For most of us, going back home means a minimum of 10 minutes from school, a few hours from work, or maybe even a plane ride to another state from our college dorms. For most of us, “home” itself is the couch, the dinner table, the living room, or the television around which our brothers, sisters, and parents who surround us. If home is where your family is, then my home is 7,200 miles away.
Born in a small suburban area outside the capital of Delhi, I moved to the states when I was around five years old. Not one aunt, uncle, or third cousin twice removed was on this side of the globe; just my father, my mother, and I. My parents being immigrants, they took their time to adjust but soon were accustomed to the lifestyle. I, however, probably took the longest to get used to the environment. It wasn't anything about the people, or being too habituated with India because I was only five years old anyways. What I struggled with the most was the lack of a one solidified sense of culture. With so many diverse personas rooted from such different backgrounds, the pool of variety made it that much harder for the new kid to fit in. I had no brother or sister to share the experiences with, I had no cousins who could give me advice or tips, and my parents were on the same boat (pun intended) as I was so there was no true pillar to lean on for assistance, and riding a bike without training wheels is never an easy task.
16 years in America have passed by and I’m here; a 21 year old undergrad trying to find his way amongst the millions of other people in this world. We moved from place to place, faces changed, seasons varied, and perspectives grew little by little, but one thing always remained constant in my life; I grew up never understanding the true attributes of what it meant to have a family.
My best friend in elementary school was one of eight people living in the house that contained an adorably enthusiastic Italian family. The three brothers, baby sister, two parents, and two grandparents, really formed an almost movie like family that you couldn’t help but fall in love with. Even now, the closest person in my life has several family members around the country as well as a big family at home. Both my parents who grew up with two siblings each and plenty of cousins always coming in and out of the house were never really adequate sources to relate with because they didn’t understand my type of upbringing. We used to travel back to India every two years but then that stopped and 10 years passed by. The 10-year-old became a 20-year-old, the phone calls stopped, life got busier, and all ties were gone.
A fraction of a lifetime and 7,200 miles later, I finally convinced them to go back to where we came from. I wanted to travel the country, put faces to names I never could relate to, and photograph each and every moment. I thought this was going to be an amazing experience, but I was wrong; it was much more than that. When I got back, my breath was lost not due to all the changes that had taken place, but rather everything that had remained completely stagnant. I brushed my fingertips across the marble sign cemented on my grandmother’s home, kicked the metal fence along the garden outside, opened the metal gate only to hear the exact same squeak that once would mark me coming home everyday from the park. I walked in wearing my Sperry's into the store that once fitted me with my first pair of shoes.
I drank from the same nine by nine square foot shop that would serve me the little lemon soda made the same way by the same guy I would go to everyday 10 years ago. Me and my dad went to all his childhood best friends and pranked them by having me go up to them and ask for my father by his old childhood nickname. I cannot explain in words the shock they had when they heard that name after so many years (our family hadn’t told anyone we were coming back) so imagine the shock when they actually saw my dad step forward in front of them. Friendships like that come once a lifetime, I haven’t found mine but I found it breathtaking that my dad could go back to people that he hadn’t seen or talked to in a decade and they started laughing and talking as if they were little kids.
The people had grown, the technology had evolved, and the faces had changed, but my town was still the same place I was born 21 years ago. We met each and every family member and for the first time in a decade I could put a meaning to the six letter word. Through all the experiences, through everything I saw and learned, if you ask me what stuck with me I would have a simple answer. My aunt who was just recently married to my uncle last time I was there never really had a true relationship with me. She had just married into the family and we never talked because I was too young and we weren’t in contact while I was in America.
But after we all had dinner and talked about how everything’s been and I got in the car and got ready to leave Jaipur, she said one small sentence that had more significance than anything anyone’s ever said to me in my life: “Shantanu, always remain the same.” She had told me that even their closest family members hesitate to be open or lighthearted, to them the eagerness I showed with the little things like dishes, or to give them a hug, or just laugh openly in front of the elders was behavior that happened scarcely. To me it was less strange but rather more than necessary to do to make up for lost time. So for my quiet reserved aunt to say that sentence in front of our entire family was something that hit home.
I went home after 10 years, I smelled the air from my childhood, ran across the streets I used to pretend to be the king of, embraced the figures in my life that I only saw in my friends’, and heard stories that could change even the most cemented of perspectives. Home is not where your family is, home is not where your heart is. Home is the aggregate of all the scraped knees, the playground laughters, the homemade dinners, the bike rides until sunset, or the giant rocks between the trees that would be the perfect looking glass to the almost-Christmas lit sky. If you think home is one place, and you haven’t looked back at and encompassed all the memories that made you the person you are, then maybe you’re just like me, and haven’t gone back yet. It took me a two plane tickets, one camera, and a decade of waiting to find out where my home was. I hadn’t gone back in 10 years, how long has it been since you’ve gone back?
