5000 miles

Music

Nadiya from Bake Off is my literal hero.

I’ve just sat and watched the first two episodes of her new programme – Chronicles of Nadiya.

Besides loving the word play (nice), I can’t help but feel a kindred spirit with her.  Obviously, the only difference being she bakes cake versus I eat cake.

Since coming back from India, I find myself completely inarticulate.  My heart is still living there, stringing along about 5000 miles behind my physical body.  My brain can’t work out where it wants to be.  I get it when she says, ‘When I’m here, I call UK home and when I’m in the UK I call here home’, referring of course to Bangladesh as ‘here’ for her.

I don’t know if many of you will understand the feeling of constantly being torn.

A friend of mine asked me, ‘Where is home?’ and I found myself saying ‘no where and everywhere’.  A follow up question of ‘what is it that you feel coming back?’ and all I could say was, ‘It just completes me’.  Don’t get me wrong, within 2-3 days of being there, I long for home (the UK one).  I long for my bed with its soft mattress, my flat where I can do things the way I want, even my job where I feel I have some sort of use or purpose.  And there’s just something about being in the UK that feels different.

And yet when I’m back (like now), it takes me a while to shake off India from my system.  It’s like it permeates my pores and takes a while to steam out.

It is hard not to think, ‘when will I see them again?’  Or ‘I really miss them, but I can’t’.  It doesn’t help you to miss people you do not know whether you’ll see again or not.

And after a week or two, that whole distance and time thing works its magic.  You forget.  You forget that people have lives out there.  That maybe, they too wonder, ‘when will I see her again?’.  And though the sadness feels acute just now, I know, like every time before, this too will pass.

And all we can really do is look forward to the next thing, keep creating those opportunities that help you remember just how connected the world really is.  And hope that maybe one day, a balance can be struck and that permanent sense of homesickness becomes a permanent sense of belonging.