One of the best and strangest things about travelling and
living abroad is going home. I returned home to England for Christmas and New
Year and it was the first time I’d been back in a year. Within twenty four
hours of arriving home I was in a London pub with friends, surrounded by other
British people drinking their pints and generally being British. At first I
felt a bit as though I’d strayed into a theme park of Britain as it was such a
stereotypical scene and so familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time. Another
twenty four hours later I left the pub…just kidding, another twenty four hours
later of being at home and India seemed like it had almost never happened, as
though it had been some crazy dream.
My reason for writing this slightly abstract post is I
wanted to try and put down how it feels to me leading this slightly strange
double-life. How quickly you can revert from one situation to another and for
both to seem completely normal, with perhaps just a few minor details out of
place. For instance, I was at first a little spooked out by just how quiet the
roads are in England, in fact how quiet it is in general compared to Delhi. I
also quite enjoyed the freedom my foreigner status gave me at times, such as daring
to look around me in the London Tube (metro) carriage and look people in the
eye. It might sound ridiculous but this is something that Londoners simply
don’t do and there is something quite freeing about not observing certain
rituals which have always seemed absurd to me anyway.
I found I got a bit stuck when people at home asked me, “So,
how’s India?” A year living of living in Delhi and travelling and the best I
could mostly come up with was, “Great thanks!” As though I’d just popped to the
shops to get some milk. The thing is I find it a bit difficult to strike a
middle balance between saying the bare minimum for fear of being a bore and
being a bore and going through a blow by blow account of my daily life in India.
After all, that’s what this blog is for! So apologies friends and family if I
was a bore at any point, at least I didn’t subject you to any slide shows. This
time.
Right now I’m sat in Riyadh Airport on a ten hour stopover
(the economy way to fly) and yet again it almost feels like home was just some
lovely dream. I was so confused a few hours ago that I forgot I was going back
to Delhi and was thinking about what I’d do when I got back to the UK tomorrow
where I’ve just left. I blame the fact
that I’ve already been travelling for 12 hours on very little sleep (Em/Nikki -
it could have ended like my train journey to Stevenage only on international
proportions). It’s a strange airport as in addition to being in the middle of
the desert with no apparent activity outside of it - you don’t see the runway
until you’ve touched down on it - there are large numbers of transit passengers
also here on long stopovers so there’s a mini international airport community
doing laps of the very small airport looking at the food they can’t buy (if you
happen to be here in transit see if you can get your hands on some Saudi riyals)
and looking increasingly bleary eyed as the transit hours tick by.
A couple of days ago the memories of my life in India
started to come back and I began to mentally prepare myself for my return. It
feels very different from when I left England for India this time last year as
this time round I know what I’m letting myself in for. This is both a good and
bad thing. As before I hate leaving my friends and family behind and constantly
think I must be mad to do so but there’s always that other part of me that’s
excited to be going back and misses India. It was the strangest feeling when I
was leaving Delhi before Christmas as although I was stupidly excited about
going home I also felt a little unsettled about leaving my bizarre Delhi world.
It seems that at some point during the year it has become my new ‘normal.’
Despite my heart sinking slightly at the thought of my body being put through
another year of extreme heat, humidity and potential hair loss (it’s only just
grown back to its former lustre which wasn’t particularly lustrous in the first
place), India and Delhi in particular seems to have well and truly gotten under
my skin in a way I don’t really fully understand but am learning to embrace.
