"I am comparing gravity with belonging. Both phenomena observably exist: my feet stay on the ground, and I have never been angrier than on the day my father told me he had sold my childhood home in Bombay. But neither is understood. We know the force of gravity, but not its origins; and to explain why we become attached to our birthplaces we pretend that we are trees and speak of roots. Look under your feet. You will not find gnarled growths spouting through the soles. Roots, I sometimes think, are a conservative myth, designed to keep us in our places.
"When individuals come unstuck from their native land, they are called migrants. When nations do the same (Bangladesh), the act is called secession. What is the best thing about migrant peoples and seceded nations? I think it is their hopefulness. . . . And what's the worst thing? It is the emptiness of one's luggage. I'm speaking of invisible suitcases, not the physical, perhaps cardboard, variety containing a few meaning-drained mementoes: we have come unstuck from more than land. We have floated upwards from history from memory, from Time."
- Salman Rushdie
Growing up , i alwez thought this concept of roots was over-rated . Having been born and brought up in a place very different - culturally , geographically and linguistically - from the region ppl call my "native"place ... i never bothered with the question of whr i belonged... In fact I prided myself on this detachment from any particular place ..on this ability to settle in whrever time or fate takes me ... It was just a part of tht emotional baggage tht i dint want to have to carry arnd ...
As a kid it was ok.. i belonged whr my home was... but things have changed ... parents have relocated whr they felt they shud be .. and i am caught at a crossroads whr i dont know whr home is ... i mean sure ,mom dad rock ...and i love the new house ...but its not home .... and all the old houses and places i have lived in evoke nostalgia ....but they dont call out to me ..... Thrz no place tht tugs at my heart the way my frenz describe their homecomings... Time and again these days i find myself lost ... longing for a place i belong .. a place i can call my home .... The normal confusion of a young girl trying to fit in sumwhr ... or a deep-rooted unfulfilled need to belong ???
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