It’s been a lifetime of city-hopping and never a dull moment in my banking service. Bharat Darshan at bank’s cost, and a rich haul of experiences and memories. Families of Union government or public sector employees are this rootless lot who are forever outsiders wherever they live.
I have wondered about the greener pasture on the other side, the vast majority who live out their entire lives at their place of birth, or maybe not farther than a five-hour bus-ride away, building a huge circle of acquaintances, friends, and strengthening relationships among kin. The only negative aspect might be that this lot can’t escape the circle if a few relationships turn sour.
If you leave your home State at the high school stage, then over the years you lose your brand-recognition— your hometown accent goes neutral and indistinguishable into a flavour-free, pan-Indian monotone.
Seeking livelihoods, a family gets dispersed across the country and the world. You leave your native town where you spent your early years and commence translocation all over the map, The first time around, it is a drawn-out business of goodbyes, tears on train platforms, or the last sight of aircraft heading towards the horizon. Then on, you get used to the packing and unpacking of luggage which gets to be a routine for those in the loop of transfers every three years or so. The relationship that you build with your new neighbours, the friendship and attachment that begin to take root within your three-year tenure comes to an end. Before you know it, it’s time to bid farewell to the neighbours, and workplace friends who too are transferees,
Each time you move, you intend to return and settle in your hometown, but over the years, your son-of-the-soil sentiments, and your emotional reasons for returning to your homeland get a little cloudier. The reasons don’t seem so compelling as time passes. You begin to compare the pros and cons. And you decide that one place is as good as any other. If you expand that idea, you might even feel the same about countries — one country is no less or no greater than others. You begin to appreciate the thought processes of ancient migrant waves who left their original homelands and settled in new pastures. And who later confirmed their resident status by emotionalising the issue, attributing maternal values to real estate and calling it motherland, and showing themselves more patriotic than others. That was how one made peace with one’s displacement.
Bridging distances
Fortunately today, geographical distance is not an issue anymore. Social media has connected far-flung lives, and you feel you never left home at all. Your friends and kin are there just a click away. Settled far from your native town, you get a WhatApp message from your one brother you don’t get to see much. The two of you are the ones left over from a family of five, and now live in different cities. The message says, ‘Today’s mom’s death anniversary.’ You had forgotten. And all you can come up with, in reply is a thoughtful, ‘Yes’ —a paltry response the nearest thing to being speechless. And then you try to honour the memory of mom and experience the melancholy of such a loss. You offer up a little prayer, and later shuffle through her old photographs, and then play some hymnal music that mom liked long ago. You try to remember her voice, the nasal tone in which she told you something, the shrug of her shoulders and tilt of her head as she laughed.
Had you been in your hometown where mom is buried, it would have been a bit of a ceremony at the grave on the death anniversary. You would have stood around her resting place with your clan, bearing witness to each other’s sense of loss. Gingerly, on the pretext of dusting the headstone, you would move away from the rest of those assembled there, and would whisper, moist-eyed, words that no one else could hear, “Mom, are you really in here?”
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