When things break in my life they do in twos sometimes threes. One of my choosing the others collateral damage that I don't seek and cannot control. November a was dreary, long and frenetic month. It left me gasping for breath and weary waiting for change at the same time. I had finally chosen to hack the figurative limb that was festering and had no hope of healing. In so doing, I had set in motion a chain of events I no longer controlled. I visited a couple of cold places for business and the sullen gray of the sky matched my mood. Those trips were as fruitless as some of the wars I had been waging in my personal life. At home J could be the sunshine that broke through that clouds but there would be downpours too - unbidden and unannounced. And so we weathered the month while planning what our escape might be in the next. Complete the year on a high note so good things may follow from there.
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t
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