I'm kind of hopeless sometimes. Well, even more than hopeless. After an entire year at law school, I still feel homesick sometimes. (For the love of filter coffee.) I wonder if it's okay to feel homesick at times, even after the entire "oh, I've left home. I'm an adult now and I live off suitcases" life status.
Last week, I read Roshi Fernando's "Homesick". I have to admit, a delightful insight into the lives of Sri Lankan immigrants in the UK. Yet, hanging in the entire spirit of the book was the feeling of homesickness. To be back in Sri Lanka. And do Sri Lankan things. The way Sri Lankans do it.
Wherever you are, for however long, there's still that panging feeling in your heart which will only go away when you're-inevitably-home. Home is not a place where you've always been happy, necessarily. It's the place where your heart has witnesses both heaviness and light-heartedness. The place, where you will always find, assurance and support. And Hope. It's a safe place. For the risk of sounding cliched, home is where the heart is. I'm sitting in an ordinary room on an ordinary bed. The walls around me are pale blue, not very different from my room in the lizard infested fungus ridden hostel room back in Calcutta. Yet, it's safer, somehow. (And, it's not because of the brilliant weather outside).
It's perfectly normal to feel homesick. To yearn for good food, good weather or just your bed. (which might be as ordinary as any other bed, but it's still YOUR bed). Or, to just get off Potato for a few days. That's what makes coming back home all the more awesome and worthwhile. Because that's how it will be from now on. Come back home to be that incorrigible child for a little while and then get back to "I'm an adult and I'm responsible." But for those days back home, just be the annoying little kid your mother always complained about. (Believe me, she secretly likes it, and misses it too)
And, don't punish yourself by making that a by 2 coffee. Drink it full. For the love of filter kaapi.
Last week, I read Roshi Fernando's "Homesick". I have to admit, a delightful insight into the lives of Sri Lankan immigrants in the UK. Yet, hanging in the entire spirit of the book was the feeling of homesickness. To be back in Sri Lanka. And do Sri Lankan things. The way Sri Lankans do it.
Wherever you are, for however long, there's still that panging feeling in your heart which will only go away when you're-inevitably-home. Home is not a place where you've always been happy, necessarily. It's the place where your heart has witnesses both heaviness and light-heartedness. The place, where you will always find, assurance and support. And Hope. It's a safe place. For the risk of sounding cliched, home is where the heart is. I'm sitting in an ordinary room on an ordinary bed. The walls around me are pale blue, not very different from my room in the lizard infested fungus ridden hostel room back in Calcutta. Yet, it's safer, somehow. (And, it's not because of the brilliant weather outside).
It's perfectly normal to feel homesick. To yearn for good food, good weather or just your bed. (which might be as ordinary as any other bed, but it's still YOUR bed). Or, to just get off Potato for a few days. That's what makes coming back home all the more awesome and worthwhile. Because that's how it will be from now on. Come back home to be that incorrigible child for a little while and then get back to "I'm an adult and I'm responsible." But for those days back home, just be the annoying little kid your mother always complained about. (Believe me, she secretly likes it, and misses it too)
And, don't punish yourself by making that a by 2 coffee. Drink it full. For the love of filter kaapi.
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