On one of the four bus journeys I make during a regular work day, I suddenly got to thinking of what if feels like to be “at home.” To me, Bangalore has always been home. I was born there, I grew up there and only left there for a long period of time just about five years ago. Yet, I don’t recognise that city much anymore. And I feel vaguely uncomfortable in my parents’ new home (They just moved in November.)<\/p>\n
I lived in a hostel (a dorm for my American readers!) for two years after I left Bangalore. I never felt much at home there either. My first few months in that city I hated because I resented being put into the programme I was in and I was generally annoyed with classmates and other people. In short, I was being a brat. I grew to like the people and made some of my best friends there, but I still didn’t feel at home. It was always just this place I was at to study.<\/p>\n
I moved to the US then to join grad school there and I thought I would never feel at home there since everything would be quite different. I was wrong and I was right. Some things were not so different, I had to fend for myself, cook my own food, etc but I was surrounded by other Indians and had very few American friends to start off with. (Not too many at the end either but then my excuse is that I wasn’t in the US long enough!) You’d assume I’d feel at home since there were all these Indians around me. But no, most were so different from me in so many ways, in thoughts, in ideas of what was “cool,” in backgrounds back in India, and, not the least, in the subject they were in grad school for. All engineers! And me a biologist! My first few months were spent in some sort of denial, I spent hours online chatting with my friends back in India and spent hundreds of dollars on long distance phone calls to India!<\/p>\n
It took a while, but I finally clicked into a routine in America. I had more (and new) friends and I was out doing things, school began to occupy my time and teaching turned out to be a lot of fun! (Not the grading though!) I began to enjoy the “creature comforts” that were so easily available in the US. Netflix, highspeed internet a given where ever I was, fairly comfortable living for cheap, good food and drink was affordable on my student stipend, and generally scratching the consumer itch that we all have. I was just thinking I could feel at home there. I was planning to get a car and maybe move out on my own or with a single roommate.<\/p>\n
But then, I moved again. Back to India. I decided I wouldn’t be too heartbroken about leaving the US, and that I should be back into the groove when I was in India. Once again, I was wrong and right. It took me a while to confirm the job I was offered here and that job was in Bombay and not Bangalore. So it meant moving to a city I was not very familiar with yet again. It meant having to strike it out on my own in a city in India which it is supposed to be the toughest to do. I’m doing pretty well I guess. I still don’t have a place to stay and have to live with my god-parents for now, but I’m confident I’ll be finding a place soon and living the “cool single life!” *grin*<\/p>\n
I do<\/span> miss some of those things from the US and of course I do miss my friends, and I have a hell of a lot of gripes about this country, but on the whole I don’t mind being in India at all. It’s home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On one of the four bus journeys I make during a regular work day, I suddenly got to thinking of what if feels like to be “at home.” To me, Bangalore has always been home. I was born there, I grew up there and only left there for a long period of time just about… Continue reading Home is where the hearth is?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[82,63,34],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/absolutegeeky.com\/oook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}