In a few days I will leave Oxford. It would be more than six months that I have lived here, and liked most things about it. Am I sad about leaving it? A bit of yes - I have met some good people, had some good conversations, made some fond memories - and a bit of no - I go back to a land I love. Or, maybe, it is not a land I love, but a land where I feel I belong. ('Love' makes it sound more emotional and sentimental than it really is.)
On the first day when I met the other Fellows at the Reuters Institute, I was asked if I have ever wanted to live in a country apart from India. I had said no. The answer had not required much thought.
A few days ago, I was asked a slightly different question, but on similar lines - would I like to work in any other country apart from India? The answer, again not requiring much thought, was no.
Years ago, more than a decade in fact, my then boyfriend had been rather hurt when I had refused to accompany him to the US when he was making plans to study for an MS in that country.
When I was even younger, 11 or 12 I think, I had wept (in secret) at the prospect of my family migrating to the US.
So, I can claim with some degree of certainty that this is one thing about which I have been rather consistent.

My family has had (from my parents' generation onwards) several members who have made other countries (mostly the US) their home. I have grown up meeting these relatives - some of whom are very close and much loved - once every two years, or, if lucky, once a year. I have grown up wearing clothes and shoes made in the US (before all their factories moved to China); our house is full of bric-a-brac, cutlery and crockery that says 'Made in England', and I have heard stories of snow-covered driveways, log fireplaces and carpeted rooms for as long as I can remember.

Now, I have friends who lead the very lives that my uncles and aunts once led.

And now, more than ever before, I wish not to ever lead a life like theirs.

This is not to say that I disagree with every one who has ever lived away from their home country. This is to say that I am sure each one of them have their reasons, and that I don't have any. This is also to say - in a rather old-fashioned way, perhaps - that I feel I belong only in India. And no, this has nothing to do with patriotism.

I have lived away from home for a decade. I have enjoyed living in cities where no one knows me, where I have lived an anonymous life amid millions. Living alone has given me the freedom and opportunity to do things that would have been more difficult to do had I been living at home. And I have exulted in that freedom. But now, when I go back home, and walk into a photo studio to get some passport photos printed, the elderly owner looks at me with a smile and says - Aren't you X's daughter? How is your mother doing? We chat about the neighbourhood, as though we have known each other for years. Fact is, we HAVE know each other for years. I had simply forgotten.

It is not as simple as saying that familiarity makes me comfortable. It's not familiarity with a place or its people. It's the knowledge of the place and the people. The knowledge that I have of them, and they have of me. The knowledge that comes from living on the same land, and sharing its history for more generations than we know. The knowledge is a little more in some places, and a little less in some others. And I am fine with both. What I am not fine with is a place where that knowledge is altogether absent.

Putting it very simplistically, I refuse to permanently carry a passport (even a metaphorical one) as proof of identity.