*With sealed borders and travel restrictions, expatriates who opted to stay back in India share their stories about making India their home
With borders between countries briefly sealed in response to the Covid-19 crisis, what happens to people who are away from their countries of origin?
For some, the restriction on travel means taking difficult decisions about what actually constitutes a home. Expatriates who opted to stay back in India share their stories about why they did so.
Designer Elena Tommaseo, originally from Venice, Italy, does not consider herself an expatriate. She first visited India in 1997, and has been living in Delhi since 2010. She says, “I’ve had a direct relationship with India since I first arrived here.”
Fluent in Hindi, and with a close-knit circle of friends in the Capital, she still felt torn during the initial days of the lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Around March 24, I had to deal with a lot of calls from my family and friends in Italy. They felt that if the virus struck India, a disaster would ensue because of India’s large population.”
She, however, decided to stay on in Delhi. “Here is where I feel I belong; and the idea of leaving my friends, my home, my life behind would have been unbearable for me,” she says. “You cannot call a place home only when everything is fine and just run away when things get bad.”
Travel journalist and blogger Mariellen Ward feels a similar connect to India. “From the first day I landed in India in 2005, I felt an uncanny sense of being at home,” she says. A Canadian, Ward had been travelling to India every year since then, till, in 2018, she decided to shift her base to Rishikesh. She spends eight to nine months of the year in the Uttarakhand town.
When the lockdown was announced on March 24, she decided to stay on, despite knowing that flights were being organised back to Canada. “I love the light, the sunshine, the fresh air, the mountain vistas, and, of course, the positive spiritual vibrations of this region on the Himalayan foothills,” she says. “I’ve known since I first came here that this is my spiritual home, and now it feels like my home in every sense. Leaving here now feels like it would be an undue risk.”
While she feels closely tied to Canada, and is keeping in touch with her family there, she is happy staying back in Rishikesh. “It feels like the best option as I feel protected here.”
The decision to stay on was not that simple for Anna Alaman Torres, who runs a sustainable tourism company and came to India from Spain in 2011. Torres was in Goa, where she lives, when the lockdown was announced.
“I had only one day to decide between leaving for Spain or staying here in India. I also dealt with the anxiety of the borders closing, being away from my family, and the lack of basic provisions that we faced in Goa in the first week.”
Finally, she decided not to panic. “Things improved in terms of availability of essential items. Local people were very caring. I decided not ‘to run away’ based on unreal fears.”
Future tense
Tommaseo knew what to expect from the pandemic experiences of her friends and family back in Italy. Therefore, she prepared herself accordingly: “I felt it would be better not to be alone, so just before the official lockdown, I asked a couple of friends to come and stay at my place.” As for the future, she has taken this as an opportunity to look at life anew.
“I have taken this as a chance to discover myself once again at a deeper level, to learn how to share my space and grow more tolerant, to become more disciplined and to write — something I stopped doing a long time ago.”
Ward, on the other hand, is working on planning and designing new changes to her website, and has a daily routine of yoga, cooking, and writing. She also feels that this period in time has deepened her connection to India and hopes to be in the country longer.
Torres, in contrast, is prepared to return to Barcelona when things improve. But right now she is thinking of new ways of expanding her business. She is also ready to leave for Spain with a peaceful mind, knowing that her business will be in the best possible shape. “I have to be positive that everything will go well. I want to leave things (as much as I can) in place because I don’t know when I could get back again to India,” she says.
British poet Warsan Shire had said, “At the end of the day, it isn’t where I came from. Maybe home is somewhere I’m going and never have been before.”
The stories of the expatriates underline the fact that, sometimes, home is also where people face their fears and live up to the best possible version of themselves.
Jonaki Ray is a Delhi-based poet and writer