The nebulous notion of home
Updated On: 30 August, 2024 06:47 AM IST | Mumbai | Rosalyn D`mello
The immigrant experience is often marked by existing in between worlds, trading one form of longing for another and latching onto largely idealised memories of the place where you used to live
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Sometimes solitude is welcome, but there are moments when it feels too much to bear and I miss being social. Representation Pic
The sun angles itself differently already. Where we live, the birds now chirp shortly past 6 am. It is late summer. The first lot of apples are being harvested. The wineries are readying for the grapes to come in. Boxes are being cleaned with high-pressure water hoses. The grapes are steadily sweetening and look robust and almost mature. The swallows have begun their annual meeting around the elementary school to plan their migration. There is a nip in the air in the mornings. It is neither warm nor cold, just right, just perfect, just pleasant enough. Our balcony will still serve us another two months until the cold of winter starts to settle in. I have mixed feelings about these transitions. There are things to look forward to, undoubtedly, but as the year starts to fold in on itself, I am reminded, once again, of another year passing without having had the comfort of family or friends near me.
It isn’t just that I moved to Italy. It is the remoteness of where I live that isolates me from all the worlds I have known before. Friends make plans to visit Italy, but I am rarely factored into those plans because where I live is not on general tourist maps is not quite on the ‘grand tour’. I saw some ‘society’ pics the other day of the designer Masaba’s baby shower and I felt a lot of envy. I felt sure that if I was back home, someone would have cared enough to do something like that for me. I have not managed to achieve such intimate friendships here, and being so far away from home also alienates me from the intimacies of my past friendships. Sometimes the solitude is welcome. But there are moments when it feels too much to bear and I miss being social.
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