Homeless in Two Homes
When I was pregnant, I spent six months in India, doing fieldwork for my doctoral dissertation. I had planned it that way. On the 4th of July, I discovered I was pregnant, and on the 11th I was leaving for India. I spent the first six months with my parents, in the cocoon of their love and the safety of the home I’d grown up in. The city I proudly called home. I found a brilliant gynecologist, who took me on as a client, even though she knew I’d be back in the U.S. to deliver my child because I needed to get back to my studies, my work, my other home.
What I remember the most about my return was, on my way back to my tiny Columbus studio apartment, I had kept hankering for Chipotle. I had spent six months in the food heaven of Baroda, with the sights, smells, and flavors that touched the skin and reached the soul. Yet, I craved tacos and fajitas and that braised lamb shank that I’d had only once at a restaurant too expensive for either me or my partner on our student stipends. I missed tacos so much that I went looking for them online, and finally hunted down a small place run from their home, making fresh corn tacos. The couple, who’d lived in the U.S. and learned the art of making corn tacos there, had returned to India and started a small business. But unlike the food that I regularly savored in my hometown, the flavors of the three tacos I had didn't reach my soul. And the first thing I wanted when I landed was chipotle.
Chipotle never happened. I wouldn't eat chipotle for another two years after that because two days later, I was rushed to the hospital with high blood pressure, which I didn't know at the time was preeclampsia. But the yearning for Chipotle, the location beside 75 on Lover’s Lane in Dallas is still distinct in my brain.
I’m reminded of this because as I prepare to leave for India at the end of this month, I find myself conflicted between two contesting identities, yearnings, desires, and homes. I’ve been in the U.S. for 16 years, I am now a U.S. citizen. Yet, I still think of Baroda when I say home. I long for the touch and smell of the city, yet I know that when I’m there, I’ll face a similar yearning for my home in the U.S. I have my husband and child in the U.S., my parents and sister in India. I love the M.S. University of Baroda and miss the OSU campus equally. I feel at home in Baroda and in the many cities I’ve called home in the U.S., but neither is home for me and all of them are.
Home is a state of mind, where you feel safe, protected, happy. At least, you should, that’s the ideal situation. Not everyone is as fortunate, but that’s how we’ve defined home. In that vein, I have two homes yet I have no roots. Sometimes, it feels like a blessing. At other times, I feel transient because I’m never satisfied. Is that the fate of the migrant, the expatriate, the traveler?