#8 The answer to where are you 'from'

Negotiating the meaning of 'home' as a third culture kid

Hi there,

I recently went on a solo trip to Phuket, Thailand as a belated birthday treat to myself. But no, this newsletter is not about that vacation. It’s about a question I’ve been carrying for a long time, which became more insistent with people in Thailand invariably asking at some point, “So, where are you from?”

Cue an awkward pause and unconvinced answer which might have even come across as evasiveness on my part. In reality, I was engaged in an impromptu internal debate. In what context was I to determine my response? My ethnicity, my citizenship, the country which granted me a residence visa, the neighbourhood where I spend at least 182 days, the government to whom I pay taxes, where I took the flight in from or the place to which I’m taking a flight out, where I was raised, where my parents grew up or currently stay, the jurisdiction my rental agreement falls under, the place where I do not have to pay for a roof, or the city that’s my default setting for stories?

Such a paralysing conundrum because enquirers usually synonymise the answer to ‘from’ with ‘home’, which for me is complicated.

I had carried my dilemma with me to the Singapore Writers’ Festival (SWF) 2022, hoping literature may provide some solution. I still sat on a newsletter about ‘home’ for almost two years, intending to meditate on the meaning of the term for as long as it took and discover the ‘one ultimate and eternal truth’. Ultimately, I’ve relented that the answer may not manifest any time soon or ever at all, and possibly change every now and then.

I indeed found some guidance at SWF 2022, the most reassuring of which came from the poet, author, and educator Professor Boey Kim Cheng: “‘Home’ is a constant negotiation of where you come from, where you are, and where you are headed.”

With the question resurfacing with such persistence at Phuket, I decided to give this negotiation a shot.

Home is where the parents’ childhood is

For some background, I lived in Singapore from ages 4 to 13 with family, post which we moved back to Mumbai in 2007. I returned alone to Singapore in 2022, with ‘being independent’ the closest to any sort of agenda.

To my parents’ credit, they were clear about returning to India. They instilled the same awareness in their kids that the country they are in now is temporary, instead of springing it as a surprise when they had turned already-angsty teenagers. ‘Home’ is elsewhere, we were told, and we accepted it too.

Typical of parents who move abroad, they then went out of the way to ensure their children were raised ‘Indian’. We lived in an Indian expat bubble, studied in an Indian CBSE school, attended flag hoisting ceremonies at the Indian embassy on the Indian Republic Day and Indian Independence Day, and celebrated all Indian festivals with the larger Indian community, observing all rituals that they entailed to the T with genuine curiosity and enthusiasm.

When I say 'enthusiasm for Indian culture' I mean Amrish-Puri-from-DDLJ level of enthusiasm. [Don’t tell him I said this; my Dad even looks like Amrish Puri when he gets angry XD]

After trying so hard to be an Indian in Singapore, on returning to the homeland we were told that you know what, you will never be fully Indian. You’ve still been touched by a foreign culture and its colour will never wear off.

Sure enough, I always turn up at parties at the time printed on the invitation. Even on streets with intense competition to hail a ride, I let the people waiting before me hop into an auto-rickshaw first. And rage when others don’t show me the same courtesy. I still don’t know what makes an ‘asal 100% shuddh desi’, but a tolerance and even a slight taste for callous ruthlessness masquerading as ‘street smartness’ seemed to be part of the deal.

It did not help matters that my Indian-Indian classmates were in fact a lot more like ‘those Western people’ that the foreign-return-Indian me was strictly instructed not to become in said foreign land. Basically, I came prepared to attend an Anup Jalota concert but found Freddie Mercury.

And herein lies the origin story of the perpetual existence crisis of this third culture kid :,)

Nonetheless, one of the default ways to think of ‘home’ is in terms ‘roots’, and the first place they lead to is that of your parents’ childhood. This happened to be India, which was decided as our domicile for us too.

Home is where my childhood is

By that logic, the place of my childhood should also receive consideration, but its division across two countries makes things tricky. I returned to Singapore as a steeped Mumbaikar, ever-prepared to look down on every other place in the world. Sure, Singapore is also competitive but what’s with this unreal, unnaturally sanitized façade. Some chaos is fun and good for you, you know!

