Home is where the heart is
After nearly two weeks of exploring and eating, socializing and shopping, I returned from India filled with many surprising revelations. As the summer progresses, I’m sure I’ll share some of those. Foremost on my mind is how hard it was for me to leave India. It is my birthplace but in reality, I experience it like a tourist these days. Staying in a hotel and taking guided tours is far removed from my childhood visits to India. Still, as my ancestral homeland, it pulls me in, the sights and smells penetrate deep, and suddenly I start dreaming about coming back and spending months there.
This is strange to me because I feel connected to India but it doesn’t feel like home. They say that home is where the heart is, but what if your heart is in so many places? Last week, I shared a meal with cousins in New Delhi and learned about shared family history. I also traveled within India with my father (who has lived in Belize for 50 years) and learned tidbits about his family. When I come to India, I feel the pull of my ancestry. When I go to Belize, I feel the pull of my childhood connections. When I return to New York, I feel the pull of familiar routines, close friends and my family of creation.
When I think of home, I often think of Belize, the place of my childhood, the place where my parents live. Home is also my partner and child, with whom I live in New York, and with whom my life is decidedly richer. Home is also the community of people, mostly women, with whom I work, with whom I share this space, with whom I celebrate and commiserate. Home is familiarity, something I feel in Belize, India, New York. And in London, where I lived for two years and where my child was born. It’s also Arizona, where I have worked with so many amazing people for over a decade.
While in India, the idea of home preoccupied me. Flipping through a coffee table book, I read an interview by the filmmaker Mira Nair, who was born in India, met her husband in Uganda and also makes a home in New York City. She said she feels at home in all these places but that home is where you make your garden. For her, that’s in Kampala.
I used to be tortured by feeling simultaneously rooted and multiply rooted. By the idea that my ancestry and my people were not easily accessible in one place. I am less bothered by this now, because I understand that familiarity with and connection to many places across the United States and around the world is a gift. With this many people and places to love, my heart gets the workout it needs to be big and spacious. After all, the heart is a muscle, and one I get to exercise frequently and at length.
Sayu
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