Homelanding

on belonging, on considering

On my flight from Boston to Chicago, I attempt to stand tall on my reaffirmed intention – not to be mistaken for a New Years resolution, of less screen time. So I look out the window. Nature’s television. Sheets of clouds, wispy yet abundant, crater back and forth against a perfect blue sky. Something I have come to realize in my almost two and half years living in Chicago is how the sky often dismally defaults to slate in the winters. The cold is, for the most part, comparable in both Massachusetts and Chicago. The former, from my 28 years of historical data, has had far more snowfall. But Chicago’s sky leans heavily towards chrome that, I’m spiritually convinced, adds to the iced bite daggering the air. And, of course, there’s the scientifically proven lake effect from Lake Michigan, my neighbor. So to see a blue sky as I head towards Chicago – well, this is special.

I’m leaving home to fly back home. A strange concept to consider, one that just a year ago I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to fathom. To feel belonging so strongly in two places that I can definitively call both home. That they both feel like home. Considering this feels monumental. Almost heavy. Overwhelming.

I resist the urge to soothe this complicated feeling with my phone. I am committed to not mindlessly exacerbating my screen time. Since I had already blown past my limit at my flight’s gate – okay fine, I suppose we can call this a resolution of sorts, I attempt to maintain a compact body as I reach into my tote bag between my feet. Careful not to disturb the woman sleeping next to me, I slowly contort myself on the way down. Sudden movements at my big age prompt muscle pulls, I’ve learned. I grab Smoking the Bible by Chris Abani.

During my first winter in Chicago two years ago, my mind teetered back and forth on whether I should venture downtown to River North for a poetry reading. It was, of course, already dark. It was a work night. Undoubtedly, it was frigid. The train ride was long enough that it felt more like a journey, less like a quick trip. But there was a poet reading that night who I had a peculiar connection with. She, like me, was an Indian poet. She had lived in Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, the Indian state my family is from. While I had only visited Chennai a few times, we both shared the same dust of its red dirt beneath our soles. Likely, felt the same stones cool our feet midday at Hindu temples, a place I have found refuge in, peace in.

But perhaps my favorite connection – she had written a poem based on another poem by Elizabeth Bishop. Bishop, a Worcester, Massachusetts native like myself, was not a favorite poet of mine. In fact, I was only familiar with a slim selection of her work. But I remember the distinct delight of discovering she was from my hometown. The delight of uncovering this other poet’s connection to my Chennai and my Worcester was enough for me to put on a pair of my favorite jimmikis and cocoon in my parka.

An affirmation I have been telling myself lately is that “I am exactly where I am supposed to be”. I repeat it out loud and tap my heart to steady the anxious stories that worm into me. It nudges me towards a cadence that slows down the races my mind leaps into, ones that only burn out my knees and send my shins blazing. It would take some time to understand the extent, but on this night, I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

Along with the poet I had been excited to see, I was introduced to the work of Chris Abani. Actually, I was taken aback by the work of Chris Abani. He read a few poems from Smoking the Bible, and I found myself in tears. Touched and changed, I sought him out after the reading.

With a newly purchased copy of his book, I approached him. Kindly, he signed it. Kindly asked if I was a writer as well. Kindly asked if he would have read my work anywhere. Kindly listened to me as I said of course not. Kindly listened more as I divulged that I am new to the city and feel immensely intimidated by the world of poetry and am just trying to find my place. Kindly, he suggested I send him an email. He teaches at a “small” school in Chicago and perhaps there’s a class of his I could audit.

During the following summer semester, I met my now dear friend, Surya. We met while I audited Chris’s writing workshop together. I was nervous. I hadn’t been in a classroom in years, and as an engineer, I, especially, had never been in a collegiate setting for writing. It was both daunting and exhilarating.

Our workshop began and ended in a blink. Such is the summer. I had learned how to ground a poem in an object. How to find that object in several lines of the poem. How to be intentional with line breaks more than I had ever in the past. How to turn a poem on its head. How to read without caveat when sharing. How to write as a writer not a reader. But perhaps what changed me the most was my friendship with Surya.

