Half-and-Half: Twenty three and me

I migrated to America twenty three years back in the summer of 1996. Notice that I chose the word ‘migrate’ rather that ‘immigrate’ or ‘emigrate.’ The dictionary definition of ‘immigrate’ is to come to a foreign country with the intention to permanently settle there. The dictionary definition of ‘emigrate’ is to leave one’s own country to permanently settle in another country. When I first came to America, I didn’t know whether or not I would settle in America. It was barely the act of physically bringing myself to another country with no clearly-formed intention of where to settle eventually for the long run. I came to pursue graduate studies in Electrical Engineering. My husband was already a graduate student at the University of Maryland, and I started graduate school there in Spring 1997. With both of us on temporary student visas, there was no certainty about whether we would go back to India after our studies were over, just like my parents did in the 1960s, or whether we would adopt America as our home.

I was twenty three years old when I first came to America. You do the math. As of now, I have spent exactly half of my life in America, and the other half in India. It feels strange to think that the year 2020 onwards I will have spent more time in America than I had spent in India from the time of my birth to the time of leaving India to come to America. Sure I visit India every year, sometimes more than once a year, but visiting is not the same as going back. After 2019, it will be mathematically incorrect to claim that I have spent ‘most of my life’ in India. That realization gave birth to this blog.

I had thought of capturing my thoughts via a blog post in August 2018, when our family completed ten years of “immigrating” to the silicon valley. I know technically ‘immigration’ requires moving to a whole new country rather than moving from one state to another state within the same country. But, to us, moving to California after spending twelve years in Maryland (greater Washington DC area, to be a little more geographically inclusive) was no less than a country-level immigration. Compared to the East coast, California felt like a different country altogether. The terrains are different. The vegetation is different. The sun scorches more. The sky dazzles bluer. The ocean is colder. And especially in the silicon valley, the techno-cultural vibes feel younger. Plus I swear in East coast I have never seen rainbows, sometime double rainbows, this frequently during my commute time! Coming to California gave me a sense of ‘homecoming’ that strangely I never fully experienced in the East coast. 

Somehow I never got to writing the ten-year California anniversary (“Caliversary”?) blog in 2018. But it appears that the connection between the prime number twenty three and me is a little more primal than my connection with the nice round number ten, because this time, I could not rest easy without penning down my thoughts about spending exactly half of my life in America. At this point of time, my existence is a perfect hybrid of twenty three hereditary chromosomes from India and twenty three influential chromosomes from America. There is little doubt that the rest of my professional life will be in California. But it will be interesting to see, when it comes to choosing a place to settle after retirement, who wins the ultimate battle between nature and nurture—my birth mother India, or my adoptive mother America.