somebody's country
I sit on a hard-cusioned couch in a dimly lit room with three ceiling fans, listening to the sound of rain through the open doors of the house. The walls are pink, the floors are tiled, and there is a spectral humidity that accompanies me everywhere and reminds me that I am here.
I’m in India, in my home state of Kerala.
This country used to be one that I dreaded coming to.
I’ve always been a little weird. A little different. I could not seem to brush off undeserved scoldings the way other kids did, could not defer to my elders when I thought they were wrong. I was (and still am) physically incapable of pretending to be someone other than myself.
When you’re a child in a conservative Malayali community, that is a terrible combination of attributes. You’re honest, you’re kinetic. You are dangerous. The easily-offended strangers who lay claim to you muzzle you a little harder, they chain you a little firmer. You are detonated.
From the ages of three to twenty-three, India for me was a place where I had no control over my whereabouts, my decisions, my clothing, my speech. South Africa was home—my parents were home—but India was not home.
India was where I had to give up my personality in exchange for peace—I had to become a whisper of myself. I had to be invisibly visible; to be simultaneously remembered and forgotten.
This trip has been unnervingly different.
Those strangers from a bygone era are no longer here, whether due to bounds or boundaries. Those who remain are those for whom my personhood is inoffensive and loveable (and sometimes a little funny, because they tease me in my righteous rages to see what happens when they turn the volume up).
My adulthood has also granted me licence to autonomy. Isn’t it terrifying that many, many communities don’t afford such a thing to children? Today, I have the right to personhood that I did not as a child. I am who I am.
Now, I sit on a sturdy couch in a dimly lit room with three ceiling fans, listening to the sound of rain through the open doors of my favourite aunt’s house. The walls are pink (my favourite colour), the floors are cool in hot weather, and there is an ever-welcome humidity that refreshes my Brown skin and reminds me that—one way or another—I am home.