Which Place I Belong To
Are you from Mumbai? This question has been asked to me hundreds of time and everytime I am left with a sense of confusion. Confusion why-because the minute I answer, no I am not from Mumbai next question which immediately bang on is what is your native place?
In India people have a natural tendency to trace the origins or native from language,surnames and caste.In a cosmo city like Mumbai where majority of people have migrated this question is quite common whenever a conversation starts.Most of us when we tell our native place we naturally attach our identity to that place.We use the words native place or hometown interchangeably.
Friends after almost a decade of marriage the term native place appears very vague and misleading to my thought process. Should we call our birthplace our native place or the place where we are brought up or where we got married.
Generally the place where our parents live is our hometown. Naturally, I do love my hometown. I visit my hometown since my parents are based there. I have some very precious memories attached to the place.My besties stay there. But I no longer own that city as before. Many married women feel that post marriage inlaws place is our native place. But I don’t even feel so.
Only some people from tier II or tier III cities in India have the fortune of living in same city post graduation. Jobs and better employment oppurtunities naturally attract all the younger generations to metros and abroad. Due to globalization and better connectivity people are not bound to one place anymore. Many people get married out of their state or out of their country. Many time their parents too leave their original places and move with them. So what should be their native or hometown. I feel love for my roots but I guess we need not restrict our identity to our hometown. As an experiment if we trace our roots some 10 generations back we can get surprising results. There has been an influx always. So where do I belong to is a tough question.
In my case my father being in a PSU we had the advantage of travelling and living in multiple cities. Also the hometown of my parents are different. I got married in a family based in different part of state. Post marriage also we have travelled across cities before coming to Mumbai. Having lived in western and central of Mumbai I have a sense of belonging for entire Mumbai City. So when people ask me are you from Mumbai I specifically reply that even though not born in Mumbai I love this place and now I am a Mumbaikar.
Actually the fact is I have loved all cities and places. Every city has its own speciality. Every place has its own charm. Every city has a culture and a belief system.Weather, language, food habits, lifestyle are peculiar to every place. We naturally get attached to a place where we live for a long period of time.We create our circle of friends and extended family at places where we live. Many traits in our personality are drawn from the places where we have lived. Every time when I leave a city I feel equally bad and sad. But then over a period of time I start loving the new place.
Over a period of time I have realized that native or hometown becomes really irrelevant once we recognize the fact that our identity has nothing to do with the place where we belonged to in past but it depends much more on how we own the current place where we are living.
Friends on a serious note more relevant and logical answer for me is I belong to the place where my heart, mind and soul is at peace. I belong to the place where I am able to fulfill my dreams where I am able to fulfill my responsibilities and where I share a nest called home. I belong to a city where I have a home to which I look forward to going to every now and then. I belong to city where I have comfort zones in form of friends and close circles. All these things can be created wherever we go with open mind. Our mental boundaries are more restrictive than geographical boundaries. Friends, important is to look at a bigger picture. Many people live in pain of moving away from hometown throughout their lives.I feel if we adopt and accept, if we love and try to find peace in current state every place is equally ours. It entirely depends upon us to create a cozy, happy and secured feeling like home in any place we move to.
Instead of fixing our identity to a certain city or location we can get merged wherever we live and say that we belong to that place.I now understand why a famous Marathi saint “Sant Dynaneshwar” has said
Hē viśvaci mājhē ghara | aisī matī jayācī sthira | kimbahunā charāchara | āpaṇa jāhalā
Meaning: His heart feels, ‘the entire world is my family’. The experience of this joyful feeling is firmly established in his mind. Indeed he experiences as if he has become the whole universe (there is no other).