On going about things in Singapore as an adult, however, I realised how crucial it was to have spent my formative years here. Not just for the experiences that enabled my current life trajectory, but my fundamental make up as a person. That topic, however, is at least a novella. All I can say is by the time SWF 2022 arrived, I was giddy with fondness towards Singapore, and guilty over two-timing with Mumbai.

I (over-)shared my anguish over having to pick a side with the journalist and author Akshita Nanda — and she fully empathised. She said, “We are all CCDs: Continuously Confused Desis. But did you know? We are ALLOWED to love more than one place at a time.”

Akshita Nanda’s message

This was a HUGE revelation and relief for someone like me who is still learning to accept messiness over clearly labelled and neatly stacked boxes. From there on, I smiled freely at the thought that Singapore may not just be my “first home” as I always called it, but my “other home”. That I could be the kind of person who ‘divides her time’ between two cities.

Home could be where the library and storage are

My perpetual existential crisis currently co-exists with the FOMO from leaving all my books behind in Mumbai. What if I just have to read a novel from my tsundoku but it isn’t on hand? And when I had to move apartments in Singapore, I couldn’t fathom the amount of junk I had gathered in a relatively short period of time, despite spending mindfully (God-promise!)

This made me think that accumulating possessions is one of the sure signs of settling in and committing to a place. Our physical belongings pretty much become an anchor that keeps us attached. So if I were to become a digital nomad, where would I voluntarily stash most of my stuff for a long period time? To which place do I have a strong or stronger enough reason to return to and reunite with my items? Could that place be home?

Home is a people

Something unexpected happened in Phuket. I missed people.

And when one of my favourite podcasters asked his guest the question, “So I want to ask, what is your Gangauli¹,” the image that flashed before my eyes was my family. In portrait mode; not with a distinct skyline in the backdrop.

Solo travel and independent living for me were to some extent an emulation of those I aspired to, but mainly they were an endeavour in self-discovery. They stemmed from an urge to prove my competence to myself, and to be in a space where I could expand in thoughts and actions. I often found myself in a zone where I could conjure epiphanies almost at will.

In Phuket, though, the sun rising before the Big Buddha brought no deep notions to the surface. I only felt how watching the cabaret alone is fine but it would have been great to have a friend I could giggle with at that monkey on the railing right now. I’ve also begun to roll my eyes at excited, newly-initiated girls of the ‘solo and independent club,’ stopping halfway when I remind myself that’s where I was a few years ago too.

Point is, I will still travel and live alone if there’s no company, if I want to do things at my own pace, or if I just need a breather. But I’ve grown sure enough of myself as a person, courtesy the fortune to have had some time and space to be on my own, to know that I’m not the kind that flies solo. I like, need, want, and prefer to roll and feel at ‘home’ with my loved ones.

Sunrise at the Big Buddha viewpoint

Home is where the heart is

A friend tried to help with the adage “home is where the heart is” when I whined about how long it’s taking to write this piece. So many of my earlier conclusions on this topic turned suspect, with memories clashing with logical technicalities and flaky emotions. But what do you still do when your heart’s current motto is ‘go wherever life takes you’?

The book Soy Sauce for Beginners by Kirstin Chen moved me deeply as a writer and a person, in great part because of a colossal TIL moment: that I could choose my home. That it doesn’t have to be where I was born or raised. The protagonist is caught in a tussle between two different countries where either of her parents want her to make a life in, but realises much later that the decision was always her own to make; all the parents wanted was for her to have options.

Perhaps I was too wrapped up in myself to realise that my own parents had exercised an option too. They are not native Mumbaikars, and people have migrated to different shores for centuries. So, you can very much be ‘from xyz’ but ‘make abc’ your home.

Until the heart makes up its mind, we shall see :)

This negotiation wasn’t really conclusive but we made some headway, no? What do you think?

Love,

Payal

p.s: Honestly, even I am tired of these introspective pieces. I’ve bottomed out on deep thoughts and just want to have fun. And that’s what the next newsletters will be about. Thank you for sticking around <3

1. Amit Varma quoting Amitava Kumar’s reference to an incident from Rahi Masoom Raza’s novel Adha Gaon where a character says, “[…] I love this village because I myself am this village. I love the indigo warehouses, this tank and these mud lanes because they are different forms of myself. On the battlefield when death came very near, I certainly remembered Allah but instead of Mecca or Karbala, I remembered Gangauli.” Amit proceeds to say, “And I found this so moving and I want to ask you what is your Gangauli? What is home to you?”