Every new introduction is almost always accompanied by the question, “where are you from?” 

I want to have an answer that’s simple, straightforward, to the point. The voice I respond in betrays me though, I’ve code switched, assimilated, my accent is American, my passport too; it would open a whole can of questions if I said I was from Mumbai. “I’m a little bit from Houston, a little bit from Mumbai, India,” I say, hesitantly. 

With this response, I’m hoping to have side-stepped questions about my accent, well-spoken English, or mentioning that I’m still grappling with where home is for me. Three years ago, I packed up nineteen years of existence, from clothes to middle school diaries, into two suitcases and left the city I grew up in without shedding a single tear. On the other hand, my current residential address is a dorm room with an expiry date packaged as graduation, barreling toward me at lightning speed. Come May, there’s two homes, 8,000 miles apart, with my name on the door, and I’m not sure which one I want to open. 

I don’t know how I got to being twenty-two with no permanent address – while that seems normal at this young age, it’s terrifying not knowing where I will be in a year. The last three years have been spent living out of suitcases and moving boxes, dorm room to apartment to dorm room, with all my feelings of home shut tightly in the memory-box under my bed. It’s full to the brim, with boarding passes, concert tickets, polaroids with people I have not seen in years, and birthday cards from fifth grade. Save for keeping that box under every bed I have slept in, no matter where I go, how many throw pillows I buy, or scented candles I light, or pictures I paste on the too-thin walls, I’m still struggling to find a singular place that I can pin as “Home” in my google maps. 

To me, home is my childhood best friend’s couch in Brooklyn, eating dollar slices in our pjs and catching up every six months. Come May, it might not exist. To me, home is the residential college I gazed upon with awe when I first arrived at college three years ago, where I met some of my closest friends. Come may, there’s no room for any of us here. To me, home is sleepovers in my cousin’s twin bed in Mumbai, the same one we have been squeezing into since age four, eating chocolate chip ice cream straight from the box and watching romcoms late into the night. Come May, I can go back to that home, and I might. To me, home is all the people and places who made me who I am, who let me be myself, and who continue to inspire me to be the person I want to become. So here I am, seeking a home that I’m not sure exists anymore, because never again in my life will all the people who are home to me be in the same place again. 

When I am asked where I’m from, I say “A little bit from Houston, a little bit from Mumbai,” and what I really mean is, the people who feel like home to me, were there when I first met them. In a short eight months, everything as I have known it will change. All my people will be dispersed in the places that call to them, building new homes. That leaves it up to me on where I want to build mine – whether I want to seek more people who might eventually feel like home. Or, do I move back to a city 8,000 miles away, the one I grew up having a love-hate relationship with, hoping to somehow jigsaw myself back into its puzzle, make myself smaller to fit the life I once had? It’s teeming with history, both mine and its own, and ours intertwined, and I’m suddenly yearning for some familiarity. It’s a decision I have been grappling with for a while, one I know will be difficult, but I wonder what it would feel like to be asked, “Where are you from?” and be able to answer, unwaveringly, without hesitation, the name of one city, to be so grounded, so certain, in where home is for you.