It’s been almost a year since I first arrived in the US of A, and now after all this time, it was time to go back! I was sitting in the plane, extremely thrilled about the prospect of returning to my motherland, but the immediate short term goal of going through a 22-hour journey, all alone, did not excite me at all. With the lack of anything else to do, my thoughts began to wander like they tend to do in such times, and I started thinking of the journey I’d embarked on a year ago. And that’s when, for no apparent reason, ‘the question’ popped into my mind, after all this while. May be it was because my mind had time-warped itself to when I first came here or may be because I felt a small sense of guilt for not having found ‘the answer’ even after all this time, but I found myself thinking about a question that a complete stranger had asked me then. It seemed like a really long while ago…
So, a little background on the question in question here. The thing is, when you first come to the US, you are bombarded with questions from everyone, which is understandable, since most of them are from friends and family involving inquiries of my well-being. But then a major part of this barrage is from prospective students who wish to follow suit. Most of these questions involve their own well-being, with their inquests being regarding the University and the student life in the US in general, which is again, quite understandable. But then, in some cases, the latter part of the population sometimes feels the need to suddenly inquire about my own well-being and what with them being complete strangers and all, here is where understandability of it all ceases to exist. What made the question stranger than usual, was the fact that it was asked to me by such a complete stranger. There we were, sending emails back and forth, with regular run-of the-mill questions and their replies, when this particular guy probably realized that the length of my replies to his questions was getting shorter and he needed to get into something personal to make sure I don’t quit on him. With enough fuss having been made on and around the question, to cut to the chase, here is what this guy asked me:
“So, when did it really sink in, that you are actually leaving your home… You know, was there like a particular moment when it hit you that you were ‘leaving’?”
I thought about it and I answered,
“You know, it wasn’t till the last moment that it actually sunk in for me! The actual moment when it hit me that I’m leaving was when I was sitting in the plane ready to take off. It was when I felt the wheels of the plane leave the ground, and when I watched through the window, the sight of my motherland fading away into the distance… That’s when it finally sunk in!”
That is the answer I gave him. As extravagant as the answer sounds, to tell you the absolute truth, I LIED! That answer was as much further away from the truth as I was from a window seat in my flight to have seen the aforementioned fading view of the land. But then, I had to lie, because truth be told, when I tried to come up with the defining moment when it had actually sunk in, I drew a complete blank!
Now, almost an year later, as I sat in the plane waiting to reach back home, the question gnawed its way back into my brain, initiating a domino effect of thoughts. With one thought leading to another, I went back to search for whether there really did exist such a moment…
Was it the moment when I saw my friends for the last time? When I saw the last movie on a weekend in my favourite multiplex in my home-city, or when I had the last bike ride through the streets? Or was it when I stood in my house, about to leave, taking a long last look at it so as to store each and every thing about it in my memory? Or was it when I looked back one last time at the airport at my family standing there teary-eyed, waving their good-byes? I would have very much liked that to be the moment, but well, it wasn’t. It was none of them that struck me as the defining moment. May be there was no defining moment…?
Unable to take no for an answer, I decided to cheat the question, by changing it to suit myself. I realized that may be it’s never a single moment that makes you realize that you have left. It’s those small things that keep occurring daily even after you leave, that hit you every single day, aiding you in the realization. It's when you wake up in your new bed the first few days and it takes you a second to figure out why you aren't in your own bed at home, that it partly sinks in. And it is when you look to the wrong side while crossing the road, even weeks after you've arrived... Or when you try your hand at cooking, and realize how vastly unlike your Mom's food it tastes... This list could go on for a while, but the gist being, it's all those moments bringing out the trifling differences in your routine.
Well, its not just these differences, but the moments of some remote resemblance, as well, that you manage to come across everyday. It's something as small as when you pull an all-nighter before an exam, since you waited till the last moment as always and realize how some things never change... Or something as grand as watching your country win the World-Cup with people around you celebrating with an enthusiasm that makes you forget that you are 8000 miles away from home... And so on...
Thus, I made my peace in thinking that ‘the one moment’ was, in fact, a collage of all such memories, scattered across your daily life. It is every time you smile knowingly to yourself when you’re reminded of something back home, that it sinks in one step at a time… Yes! That must be it. That must be the answer I was looking for. Yet again, it WASN’T…
Because, in the end, just when I’d stopped looking for the answer, I finally DID find it! And ironically enough, the answer was more close to the lie I’d told, to that stranger, a year ago, than you’d think. As my journey drew to a close, I watched through my window outside (as this time I did have a window seat) and then it struck me!
As I watched the familiar shoreline of Mumbai approaching; as the wheels of the plane touched the soil, the soil of my country; as I felt the exhilarating joy on finally returning back home and as I finally realized what I was missing all this while, THAT was when it hit me! It was really strange and might not even make much sense, but I just knew I’d found my answer - the moment when it finally sunk in, that I’d actually ever left, was that moment when I had finally come back!
