California dreaming: When you've lived around the world, how do you find 'home'?

“Where is home?” asks my five-year-old looking up at me from under his new rainbow-coloured umbrella with his planet-shaped eyes. We are skirting puddles, braving a fun walk in the torrential downpour, under the flimsy disguise of an errand. He is as excited as a kindergartener can be to be in the foreign city his mother grew up in and he has heard so much about.

The wild Mumbai monsoon and I are meeting after eleven years. And like an eccentric Bengali aunt you have not visited in ages, she does not bother to hide her fury. It is familiar and a huge part of my otherwise rather fluid identity. A lifetime of moving has turned the term identity into a mist of confusion that I have struggled to hold on to, until my twenties when I finally gave up the futile effort altogether.

A bridge has collapsed somewhere scattering paranoia well beyond its debris. Cabs lacked the courage to get passengers out of the clear roads surrounding the airport even those like us whose destination was merely five miles away. We are forced to pay thrice the amount and check into a transit hotel inside the airport because we can’t even get transportation to get to the line of hotels across the street in the blinding rain. It is a surreal feeling to be forced to check into a hotel in your home city. What a welcome!

We are raised to believe that we belong to places, flavours, foods, smells, sounds, weather, people...Nowhere is this more confusing than in India where every single thing is amplified, be it the good, the bad or the ugly. Half a dozen stories lurk wherever you turn your head.

All foods have more flavour here. Leave alone the legendary mangoes, even the salt is saltier in India! I’m reminded of a meeting with the well-known biologist and geneticist Andrew Hessel several years ago in good old Mountain View. Andrew had said that he was deeply envious of my Mumbai roots. I thought he was kidding or being polite or something like that. I couldn’t understand why. But when I asked him why, he was dead serious and said that it was because life grew so, so fast there. He was talking from a biologist’s point of view of course. (Bananas take a week to ripen in sunny California by which time they have grown and rotted into compost in a tropical country.) But Andrew’s perspective is even more true even out of the lab.

Personal boundaries are a luxury and almost non-existent. (My little Dalai Lama is used to privacy and exhausted of strangers and passersby treating him, especially his tempting chubby cheeks and chin like public property.) People are more openly emotive, warm and temperamental. It’s as if everything is expanded to the maximum in India: the joys and the agonies. A great example is this breathtakingly beautiful mad Mumbai monsoon which nobody can tame and which brings out all the literal and metaphorical filth out from corners versus our well-behaved winter rain which appears almost like a drizzle in comparison.

My Californian life appears like a beautiful old black and white TV set while India is a blast of full technicolour. This is why I always describe my double life as being at peace in California but truly alive in India.

Yet, the city and even most of my beloved Bandra have become unfamiliar to me. Perhaps because I grew up in Bombay. Like ink on ancient paper, Bombay has faded, washed away, evaporated...to be replaced by the shiny, seemingly Manhattan-wannabe called Mumbai. The Bandra-Worli Sea Link in my home city gives company to Golden Gate Bridge back home.

My boy, used to the Pacific, walking on the battered terrain of Bandstand, is horrified that a seashore can exist sans a beach to build sandcastles upon. Later in Juhu, he, a nature’s child, is scandalised when he isn’t allowed to touch the sand. I am unable to take him to Mount Mary lest he slide on the slippery steps. He cannot fathom why his mother is so crazy about her “home” city when she clearly isn’t at home here while she is very relaxed in his home country.

I have learned to see the world through his huge planet-shaped eyes and agree with him. I no longer know what home even means. I have become used to belonging nowhere and everywhere at once. Perhaps this lack of rootedness, this lack of belonging, this lack of meaning is what home is.


