Category Archives: Back in US
Journey From Home to Home
As journeys go, this one was pretty uneventful.
Saying goodbye to the nest I had created for myself was tough. Tougher still were my farewells to my very best Mumbai buddies – so many good times we had together!
My neighbor on the first flight out of Mumbai was an elderly Indian gentleman who lived in the deep South like I did. This had been a quickie visit to India for him for a family wedding, a trip he had made after a five year interval. He was astonished at the changes he saw in India, everywhere he went.
When I told him that I had been based in Mumbai for a couple of years, he shook his head and said, “I don’t know how you did that! No way I could live there!”. He had just spent the day in Mumbai. One day and he had reached this conclusion!
Meanwhile, I’m thinking to myself, buddy, what do you know? I wouldn’t trade this experience I’ve had for anything!
I began telling him about the Mumbai of my experience. My, but I was getting so defensive! What was happening to me? I had known and lived surrounded by all the dirt and smell that was typical of Mumbai. I should have been echoing his thoughts but instead I was up in arms, the emotions of my departure getting the better of me and dominating my feelings now.
My home in the U.S. had not gone anywhere – it was waiting to welcome me back. This particular time was the longest interval I had stayed away during my two year sojourn in India. Approaching six months…come to think of it, in all these years (decades!) of living in the U.S., this was the longest stretch of time that I had been away. Ever. I just realized that and it made me long to get back, more than ever.
So, what was it like getting back home? For one, there was really no adjustment period at all. The warmth of my real home enfolded me like a blanket. In spite of the chilly winter cold. Here I was, in no time at all, back to shopping for groceries, back to all the house work and muddling my way through the kitchen. Back to a chauffeur-less car, driving in the comfort of my own car on the clean, pothole-devoid roads of my home town. Getting back home. To new beginnings.
So, it was that easy then.
Meanwhile, I received an email from my assistant at the office in Mumbai.
Every day, without fail, as soon as I reached my office and before I had time to even turn on my computer, a cup of fresh green tea would magically appear, brought to me by one of the pantry staff. She wrote in the email that this past week on Monday morning, the same person carried a cup of green tea, as was the usual custom for two years, to my office. It wasn’t until he reached my office door that he remembered that I was not there anymore. 😦
Thank you all! I won’t ever forget the wonderful ways that you were there for me through these past months. You helped me truly feel welcomed and ensured that I was in a home away from home.
This is why I was so up in arms when that gentleman made derogatory remarks about living in Mumbai. Poor fella, he had no clue because he hadn’t experienced the people that I had. And ultimately, you know that that’s what made the goodbyes so hard.
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Photo credit (home sweet home): Nhlarry at en.wikipedia [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)%5D, from Wikimedia Commons
Goodbye, India. And Thank You!
“Promise me you’ll never forget me because if I thought you would, I’d never leave.”
― A.A. Milne
What on earth just happened??!
My head is still spinning.
Before I could say “boo”, my time here is up. Done. Gone. Finis.
Here’s the twist – with a couple of months still remaining on my commitment, I received a sweet offer (very sweet) to head back home and do my thing there instead.
Carpe diem (Sorry, I just watched that wonderful movie, Dead Poet’s Society).
Sieze the day! What else could I do? What would you do? When the choice is heading home or not, and it’s presented with a flourish of new incentives? Exactly.
It’s just that it was totally unexpected and sudden, and I was quite unprepared. In fact, I was under pressure to extend my commitment to stay on in Bombay (by a few years!), making me grapple with all that it means to do so. I had finally come to terms with this, ready to compromise and lengthen my stay for the right ‘fine print’.
But as I went in to discuss the details, lo and behold, the situation got turned all upside down and topsy turvy!
Could I take on a totally different (and exciting, blah, blah, blah) assignment for the company… based over there?
Huh.
And, before I knew it, just like that, it was over.
Things are happening so rapidly that I will be packing up and saying my goodbyes over the next couple of weeks. And then, it’ll be off and away for me. So quickly!
India
The time’s right to reflect a bit on my stay in India. Sadness is setting in. Because whatever good, bad or ugly I experienced here – only the good stands out for me now. [Aah, the mysterious workings of the human brain!]
I feel so lucky to have spent this time living and experiencing India – very different from a visit every now and then.
I feel so fortunate to have met all those wonderful people, many who have now turned into life long friends.
And I know that while I will still be racking up tons of frequent flier miles flying back and forth, it will never be quite the same as living here.
Mum-bai
And of the city that became my home for almost two years…whatever can I say?
A view of Mumbai at night, “clean” and shining bright!
I love this city in all its smelly and chaotic glory. I love its vibrance. I love the warmth – not of the weather so much as of its people. I love the shopping. I love the theater. I love the yoga I pursued here. I love the best pani puri in the world. I love…so many things here.
[But I do hate the sight of all that roadside garbage nor will I miss the traffic and crazy commutes].
The sweet and sour experience of living in India is looking mostly sweet – in retrospect and when it’s getting time to say goodbye. Isn’t that always the case?
Home Again
So, I head back to the US with all the eagerness of going home, but it’s mixed in with the sadness of leaving the new nest that I had created for myself in my native land.
Aaah, the yin and yang.
My time here has flown by! Almost two years that feel like the blink of an eye.
I am heading to a place where the news I will be reading is not about Sonia Gandhi, Kejriwal or corruption and scams. Instead it will be about Obama (yes!), Boehner, job creation and the fiscal cliff.
As I get ready to return home, I’m glad to say that I’m not alone. Nor will I ever be. Because accompanying me will be big buckets full of memories that will never go anywhere.
Yep. I consider myself very lucky indeed.
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“Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
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Heading towards a different skyline on the other side of the world
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P.S. And what of my blog??! I haven’t had the time to figure that out yet. I have loved every minute of creating it, even when the number of readers was at zero because it was never about how many would read it, rather about what thoughts were pouring through my head that just had to get written somewhere.
Now, what? Perhaps I just morph it to The Yin and Yang of Life…whaddya think?
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The Yin and Yang of Life Anywhere 