Roots

 It’s been 13 years in Mumbai. It almost feels like home, and yet, somehow, something still feels amiss.

I’m from up north, but I’ve spent much of my life living across different parts of the country. There was a time when I loved that life. I felt proud of having experienced so many places, people and cultures. Every new city became home for a while, and I carried a little piece of each one with me.

But as I grow older, I find myself feeling a lingering sense of rootlessness.

After 40 years of moving through different places, I have so many places that felt like home once, yet none of them completely feels like one anymore. Places that once gave me a sense of belonging somehow don’t evoke the same feeling today.

Perhaps that’s why, after a lifetime of living elsewhere, so many people eventually return to their roots. There is something comforting about knowing where you belong.

But what happens when you never really had one place to call your roots?

Maybe that’s the hardest part—the strange longing for a home that exists somewhere between all the places you’ve lived, but nowhere in particular.