Finding My Place: Exploring the Meaning of Home

To start with, here is my home essay where I want to share with you personal experience and self-reflection. So, with seconds to spare, I take a swift glance at my boarding pass. Like a dog restlessly looking for a shelter during a storm, I drag myself through the frenetic sea of people, attempting to not be deserted in one of the most populated city in the world: Mumbai.

Thankfully, I manage to board my flight seconds before the gate closes, without being turned into a waffle -- phew. As I walk through the Jet Bridge into the plane, the flight attendant welcomes me aboard with a “Hello”. I respond back with a smile while jumbling two bags at the same time. It’s finally the time to leave home forever, leaving everything behind, for a totally new journey.

It is the spring of 2014, and my parents are ready to leave, with all the luggage nicely packed and ready to go. I exchange a last few goodbyes with my friends, and everything that I would have to leave behind. In a matter of few days, I would be in a completely different land, with different culture, different food, different language, different people, different everything.

So where is home? In the place I am living, or in the place where I will be in a few days? Vadodara or in a foreign land called Chicago? Like a broken compass, I can't decide my true north.

Unresolved, I decide to turn to my all time favorite novel, Divergent, for a second read. I somehow manage to locate it between heaps of boxes -- torn out with a few pages missing. People say that the best books tell you the things you want to hear -- echoing your thoughts and beliefs. As my eyes scroll through the words, I feel like my exact thoughts are spelled out on creased papers. The dilemma that Beatrice was facing seemed to exactly match that of mine : Stay within abnegation like she has done for her whole life, or move to Dauntless for a better future? I felt like Veronica Roth stole words straight out of my mind -- mimicking the same exact situation as I am in. All of a sudden, I find myself in the plane, between Mumbai and Chicago -- belonging to nowhere.

I keep reading during the course of my flight. Despite the high speed of the plane, my eyes trace the words like a laser. I feel like I should be distracted, especially with the man in front of me who is snoring extremely loudly, but I am not. As I finish reading the final few words, I close the book, and place it underneath my seat in my backpack.

Realizing that both of my parents were asleep, I stare out the window, looking at the beautiful farms -- It feels like everything has slowed, and time has paused in the moment. I suddenly feel a burst of content, happy, relaxing energy inside me.

This is my home. I am at home between Vadodara and Chicago. I am from both : Vadodara and Chicago. I speak both English and Gujarati. I like to use Gujarati for math and science, but I prefer English for labeling my emotions, art, and descriptions. My childhood lies in India -- filled with endless visits to the park by my home, blockbuster movies, and countless amount of cricket games with friends -- while my adolescence lies in US, filled with fast paced social life, beautiful pine trees, and competitive speed skating.

My daydream has given me the answer: Home is neither arrival, nor departure -- Neither America, nor India. It is in between, in the cusp -- that is where I feel the most satisfied, the most content.