Do I really have a ‘home’?

I’ve been living in a foreign land ever since I was a year old. Well, foreign to you, not so much to me. As a teenager in this fast paced global world, I’m constantly faced with a plethora of dilemmas: from packing everything you need for two months and having to fit it all in one tiny little suitcase to missing your favourite cousin’s wedding because your vacations obviously don’t coincide with those back ‘home’.Which brings me to my first and biggest mind boggler of all: What country can I rightfully call home?
India is home. I am Indian. I have an Indian passport. I have Indian eyes, Indian hair and Indian skin. I speak English with an Indian accent. My vocabulary consists of words like ‘yaar’, and ‘haan’. I go to an absolute CBSE school; no ‘international’ tag attached. My mother tongue is an Indian language. My social circle consists of Indians, and I still eat daal chawal every day. But how desi does this make me? You see, I visit my home country only once a year in the month of July for around two to three weeks. The conundrum of it all is that the minute I get out of the cramped airplane, I can see the looks of joy on people’s faces, including my parents. But me? I don’t feel it. Sometimes, I’ve even tried faking the emotion, and convincing myself that maybe if I told myself I’m glad to be “home’, I’d feel the sense of belonging. I’ll admit, I feel like a bit of a traitor when my mother smiles as wide as she can and heaves a sigh of relief saying “It’s so good to be back home,” but the only thought that crosses my mind when I land at Chennai’s international airport is, “Oh good lord, how am I going to survive thirty days in company of loud people, and not to forget-mosquitoes!”
The car ride from the airport to my grandmother’s home is blanketed with a thick air of nostalgia because apparently the streets rekindle a spark in my parents’ souls which brings back loads of bittersweet memories. All my NRI brat eyes can notice is the ludicrous way the cows play the role of traffic cop by positioning themselves in the middle of the road. The icing on the cake is that nobody even bats an eyelid! My parents are enjoying the scenic greenery that India has to offer, whilst I shut my eyes tight as nobody wants to stop the man taking a leak on the pavement of an extremely busy main road. My dad recalls the scrumptious taste of the roadside cut mangoes as he sees a woman selling them to a huge crowd. However, my stomach only withers in fear, imagining what sort of germs her hands carry, as she serves the mangoes with her bare palms. Does the concept of gloves not exist in this land?
After braving an army of domesticated (or so they say) animals and erratic roads (nobody ever follows the concept of the lane system), we finally reach my grandparent’s house. It is quite a big structure compared to my apartment back in Doha. This was probably because it’s a joint family system. I know my parents are ecstatic and are excited to meet all of their cousins and relatives after such a long time. “You know your uncle, your aunt, your other aunt, your uncle’s aunt, and your uncle’s daughter; we all slept in the same room at night,” (there are several other entities that shared this particular room) my mother proudly says as she points to the room she spent her childhood in. It is half the size of my room. My mom slyly smiles at me, because she knows that my silence only means one thing. I am pondering over the logistics over how eight to ten people slept in what seemed like Thumbelina’s bedroom and yet managed to maintain their personal space.
It’s dinner time, and the entire family is seated on the floor to eat their dinner. I shyly place a sheet of outdated newspaper on the floor as I don’t wish to make the tiles messy. But my aunt crumples it and throws it to the corner. “We don’t keep our plates on the newspaper in India, eat the Indian style today.” I smile at her, but only in apprehension. All the children and the men are seated on the floor with their plates full when I notice that my mother isn’t sitting yet. I turn around and see all the womenfolk of the family chatting, laughing, and holding some dish in their hands. “Ma, why aren’t you eating with us?” I ask her. All the women reply in unison, “Let the men eat first, we’ll eat later.” This, for obvious reasons, baffled me. Back in Doha, we all ate dinner together. If my mother wasn’t ready, my father would wait till she was, and vice versa. Somehow, when we came to India, all those morals and basic courtesies seemed to fly out the window.
It was only at night, when I was sleeping on the floor next to several cousins that I thought about how much I missed home. Home being Doha. I missed my bedroom, my bed, my lovely bookshelf, my phone, my kitchen (which was void of the ‘good luck lizard’ species), and my friends. I missed having the ability to step out of the house and know exactly which direction I had to move in to get to my favourite restaurant, or the grocery. I missed having the air conditioner switched on at all times, and having warm water baths at any time I wished to have one. And at that moment, as I craved for bite of labnah falafel with a cup of karak chai at the Corniche with Doha’s skyline to give me company, I finally comprehended my parents’ emotions. I realized how it must feel like for them to feel what I’d been feeling for the past five minutes, for ten months every year.
I quickly grasped the things I was missing out on because I was an NRI since birth. I didn’t understand the concepts of ‘cousins’ for one. Yes, I was close to many of them, however I missed out on loads of their ‘inside jokes’ and ‘secret vocabulary’. I felt like an alien, yet I was among my own blood. I didn’t know how it was to ride a bike in the summer breeze to school every day. Back home, I was transported to and fro only in a bus. I didn’t know the freedom of going any place at any time you wanted, thanks to India’s organized public transport system. I most definitely did not know how it was to have an equal status, and to have equal rights as every other person on the street, because I was an Indian citizen. Indians laws primarily cater to me and me only. I could seek justice for whatever I wanted, without having to worry about my nationality. I wasn’t an expatriate in India. I was one of them. I had the freedom of speech and expression, and I cannot put into words how lovely that felt. Let’s not forget, India actually respects the concept of vegetarians. And I’ll admit the cut mangoes they serve on the beach do actually taste quite good.
But alas, I did not belong there. Emotionally, my heart is attached to this little city called Doha. It is where I grew up, it is where everything significant in my life happened, and it is the place I plan on taking my kids, to show them where my nostalgia stems from. But I am not Qatari. I don’t get the same benefits they offer to their citizens. I don’t get to buy a house in Doha. And I don’t get to live here for as long as I want, regardless of whether I am employed or not. The only place that will accept me, regardless of my situation, is my homeland. The only government which will go out of their way to help me when I’m in trouble whilst vacationing abroad is India’s. But I am a stranger, a different species altogether in my homeland. My heart, soul, and body do not belong there. I am an extraterritorial creature, a mutation among those of my own kind. I don’t have a home or a homeland. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the enigma of it all.