Mein ha rahi hun ( I am going.)
A few days ago Chitra, an Indian colleague, interpreted the lines in the back of my hands. She said that I like to travel but there’s always one place I would call home. And it is definitely not India.
In two weeks I will be concluding my love-hate relationship with India, my place of residence for 26 months, as I fly back to Manila mid-September. Yesterday, it being a holiday (Idu’l Fitr) I started sorting my stuff, decided what to bring and what to leave behind. As I neatly folded the clothes to pack I was melancholic. I always thought that I was very excited to go back home. I still am. Only, it is beginning to sink in me now that a different, thrilling, sometimes boring and at many times, frustrating phase in my life is about to end.
I always knew that my stay in India would be short and temporary. It might have been two years but the days, weeks and months flew by so quickly, even those days when all I did was wait for the night to come. There wasn’t a day that I looked forward to the end of my placement. I savored the good times while they lasted and braved myself into thinking that bad times would come to an end eventually.
Two years and two months ago I did a very similar thing of sorting stuff and deciding what would fit in my suitcase. That time, I think I was apprehensive rather than sad – new place, new people to work with, different culture, spicy food. If ever I was sad, it was because I would be separated from my son and my family for many months. But again, there’s internet and cellphones, and I knew I was coming back at some point and would be reunited with them. I would be home again.
This time I am more sad than apprehensive. Sad, because even if I didn’t really gain a family here, there are people I have come to love. There’s Anjalie and Bulbul, my landlord’s daughters who became a ‘fixture’ in our flat because they were there almost every night and regaled me with stories about their schools and urban view of Indian culture. There’s also the 1-year old Meethu whose one of the first words he learned to say was my name.
I don’t have very many friends in the Philippines. In fact even my Facebook friends number only 300+, and that includes the people I met here plus the unknown people I 'friended' only because we all played the same game app. I certainly have not acquired so many friends here, but many of the Indians I have met and interacted with made my stay bearable, if not very pleasant. There’s the Indian hospitality that is quite different from Filipino hospitality. They made me feel at home yet not entirely at home. No matter how many months I’ve lived here they still considered me as guest and ensured my comfort and safety. There is a considerable distance, a lot of it is due to language barrier but also because most Indians I met don’t socialize a lot especially after they got married, yet there is a connection which I would always cherish.
There was also the community of Filipino expatriates that became my refuge while in Chennai. Not only did I have the chance to taste Filipino dishes during gatherings but also allowed me to shift to my first and native language.
And there’s Michael, my fellow volunteer, travel companion, colleague at work, roommate, boyfriend. It’s not completely rosy but life was often easy when you know you have someone with whom you can split bills, or vent frustrations. It also helped to think aloud because I knew that somehow there is always someone who would hear me and relate with my experiences. And during worse times, there’s a shoulder I could cry on. I could also allow myself to be flippant around him, and only around him (or maybe Anjalie and Bulbul sometimes). Of course there’s the indispensable community of VSO volunteers. They reminded me I am not alone and that even if I didn’t regularly meet with them I always knew that one email and they would rally support when it got very tough.
It’s safe to surmise that volunteers do introspection, recount the experiences towards the end of service, assess the placement, ruminate what difference we made and what lessons were learnt. I am not there yet. I am simply pondering from where the melancholy emanated. I realize it is from the fact that it is home to the people who made me feel I belonged in the last 26 months, and that leaving means a very good chance that I will never ever see them again. I will not see Anajlie become a doctor, or Bulbul become an artist and entrepreneur, I will not hear Meethu learn to speak English. Soon many of the people I’ve met here will just be part of my memory, precious memory. With hard-to-pronounce names I may even forget many of them as soon as the plane reached the Manila tarmac.
Chitra may be right, there’s only one home for me , it is where my heart is and I am heading back there very soon. India may have never been home to me but a good part of my life had been lived here and I am thankful for the generally wonderful experience.