About six months later, Surya and I were both visiting family in India, her up north in Mumbai and me down south in and around Chennai. It would be my first time back to India in 12 years. The last time I had visited, I was awkward, angsty, and devastated by the insurgence of puberty’s acne. I was 15. But now, at 27 – though I came back with confidence and less misdirected fire spewing from my head, I was still quite lost. I was grappling with the existential question of my life: where in the world do I belong?

The feeling of being too much of one thing and not enough of the other is universal for people in any diaspora. I was not unique in these complicated feelings. I had wrestled with it over and over at different points in my life with varying intensities. In each era of my life, I was desperate to move through it. To move beyond it. But now, I wanted to figure out how to live with the multiple parts of me rather than despite it. For me, it felt like being in my ancestral land was vital in that understanding .

Along with her mother, Surya and I met up in Goa, a state on India’s western coast. During our time at an idyllic, cozy villa on quiet Agonda Beach, we disconnected from the prescriptions of our lives and opened up to more fulfilling possibilities. Lazing by the water, we’d coo at stray puppies flopping on their backs for belly rubs. Silly and trusting, they’d make homes on our towels, under our umbrella. One morning, we floated on a sunrise bird watching boat ride. Surya’s mom pointed out birds of her childhood. She would zoom in on a King Fisher on her iPhone and capture pixelated memories. Photos that were imperfect, but somehow, masterfully captured the serenity we all shared. By night, she’d order us fresh pomfret for dinner, the fish of her childhood in India. We’d sit with the manager of the villa that we befriended and connect over our lives, our small worlds that we discovered had multiple points of overlap. Embodying the languid atmosphere of Goa, there was only peace to bask in. Only carefree space to rest and renew.

Me and Surya, January 2024

During our short respite in Goa, Surya and I went on long, romantic walks on the beach until it became dark. On one of them, I had shared with her that I didn’t know where in the world I belonged. In fact, I confided that I felt that I may always feel like that. That my identity was too fragmented for there to possibly any place where I actually fit securely. That, sure, I feel love with people. But those people move. Things change. Priorities shift. It felt foreign that I’d ever feel genuine, whole belonging anywhere especially as someone straddling multiple cultural lines.

Looking back now, it is unsurprising that Surya held me with such care as I shared this core fear of mine. Surya is a brilliant writer whose writing mirrors the way she moves through the world – extremely thoughtful, intentional. There are details of stories that I’ve relayed to her that seem miniscule but to her are key points she picks up on and remembers months later. In conversation, when we are considering something together, I often watch her pause. Take her time. In real-time, I witness her consider what she thinks. Not in a second-guessing sort of way. In fact, her confidence is something I admire because it is built from clarity she has taken the time to prioritize. She considers something with deep reverence with what is being placed in front of her.

On our walk along Agonda Beach, she paused, considered, and then told me she believes it is possible for us, people with identities that often can feel too complex to fit in one place, to feel belonging in multiple places. Our lives have been shaped by contradicting environments, institutions, and people. Of course our beings have carried pieces of all of them, some with more weight than others, sure. After all, we are inevitably changed by everything and everyone we come across. We are the product of what has lived with and among us. So sure, in some environments, some parts of us will feel more pronounced, more seen. Some others may sit back a bit more quietly. But those quiet parts will have other environments where they are front and center. Every single part of us belongs somewhere.

A year after that conversation with Surya in Goa, I am staring at a perfect blue sky adorned with clouds. I am on this flight back home from home, and I think I am really beginning to feel what she had generously shared with me. So here, I am pausing. Considering. These parts of me were collected through the various places and people I have been changed by. Places that I have come across because I have always been exactly where I am supposed to be. How miraculous is that. Some of those parts will feel more pronounced in their places of origin while some take a momentary break. But they are always within me. I am always carrying them in this precious body of mine. And I will continue to discover endless parts of me with time. They may be shy at first. May tread lightly. But they do not have to be lost just because they have yet to find their feet. Their confidence will grow. And I trust, these parts, the old, will change others the way others have changed me.