One foot here and the other...

I guess I will be a wandering soul till the day I die.

I have always envied those who say I grew up in one place, went to one great school and made some life long friends. On the other hand, it seems like I was born with a suitcase already packed and all set to travel. All through my school years we were constantly shifting, so I was constantly saying bye to a lot many friends pretty frequently. So my list of life long buddies who have known me since my first tooth popped out is a big miserable zero.

But I love talking about my school days if ever someone asks me about it. From my earliest memory I have been travelling. I spent my kindergarten , stuck with a bunch of screaming toddlers in Dubai New Indian Model School. I was too petrified of 20 odd kids all simultaneoulsy bawling that I forgot to cry when my dad left me with them. Thats my first memory of my first school. 

For my first standard I got a new uniform and new bag and a new set of books and a new school in a new country! Vijayamatha convent at a small town in Chittur district in Palakkad was my next school. My only recollection of that year was getting into a jeep loaded with other tiny kids. Loaded would not begin to describe how many kids were stuffed into that jeep. Well the van lost a kid next year when I moved back to Dubai.

Second standard mom barely had barely unpacked the suitcases when the year got over and we came back to India due to the threat of the gulf war. I joined a new school in Palakkad. I stood out like a sore thumb here with my English speaking ways and inability to play the games that these girls were experts in. 

Two years later I was again on a flight bound to Dubai to a new school where I would spend the next 6 years. Std 5 - 10 at VIPS Dubai was a particularly long stretch for me considering the record so far. I loved that every year I was with the same set of people. But hated the fact that all the girls I liked where already in a gang since ages and I was always an outsider. However, I had some of my most wonderful years there and met some very lovely people. I lost some of my shyness during my fourth or fifth year which pretty much improved my over all situation.

Having given my tenth board exams I said bye to my friends at VIPS and moved back to India.Two more years and officially my school days were over. 

By now I was used to being different. I knew I would never truly be another face in the crowd. From the way I spoke to the kind of clothes I had, I was always odd one out. And finally at some point of time in life I let it be. I guess time had come, that I wanted to be different from others and my schooling helped me do that without me trying too hard. Those terrible teenage years that everyone keeps talking about missed me by a mile.

I am now a mutant in my native place. My name is a dead give away that I am a mallu. But I am ignorant of most of the old customs and traditions. I never go to sit on my grandparents knee and hear stories of Ramayana and Mahabharata. So I made my own stories. I know my mother tongue but gosh its a slippery one. I would rather speak in English. I do not know the malayalam months but I do love celebrating my birthday twice a year. The couple of years that I spent in Kerala finally made me fall in love with the saree, but I love it only in moderation. I am still to get over my allergy to any TV channel in Malayalam. I find Kerala beautiful, but Seattle is equally lovely.

 

I know I am not alone. There are millions like me who live outside their native place yet neither embrace their new place nor completely let go of their homeland. We are stuck somewhere in the middle. 

I would rather be the mutant in my state than be anywhere else in the world. If someone asks me where are you from I give the answer I am supposed to give. But I don't call any place home. The only constant thing in my life has been my family. They are my roots. If my family choose to move to the Himalayas tomorrow I guess my internal compass would point to the mountain tops as my home.

The bottom line is now I love having been to so many places and seen so many people. My perspective has changed so much after all this travelling and it continues to change the more I see of the world. I don'd mind being the wandering soul anymore. But would I want the same shifting sands for my children? I am undecided yet.

At home, on top of each room we have stacks of old, broken suitcases from all our years of travel. They are reminders to the fact that my life has been like the cut kite in the sky. I go where the wind blows.