"So, where are you from?"
Silence.
Where is your home,
where do you
BELONG.
Pause. Think.
There.
In that place
where we have our own
'home',
where my parents grew up,
and want to retire,
where my huge extended family lives,
where they speak the langugae
we speak at home.
Where unknown faces are familiar,
where we know our neighbours,
visit people,
celebrate together.
Where I have a place to go to
every year.
There, where I was born.
Here
Where I have spent
most of my life,
made friends,
found others like me,
studying, discovering, adjusting.
Listening to stories of that other place,
struggling to learn their language well
while adopting the slang here.
Where my parents cling
to that other place
and defy customs here.
Where the weather
swings like a pendulum.
Where we may not know our neighbours,
but have found
friends, elsewhere.
Where I return from
annual vacations
to that other place.
Here, where I grew up.
Here, or there,
in the past
or the present,
or the blurred crossroads where
they almost meet,
or in some unseen future,
different altogether.
Or beyond that,
in that fabled land
of my ancestors,
where even my parents have not been,
but from where
we trace our stubborn roots
and family trees;
distinctions still meaningful
to classify and define,
or merely learnt by rote,
varieties like fruits!
Enough. Clarity.
" I am a Bengali from Delhi"
Stare.
*That's not what we meant at all*
Silence.
Where is your home,
where do you
BELONG.
Pause. Think.
There.
In that place
where we have our own
'home',
where my parents grew up,
and want to retire,
where my huge extended family lives,
where they speak the langugae
we speak at home.
Where unknown faces are familiar,
where we know our neighbours,
visit people,
celebrate together.
Where I have a place to go to
every year.
There, where I was born.
Here
Where I have spent
most of my life,
made friends,
found others like me,
studying, discovering, adjusting.
Listening to stories of that other place,
struggling to learn their language well
while adopting the slang here.
Where my parents cling
to that other place
and defy customs here.
Where the weather
swings like a pendulum.
Where we may not know our neighbours,
but have found
friends, elsewhere.
Where I return from
annual vacations
to that other place.
Here, where I grew up.
Here, or there,
in the past
or the present,
or the blurred crossroads where
they almost meet,
or in some unseen future,
different altogether.
Or beyond that,
in that fabled land
of my ancestors,
where even my parents have not been,
but from where
we trace our stubborn roots
and family trees;
distinctions still meaningful
to classify and define,
or merely learnt by rote,
varieties like fruits!
Enough. Clarity.
" I am a Bengali from Delhi"
Stare.
*That's not what we meant at all*