And then, one early Sunday morning the house is asleep. The trunks and branches of trees are so wet and shiny that they look as if they’re made of plastic.I make pancakes for the family while listening to the Mandarin rendition of 'Dreams' — originally by The Cranberries — from one of my beloved Wong Kar Wai films and watch the rain scrub already gleaming foliage. Finally, a whiff of the comfort of my Sunday routine from my life in California, a Mandarin/Cantonese song and a Hongkongese movie that gave me solace during scorching summers of my early twenties in a Delhi barsati with a hot tin roof, and the place being in Bandra, the suburb which has always been home as much as Mountain View. Suddenly life was perfect. Life made me the perfect blend to call home.

“Mimi!” calls the voice dearest to me in the whole wide world. He is standing by the kitchen door in dragon pyjamas, rubbing his eyes sleepily. “I am your home,” he says softly. “You are my home.” Melting into a puddle, I lift him up into my arms and we watch the rain eat up my home city.

(The author is a San Francisco-based writer, journalist, vegan cook, Reiki master and teacher and meditation coach. She is the co-author of ‘Nawazuddin Siddiqui: An Ordinary Life’; and a former foreign correspondent with The Economic Times. She can be reached on Twitter @ReadRituparna.)

Home Décor Hacks: How To Make The Most Of Your Small Space

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If you are living in a small home or are planning to shift to a studio apartment, make the most out of the space by choosing the right colour schemes, décor and furniture.

Surabhi Mittal, founder, RevivedbySurabhi, and Purba Kalita, co-founder, SaleBhai.com, have some easy hacks to keep clutter at bay while jazzing up your house.

If you are living in a small home or are planning to shift to a studio apartment, make the most out of the space by choosing the right colour schemes, décor and furniture. Surabhi Mittal, founder, R..

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It can be anywhere - the living room, the bedroom, or even the terrace balcony.

Just choose a bright corner of any part of the house. Add a colourful cotton rug, throw some pillows, a lamp (go for something unique, such as marble), a handful of tabletops, and a bright painting on the wall to tie it all together.

It can be anywhere - the living room, the bedroom, or even the terrace balcony. Just choose a bright corner of any part of the house. Add a colourful cotton rug, throw some pillows, a lamp (go for s..

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While choosing furniture, go for multi-functional ones. That's the best you can do to make the most of your small space.

For instance, look for a storage ottoman that can be replaced as a coffee table or opt for a foldable dining table.

Do not pick bulky furniture that may make your rooms look cramped and cluttered.

Choose furnishings of the right size and the ones that lighten up the space.

While choosing furniture, go for multi-functional ones. That's the best you can do to make the most of your small space. For instance, look for a storage ottoman that can be replaced as a coffee tab..

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When it comes to home décor, it makes sense to start from the bottom. Stark, bare floorings can be given a new life with the perfect carpet.

Depending on your taste -- the flamboyant Rajasthani, the eclectic Indo-Tibetan, or the luxurious silk -- there are varieties of coverings to choose from.

When it comes to home décor, it makes sense to start from the bottom. Stark, bare floorings can be given a new life with the perfect carpet. Depending on your taste -- the flamboyant Rajasthani, the..

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Are you too keen to adorn those empty walls of your room with paintings or other personalised designs? Well, the idea should be to create an illusion of something bigger in a small area.

You can choose a piece of art that also creates a division to your apartment or for a particular corner or a wall.

Instead of hanging three to four small frames on a wall, exaggerate the photo prints to give more depth to your wall.

Are you too keen to adorn those empty walls of your room with paintings or other personalised designs? Well, the idea should be to create an illusion of something bigger in a small area. You can cho..

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In a small apartment, visible storages such as cabinets, baskets and boxes may make your space look cluttered. The ideal solution would be to opt for hidden storages.

The key is making use of all the empty spaces such as the crawl space underneath the stairs, empty space under the bed or even the gaps beneath the floor boards.

(With inputs from IANS)

In a small apartment, visible storages such as cabinets, baskets and boxes may make your space look cluttered. The ideal solution would be to opt for hidden storages. The key is making use of all th..

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