Place Value

What is it that keeps generations of people rooted in one particular place? Is it the love the parents feel for their land, the deeply held belief that their piece of the earth is the best ever or the inability to feel at home anywhere else? I do not have that rooted feeling – I think I need to be in my own country but beyond that I feel I would survive anywhere. I have no memories of being violently attached to any particular place and that is perhaps understandable given my background.

My father had lost his mother when he was around five years old. He was number nine in a family of twelve children, four of whom died in childhood due to causes unknown. There was literally no one to care for them as his father took care of his nieces and nephews as was the wont in a matriarchal system and so they went hungry more often than not. The local village weddings and temple festivals were possibly the only occasions when they had full bellies. Having a really difficult childhood made my father determined to be a good provider when he had his family. He was willing to do any sort of work and travel to any godforsaken place to earn enough for his family. Therefore there was no sense of belonging to a particular patch of earth that I inherited from his side. He loved his hometown but rarely returned and yet he married off my sister to a family from that very place – so perhaps there was some longing for a connection to his birthplace that I wasn’t very aware of.

My mother only wanted to leave her place of birth – she had no prospects of a better life there and was unable to realize her dreams of studying in a college. Since she had no means to study, the only other option was to agree to be married off and yet since my father was away on ships for ten years, she had to stay in the village of her birth far longer than she ever wanted. So her aversion to returning there for more than a few hours saw me unable develop a lifelong attachment either. The home my parents made together in Kasargod was home for me for a few years after which I went my own way – again no lasting ties to what I saw as a fleeting landing point. Perhaps eight years of living in hostels added to the detachment.

My husband was born and raised in the same place and had an idyllic village childhood. He remembers those times with nostalgia but has no desire to go back now. For him the place while appearing essentially the same has lost its soul and he feels like a stranger in his hometown. I find that very difficult to believe – that someone with such a fairytale childhood loaded with memories still feels no attachment to his hometown. His parents have very strong feeling of rootedness – so much so that they will never spend a night away from their own home – their land has a tangible presence, it is a living entity for them and my mother-in-law has feelings for her coconut palms that she seldom displays to her grandchildren.

My children will feel even less of a bond to their birthplaces. Perhaps the notion of the land as a delimiter will vanish completely with their generation and again perhaps in the perverse way of tendencies skipping a generation, they might have a stronger bond with their birthplace than their parents ever had. Does the strength of that bond influence the manner in which their personality develops? I don’t know really. All I know is that for me at least it makes me feel like a bit of an outsider just about anywhere ...