Not all those who are born with wings are compelled to fly long distances. They fly around their demarcated territories and come back home with the setting sun. Yet, there are those who cross the waters, savour different types of food and build their nests with different materials. So are the travellers and migrants.
You can be deep-rooted to your soil or conveniently airborne that you can easily replant yourself elsewhere. A traveller can afford to love or hate the land he/ she is exploring. He can openly criticize the food he gets to eat or the natives who are too lazy to point their fingers at the direction of the super market he has been looking for. A traveller can always leave the land when his least favourite season hits it. A traveller finds his own universe within the universe. His travel journal may not contain the label of the worst food he ate or the picture of the most insolent native he met; yet, it will have the theatre ticket of the most mesmerizing opera he viewed and many accounts on the random acts of kindness by the natives.
There is an attachment within this detachment. There is a freedom to come and go as one pleases.
Only the time will tell you whether you are a traveller or a resident. For us, what makes life more difficult in a foreign soil is the fact that we tend to seek too much of home comforts. This ‘islandness’ has its pros and cons. It must be the smallness of the entity that one can reach the other end of the country within less than twenty-four hours. There is no vastness for one to get lost. There is fresh air even the city. There is space to breathe and neighbours to talk to. A migrant does not necessarily mean a one who forgets his roots. He or she is a person who has a great amount of courage to do what the seemingly brave travellers are reluctant to try out; be a resident instead of going places. Accept the conditions and try to get used to them. Bring up their children and still teach them the cultural values and their histories. Make them feel proud of a culture they have never tasted. They will make a home in a far away land, and inevitably take a tinge of ‘islandness’ there with them. True enough, opportunities draw them there. Unlike all sorts of fairytales that are painted, they land with the realistic pictures, and for them survival matters more than anything else.
Only the time will tell you whether you are a traveller or a resident. For us, what makes life more difficult in a foreign soil is the fact that we tend to seek too much of home comforts. This ‘islandness’ has its pros and cons. It must be the smallness of the entity that one can reach the other end of the country within less than twenty-four hours. There is no vastness for one to get lost. There is fresh air even the city. There is space to breathe and neighbours to talk to. A migrant does not necessarily mean a one who forgets his roots. He or she is a person who has a great amount of courage to do what the seemingly brave travellers are reluctant to try out; be a resident instead of going places. Accept the conditions and try to get used to them. Bring up their children and still teach them the cultural values and their histories. Make them feel proud of a culture they have never tasted. They will make a home in a far away land, and inevitably take a tinge of ‘islandness’ there with them. True enough, opportunities draw them there. Unlike all sorts of fairytales that are painted, they land with the realistic pictures, and for them survival matters more than anything else.
When things do not work out, something tugs them to home, and like the birds do in their winter flights, they will come looking for their old nests and be grateful for the fact that, in this island home, the world spins slowly.
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