, the bitter winter weather seemed rather comforting. The familiarity of the coldness was strangely welcoming. As if to say, welcome home.

In fact, even through immigration, I walked up to the immigration officer with a sense of entitlement. It was as if ignored the fact that my passport screamed Indian and my visa enlisted an end date. There was no fear in my answers to his questions. There wasn’t any doubt that he wouldn’t let me pass.

The quietness, the lack of horns and vast empty spaces took me in almost immediately. Grasping at the cold steering wheels of both of my cars, I couldn’t deny the fact that I felt like I had returned home. To my sparse but warm living room, to my clean kitchen with paper towels and to my bathroom that provided me with warm gushing showers whenever I wanted.

Everything felt familiar in an instant. In the grocery store I knew where to find the milk. At the cashier my attempt at an American accent seemed to fly off my tongue. I even craved for food that did not have a heavy hand of spices and where meat tasted like it was meat. It was clear that in the familiarity of my return to states, my vacation at home, I seemed more out of place.

Growing up is mostly about retracting ignorant statements you have made through your teenage years. A few years ago, I could have argued vehemently that America could never be home. I pretended to be smart by repeating that you could have many houses but only one home. That the emotional factor of your birthplace trumped every creature comfort you gained in other places.

In reality, I find it hard to not call this place my ‘other’ home. I am experiencing this strange fluidity in the concept of ‘being home’. Despite what my passport says, I grew into an adult in a country far away from my birth place. I find myself accustomed to its ways and it nuances in more ways than an outsider can imagine.

Home can’t be just one place. Its location is dictated by people you love and the things you do. It is possible to make multiple places your home without ever diminishing the value of the first one. Home cannot be a static entity. You can find it in the cockpit of a Lotus Elise or in the back of rickshaw. You can find it in a temple with your family or alone in a state park. You can find home in the spiciest of curries or in a salt and pepper rubbed steak.

And you never leave a home behind but rather the people and person you were when you lived in it. It is with that reasoning, I now believe there doesn’t need to be a finite number of homes you can be a part off. That the hemisphere doesn’t matter and the continent even less so!

In the bigger scheme of things, coming back home is same as moving to a new place, albeit with a five year phase delay.