I come from a place,
Whose name does not roll off my tongue,
But lingers,
And with my semi-accented tone,
Leaves a bittersweet aftertaste:
Half part nostalgia,
Half part disgust.
Let me explain:
I come from a place not-very-well known,
And on the edge of the map, barely visible, barely shown,
Without prominent roads,
Or crowds, or wooden doors,
But huts and sheds,
And temples.
Temples of deities I pray to daily but
Forget their names,
Part of a rehearsed exercise,
Year after year,
To forget memories of the mountain I once climbed,
And the dust my parents drove me through.
I come from a place that I’m not ashamed of,
But a place I misrepresent
Night after day after night,
In the hope that my association
Is to deserts and not to dust,
Is to silicon, but doesn’t reflect my blood.
And I ask myself why I do this,
Hoping that I’m one of the few,
But the places that we come from are places
That make our existence possible,
More than the places that shape us,
For without my roots,
My mother’s rasam would contain more tamarind,
My father’s stories wouldn’t put me to sleep,
And I would be, like the city I now call home:
Confused.
Tejas Rao 