A Home Between Two Shores

Vibrant memories 

When I lived in Madras – that’s what it was called when I left the city in the early nineties, before it became Chennai – home was something I could feel before I even opened my eyes.

I was woken not by an alarm but by my parents’ prayers, chanting rising softly through walls; it was a sound that held me and enveloped me in gentle comfort. The air carried the familiar smells of filter coffee, fresh sambar, my Amma’s hands and the fragrance of jasmine in my oiled, braided hair. I wore that fragrance like a second skin, like a blessing I hadn’t asked for and didn’t know, yet, to be thankful for.

Some mornings, Amma would sing, and Carnatic music would move through her and her tambura, ancient and alive, filling the house the way sunlight fills a room. 

At the temple, I would step inside and breathe the fragrance of ash, camphor, tulsi and come alive. Outside, the scorching Madras sun relentlessly sought out every shadow and corner. In the evenings, dipping one’s feet in the warm waters of the Marina Beach, with the cool evening breeze, felt like a quiet mercy.

Safety within the chaos

The hustle and bustle of living in the city included the milk man, the vegetable vendors, and my Amma’s unstoppable negotiating with the vendors for saving a few chillarai. Within the chaos of the day was an organized structure and safety. 

Playing outside was the only way to entertain ourselves while growing up. What a joyful, freeing atmosphere it was, almost a luxury for the children these days. 

Then came the leaving after 25 years…

I stuffed my suitcase in a hurry with sarees, salwar kameez, Amma’s sambar powder, her spices, and a Hawkins pressure cooker wrapped like something precious.

Because it was.

I tried not to look at my parents’ eyes,  tried not to hold on too long to what I saw there, the heartache, the incomprehensible feeling of an only child crossing an ocean into the land called America.

The fantasy of America

America was a fantasy, like a shimmering dream, and an uncertain one too, but one that was totally mine. Those were the days before cell phones. We had only an AT&T plan with designated hours and small windows of time in which to press their voices to my ear. It was our only connection to home, our parents and loved ones. 

Thus began the way of life that has been mine for over three decades. 

There is no noise or hustle and bustle here. Sometimes there is a pin drop silence, a silence so intense that even now, when I come back from India, I pull my ears to check if my ears are clogged. 

Pandi on the hot pavement

Hop-scotching between two worlds was like pandi on the hot pavement. Always torn between the duties of a daughter, a wife, and a mother, as though I could only be one thing at a time.

Home is supposed to be a safe place, but that has not always been my experience. The misogyny and patriarchy I was soaked in while growing up in India followed me here to California, where they appeared in different shades, different forms. For a long time, I lived in between two worlds, two cultures, and I didn’t know if that in-between could be a home at all.

Reflecting, I was assimilating, acculturating, performing, belonging – doing part of it or all of it at the same time. Hoping the dominant culture would finally look up or look down and approve and accept my existence. 

My brown skin, trying so hard to fit – not only in white spaces, but in black spaces, brown spaces, and every space in between – is slightly outside my frame always, as I continue to negotiate my place and my being. 

A longing quiet and deep

Now that my parents are gone, I realize that I no longer have a home in my own homeland. The longing lives quietly, deep and permanent within my bones, even as the ache becomes less sharp as the days go by. 

It surfaces with the smell of coffee, in the sound of a tambura on a YouTube recording. The smell of Jasmine remains suspended in unexpected places, like in the marketplace, on a stranger’s hair. And suddenly I am standing in the house that no longer stands, aching, for a morning that will not come again. 

But now, I am beginning to understand that it is possible to create something new – my own home, not from the home I was born into, not from shuttling between the two worlds that never quite felt whole to me, but from something more loosely woven. I am learning to gather home the way we gather a sari — not binding yourself to its structure, but draping it, with freedom, letting it move with the body, letting it be worn in more than one way.

A home not made from duty or longing alone but made, at last, for my own being, with my own hands, on my own terms; not from either, but from both and mine.

And while I’m at it, I may even pick up the jasmine and the tambura, holding my beloved Marina Beach in my mind as I feel the sands at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.