Home away from home?

Most NRI’s have one constant complaint of missing their homeland. We come here to pursue our dreams and ambitions with the sacrifice of being away from our beloved family and friends. Those people whom we spent a long part of our lives. In our day to day lives knowingly or unknowingly we try to make ourselves feel closer to our homeland by decorating our house with things that remind us of our homes back in India, cooking food almost similar to what we can possibly cook with the available ingredients, meet friends and attend gatherings where we could see similar faces like the ones back home. But no matter what we try to do “that something missing” remains always. I certainly do miss my hometown. The place where I have grown up and lived most of my life. Many would agree with me that Food is an essential link to our native. I wonder how people who would have come here to pursue the American dream decades ago would have found this place. In a time when internet was not there to search the Indian stores if at all the few that existed. There wouldn’t be Google maps or GPS to help navigate to the haven like stores for Indian American communities. Now that there is a large Indian community in the states we can certainly find almost everything Indian that we require.
I can’t imagine what I would do without my neighboring Indian grocery store. Indian vegetables, grocery and all those familiar brands with which we had grown seeing is available today, to make us feel better and closer to home. How about life without an occasional eat out at an Indian restaurant? Sure we do get bored of our own cooking and mimicking the version what our mother’s used to make so delicious. We yearn for something similar to what we are used to taste and yet not cooked by us. Trying out international cuisine is a must and is a great experience but tasting a familiar food is absolutely different. How about watching a Hindi movie in theatre rather than in our television? Just the way we normally do back home. And visiting a temple on an auspicious day is just so priceless and makes us feel so closer to our homeland. And how can I forget browsing those desi TV channels available at an extra cost, most of which airs no more than those weepy and conspiracy filled saas-bahu soaps. We try so hard to make our lives as similar to the Indian way as we can in this alien land. But somewhere something goes missing. Although we can find any groceries we could ask for, might be some aren’t as fresh and we should compromise for frozen. Though most Indian restaurants do a fairly good job in creating authentic food for our very authentic taste buds. Still there will be some food that would not match our local hometown restaurant or even that small tea shop snacks which we used to have during our break time. Temples here are the next best replica of what we can possibly expect in a foreign land. But still visiting them might not give us the satiation which we might get while visiting the nearest temple back home. All this is a price we pay to achieve our dreams and goals. People back home might think we shouldn’t be complaining as we have the coveted “NRI” status. But yes human mind is never satisfied. I am sure when I go back to India for good, am certainly going to miss all the good times here in the States. Well that is the reality of life……………