Home is where the heart is…

After 18 hours of flying time and two hours car ride, I finally reach my destination. This is where I am going to spend my next one month of summer, with my parents and sister. The pandemic has kept us apart from each other in two different continents for a long time and finally we meet. 

I reach home and after a quick shower to make sure that I am free of germs, I take a stroll around my mother’s garden. The lush green surroundings evoke a sense familiarity in me. I see the hibiscus tree bloomed in full, the very same tree my sister and I used to pluck flowers decades ago to make pookalam. During those times, hibiscus, roses and jasmine dominated our garden. I see that the jasmine plant gave way to a mango tree, but amma has replanted it in another corner in the garden. Sweet fragrance of jasmine fills the air. During monsoon days, it was a chore for us to carefully collect the jasmine buds in the evening and make long garlands for decorating our hair the next day. The trees, the landscape and everything in it is similar to what it had been years before, nothing much has changed except some new additions here and there. My father walks with me proudly showing off all that is thriving in the garden. It is as if the time is frozen in this home and has captured my childhood in it. 

Inside the house, I see twenty year old me smiling at me from a photo frame,  my son’s childhood photos, our story books still in the cupboards. I open the cupboard and flip through the books I read umpteen number of times. As I see my grandparents photo on the wall, their voice echoed in my ears..bringing a sudden flush of memories of the time we used to be behind Achacha to hear a story from him or with Achamma  while she makes dosas for us just because we don’t like the idlis that is made for breakfast for everyone else while our amma remarking to achamma that she is the one who is spoiling the children. We indeed were two spoiled little girls who got our way with everything under our grandparents’ loving care. 

My sister brings me a cup of brew coffee in the same steel glass I used to have coffee everyday as a child. The vessels, the kitchen, the dinning room, serving plates, clock on the wall and it’s tic tok sound, everything reminded me of how it used to be when I was growing up. How gently my parents have lived their life and made a home!

Traveling back is not only to visit  family, it is also a pilgrimage to find the lost child in you. And that is one more reason we keep finding our way back home, to be that child again to our parents as long as we can, to once more enjoy their affection and care, to remind ourselves that this is a place we can come back to rest a little, to keep our burdens off and be that carefree child. 

Making America my home…..

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of United States and to the republic for which stands, one nation, under god, with liberty and justice for all…."

This is a pledge I recite with my students every single day for the last 12 years or so, yet this altogether had a different meaning when I was reciting it with the Judge at the oath ceremony today. Along with 865 other men and women from around the globe, we became United States Citizens. As the Judge noted in the key note speech, along with the privileges we get by naturalization, comes the civic responsibility to vote, to participate in the democratic process, to raise our voice and above all to maintain the republic that we became part of today. It was a very humbling experience for me.

In preparation to be a citizen, I was reading stories of immigrants who came to this country in the first half of the century, who were eager to assimilate and to be part of this melting pot. They wanted their kids learn English as soon as possible so they decided to not teach them their language. They kept themselves from their past and were forward looking. However, recent immigrants have a different take. Their kids are bilingual and they try to keep their culture and tradition while also assimilating to the new way of life and participate in the community. They not only assimilate, they acculturate too.

So, the first generation immigrants like me are torn between two worlds. Pulled in two directions, we struggle to strike a balance. What we left behind is something very valuable and irreplaceable. We have our parents and siblings back there to who we are in constant touch, thanks to the technological advancement of the recent years. But we have also raised a generation who doesn’t connect to our past like we do. For them, this is the only place they know. Their experiences are typical for the children growing up here. But we have tried our best to tie them back to our past by introducing food and language as part of our culture. It is more of our necessity than theirs that they keep that connection.

Each generations have their contribution to the next. Like my maternal grandfather, who went to work in Ceylone in the middle of 19th century and raised the family there. Although he decided to come back to his village and settle down, he made sure his only daughter could go to college. She was the first women from her village to go for higher education. To many who didn’t realize the significance of sending the only daughter to a faraway place to study, he replied that he is providing her with the most important wealth he can possibly give her. He changed the course of the family by providing that opportunity to my mother. My father, who always told us, that life can be anything that you make of and never made my sister and I feel different because we are girls taught us to stand in our own feet. This upbringing has helped my sister and I to be our own advocates. 

Few generations from now, my husband will be that grandfather who steered the course for generations to come in an entirely different direction. It is his determination and drive to make use of the opportunities that are available that has brought us here. I am grateful that I get to play my part in this journey of life. When I look at the big picture, I realize that coming to this unknown country and making it a home is never about one individual. It is about the future more than it is about the present.