There’s a trend on TikTok right now. I know because I’ve watched it on Instagram like a good millennial. Weeks after a TikTok trend flourishes, poorly cropped replays appear on my explore page. This most recent one takes the question “Where are you from”, pans to a confused respondent, and then flashes a template with detailed choices below such as; a) where you were born, b) where you currently live, c) where you have lived the longest, d) your ethnicity. “THIS.” I want to comment, despite that emphasis giving me the ick. I’m certain if I did, a Stanley tumbler would magically appear. But where has this useful specificity been all my life? And more importantly, where was it for International Day at my son’s Montessori school?
I brought home the pre-work for International Day celebrations from school pick-up. Ms. Yasmin had told me all about the planned festivities. The toddler room, our son’s classroom, was going to use flags and strings to create one big map, and each student had an associated questionnaire to fill out. I handed it to my husband while thinking, this is not supposed to be that hard. But all I saw was one blank making me draw a bigger one: “my mom is from ____ , ____”. And hard it was, hard it has always been to answer this question.
The short version of my TikTok template is a) born in Naperville, IL, b) currently live in Los Angeles, c) have lived the longest in New York City, and d) I’m Indian. The long version has enough whiplash for a personal injury attorney. My parents immigrated to California in the ‘70s. By my second birthday, we had moved from Chicago to New Jersey to New Delhi, India on an expat assignment. India was liberalizing their economy, and the corporate American giant my dad was expanding into the country paid for us to attend an American School and a cultural sensitivity training to boot. My very diverse international classmates at the American Embassy School all belonged to a specific tribe defined by terms like third culture kid or global nomad. We lived in an American bubble in the heart of India’s capital, a bubble which seemed to pop more frequently for me than my other Indian AES peers, courtesy of trips to our grandparents’ village where they still lived, every Hindu temple in the subcontinent, or the local sabzi mandi. The ending of the first expat assignment and the beginning of a second soon uprooted us to another city in India, Bangalore. Here my sister and I would attend a very Indian school with very Indian classmates and very Indian uniforms. I would learn to add u’s to all of my words. The transition was jarring. A few years later, just in time for facial hair and braces, we relocated to suburban New Jersey. I tried out for traveling soccer and made it. Colour became color again. I experienced sleepovers, crushes, and cruising the mall on a Friday night with the best friends (cue that quote from Stand by Me on the friendships you have when you’re 12). Less than two years later, we were off again. This time we head back to Bangalore, India, where I would go to two more schools with five more years of adding back the u’s. Instability outside our house mirrored the insides of it. I struggled for some of these years, already feeling like home was not where I was from.
Ultimately, I’d live in 17 different homes before turning 17, graduating from boarding school, and heading to NYU. From this moment on, always far from family, I’d live and work in NYC, Nairobi (Kenya), Hyderabad (India), Bombay (India), and Philadelphia. My years overseas were some of my most freeing and where I’d feel the most myself, though I’d also always love returning to my other home, New York City, in between moves. We finally left New York mid-pandemic after another five year stint in the city. I now live in Los Angeles with my family. So where was I from? Was I Indian? American? I wasn’t just one. And I certainly wasn’t Indian American like many of my college peers who saw their reflection in one another. Nor was I from any one city I had grown up in. I wasn’t even a true global nomad as an Indian in India. But I could act all parts so well (with the occasional code switch error) that I was a one woman show, playing all roles for the entire run.
Some friends from college used to joke about me being a hoarder. They weren’t wrong. In my first apartment after college, I couldn’t close my dresser drawers if my life depended on it. But I never knew how to say - if I don’t carry it with me, if it’s not in this room, it’s gone forever. Sometimes it wasn’t just a shirt, but the only witness to a whole chunk of my life. Where was I from? If I didn’t have the proof, maybe I too would forget. After all my parents’ moves which continue to this day, cross-continental or otherwise, very little of my childhood remains. I still hold on to things longer than I need to these days, though now its mostly nostalgia. Okay fine, we also have a storage unit.
Speaking of nostalgia, I once spent a beautiful few days on the car-free golf-cart-only Bald Head Island, NC with an ex-boyfriend and his family. Let’s call him James Taylor. Everything about it was new, charming, and simple. It felt so unreal I might’ve held my breath the whole time. The Taylors all had an enviable clarity when answering where they were from. Carolina wasn’t just In Their Mind, but in their blood. His grandfather had fought in WW2, a pilot I think, and turned to me with a warm smile when we met. “Well my darling, I hear you’re a woman of the world”. There was the slightest twang when he said darling, either when he said it then or only when I recall it now. I think that’s how I’d like to answer where I’m from. I’m grateful to be her.
The cliche yet true answer is of course also worthy of mention - my home is my family. My husband, my beautiful baby boy, our cuckoo for cocoa puffs mini golden doodle. I may not know any one place with the profound intimacy of a local, but I’m still propagating roots. May they outpace and outperform my succulent experiments.
In the meantime, the toddler room only accepts the city, state format. Ms. Yasmin keeps it real.
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