Moving to India was challenging being a foreigner. I don't have any family here. I didn't have anyone to guide me. But I never felt for a second that I am not welcome here.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
As a child, I felt that the Indian part of me was unacknowledged, and therefore somehow negated, by my American environment and vice versa. Growing up, I was impatient with my parents for being so different, holding on to India the way they did, and always making me feel like I had to make a choice of which way I would go.
Frankly, I never had any intense desire to go to India. I know that sounds a bit strange, but it just never was someplace I had a burning desire to visit.
I'm sure I went through a stage when I resented being Indian because in every other manner, in terms of cultural reference points and vocabulary and all the rest of it, I was way ahead of everybody else - so the one thing that set me back was being Indian. And I couldn't do anything about it.
I have to put down roots where I decide to stay. It wasn't enough for me to be an expatriate Indian in Canada. If I can't feel that I can make social, political and emotional commitments to a place, I have to find another place.
Moving to a new country is always difficult, but the fact my dad and my sister came to live with me was a huge help. That made things easier.
Getting some distance allowed me to develop a hunger for India and to come back and explore it in a way I wouldn't have had I been living here. And that probably made me more political as well.
I was born in India - but never really lived there.
I was raised by the Indian community, and those families are still very close to us. We used to go to each others' houses one Sunday a month, so we got to know everyone well. Also, we love Indian food and can't get enough of it.
India somehow constantly rivets and inspires me, and I feel very relieved to have come from this country which has a very 'lifeist' approach to living fully, no matter what one has or doesn't have.
I returned to India after long years of international service, because I had always cherished the desire to make a difference in my own country.