A few weeks ago I had a friend ask me whether I was going to attend the Hopkins Diwali celebration. I said no because “I had work.” That wasn’t necessarily true. I could have made time if I’d really wanted to; I was just looking for an excuse not to go because I knew going would hurt too much.
Is home the place you live right now, a place you love but you’re going to leave after you graduate? Is home the place you’ve lived all your life but you’re never going back to? So I said I didn’t know.
“Well,” she said, “then where are you from?”
That I knew the answer to. I’m from Mumbai, India. That’s where I grew up. That’s where I lived for the first 17 years of my life. When I left to go to college in the U.S. though, I knew that I was never moving back.
It’s not like I’m never going to see my city again; I’ll still visit. But every time I return, what was once familiar becomes a little more distant.
The bumpy roads don’t feel natural anymore. I no longer know when to brace myself for the overly large ridge in the street on my drive home from the airport. I’ve forgotten where it is.
Now my mom has undertaken the project of redoing the house completely. I didn’t know, leaving my room at the end of summer, that it was the last time I was going to see my room and my house before the place I grew up became alien to me.
I’ve lost touch with Gujarati, the language that I first learned. My grandmother doesn’t know English. Every time I have a thought and really excitedly want to tell her, it breaks my heart and hers when I have to pause to search for the right word.
And my visits grow less frequent each year. It’s a 30-hour journey, and who has the time or the money to keep going home?
Is it worth it, though? Was coming here worth it? The answer is a resounding yes. I’ve been given an opportunity that most people don’t have access to. I’ve come to Hopkins, I’ve explored, I’ve found amazing friends, and none of it has been even half as amazing as I expected. I’ve found home in the people.
I still miss it though. I miss my parents, and I miss being able to talk to them without a bad Internet connection getting in the way. I miss having a place I could undoubtedly call home.
Searching for nostalgia I spent freshman year trying my best to go to the events organized by the various Indian student organizations on campus. They had performances, Indian food, people dressed in Indian traditional outfits and I can honestly say that I did enjoy myself there.
But when I was walking away from Diwali at the Rec Center I didn’t feel the sense of familiarity I expected. Diwali wasn’t supposed to be like that. The dance performances were amazing, but no one ever performed on a stage during Diwali. Back home the dancing was on the streets. The food was never traditional Indian food. It was the insanely spicy street food that made my dad cry every single time while my mom and I laughed at him. There was never just one sparkler. There were hundreds.
Diwali was staying up at night watching the fireworks from my bedroom window. Diwali was my dad insisting on going out to the store by himself and then coming back with his car trunk filled with ridiculously unsafe fireworks that my friends and I would then set off, running away as fast as we possibly could. Diwali was the whole city twinkling with lights that had no form of color scheme or organization; they were just bright and so wonderfully blinding.
Anyone who knows me knows I love things perfectly organized. But sometimes I miss the bumps in the roads that I knew so well. I miss the bangs in the air that weren’t caused by a firework display but by some kid and her dad setting off fireworks that they really shouldn’t have even had. I miss those blinding lights.
Sometimes I miss that chaos.
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