Brownian Motion

From quiet homes and first beginnings
Out to undiscovered ends
Whats worth the wear of winning
Is Laughter and the Love of friends
Anonymous

I lived away from home for 7 years. When I was 21 - I boarded a flight that took me to the place that was farthest from the only place I called home. Everything that mattered was in 2 suitcases. Emotional baggage notwithstanding.
I was excited and young and empowered.
But Time and Distance ..can both be like sinkholes. First we fear them, then we resist and fight them and ultimately we succumb to them.

There are moments that I remember distinctly. The first time I called Park16th in Gainesville "Home" ..I was at the bus stop near Shands and met someone from school who asked me where I was going ..and I said "I'm going home" ..It was months after my first flight across the atlantic.
It made me pause and feel the strange bitter sweet agony that I would soon learn to associate with my sometimes exciting and sometimes questionable existence away from home.

Living abroad can really be like a box of chocolates - Forrest's mom would have been pleased. We never really knew what we were going to get. From learning to operate vending machines, ordering the convoluted one tall cappuchino with low fat skim milk, relearning names of fruits vegetables and even ourselves. First it used to bother me that no one had heard of my name and everyone always mispronounced it. Then a few years down the lane - it stopped bothering me. But then the fact that I was so desensitized to having my own namesake questioned - started bothering me. I'm sure you get the picture.

I spent 2 and a half years in Florida...and one a brutally cold January morning when I made the drive from the sunshine state to the Peach state - I was a completely different person than the hopelessly optimistic person on the flight. ..and I remember thinking ..that all I had used to once fit in 2 suitcases ..now I have a car full of things...and it made me feel happy -sad in a way that I have not felt since...not in that precise manner anyways.


Atlanta was the city of many firsts for me. First time I stood on my feet- looked life in the eye and negotiated my own terms. First car, First job , First apartment and the list goes on. And soon the first year became the 2nd and the 2nd became the 3rd... I can never forget the first of many christmas's and new years that I spent alone in my 2119-River apartment.I was devastated and lonely ..but then the year rolled and by the 2nd holiday- I completely enjoyed the silence and the snow and the long weekend alone where I tinkered with my computer some,painted some more van goghs, cooked and cleaned and started enjoying things like doing laundry and washing my car and listening to the dishwasher. But then I'd see a Publix commercial with loads of family sitting around a table eating turkey and cry my heart out. Then I'd convince myself that I would have never eaten turkey anyways and would go back to the routine.

Life was kind to me in Atlanta - Of all the places in the world ,its like a gentle hand guided and looked over my shoulder everyday that I spent in the city. Four years and everyday one more to be thankful for. I'd found my home.But then the winds of change blew and beckoned and it was time for a change yet again.

Now I'm in Hyderabad - another place that I am learning to call home.I'll admit that it has been slow but its going to happen - one of these stormy monsoon nights.

The funny thing is that I spent 7 years answering questions like "Why did you move to the US ? will you go back?" ..and now I can envision the next decade answering "Why did you move back?" ..what makes it difficult is that there is no one good answer.Its not like I had a million great reasons for going to the US that magically fell apart one day. Its not like I didnt spend years and months agonizing over them. Its not that life came easily either. Most of us students worked brutal weeks at minimum wage - were jobless for months at a stretch with nothing other than our gut and sense of humor to feed us. Most of us who went there have spent nights all alone in our apartments with nothing to do and with just the TV talking to us.Gone through every hurricane season with our hearts beating loudly to comfort us. And yes - we have spent afternoons walking like nomads in shopping malls and read dozens of books in borders and had one too many lattes before we could come home and watch TV all over again on weekends when we didnt have plans.We've had phones that didnt ring for days. Mailboxes that never saw anything other than bills and china that was never used until we donated it.

The good came later ..and the really good ..came much much later...and that I think is what fosters a bond that is stronger than the one that you may have with any other place.

I'll always be a Bombay girl at heart and I'll always call Bombay my home..but Atlanta will always be the home that I cried and fought and struggled to keep..Everything that happened while I was away was like a coin toss.It was anybodys bet how things would have turned out - I could have ended up being one of those many million indians who sit only with other indians during lunch time. I could have ended up in a suburbian cookie cutter like existence with a family van. I could have dyed my hair three shades of blonde and had a blast...or I could have been completely mesmerized by life and lived it so intensely that for the longest time I could never see my life anywhere else. The truth is that I did a little bit of all of the above.

And I learnt to live in any place like its my home. Home stopped being one finite place somewhere along the way. It became a repository of every feel good moment I'd had, every fear that I had overcome and every dream that I had seen.And I learnt to keep it alive.On the inside.For as long as it took to call a new place "Home"
They say that home is where the heart is...and that is true. But the heart ..is in a lot of places with a lot of people and if thats not what makes life worth living - then what is ?!