Imaginary homeland

In the text "Imaginary Homelands” that author Salman Rushdie discusses being a migrant, an Indian writer outside of India. He writes that he has an image of his homeland, an imagination of India that exists partially in reality and partially in his own mind. The only memories he retain of home are in the black-and-white of old photographs. His introduction begins with him discussing the black-and-white photo of his Bombay house, hanging on the wall of his office, how this image seems more real to him than the actual memories.

I myself particularly identify with this sentiment. On my desktop there is an image of a house in autumn, slate stone walls contrasting with the fiery brightness of Canadian maples in fall. This is how I've come to picture my house, as the image I first see when I open my laptop, a contrast of dull grey and flaming reds. I know that the seasons have changed, that all the leaves have died and fallen and been swept away in the winter wind, but the image on my desktop remains the fixed image of "home".

Rushdie also writes about the “fragmented vision” in which one deals when one has left home. One’s views have been mixed with international perspectives and the ideas and ideals of several groups, people, and situations. Rushdie’s experience of living in England will have certainly influenced his perspectives on the British as a whole, not just from the Indian point of view. To some, this may seem a broken image, tarnished by the influence of foreign ideals. However, the globalization of perspectives is once which is becoming rampant in modern society. We look upon supposedly “untainted” views, views which have never explored beyond the borders of one’s country, as ignorant, uneducated. “The broken mirror may be as valuable as the one which is supposedly unflawed”. The globalized perspective is in truth more valuable than the homegrown.

The metaphor of the mirror also applies to one’s reminiscing. Bits and pieces of Canada come back as fragments when I strain to recall. Walking to the bus stop on a Monday morning in harsh January sleet, standing in line at Tim Horton’s for a chance to win at Roll Up The Rim coffee, sweltering by the splash pad in downtown Guelph, racking up huge piles of fallen leaves in the backyard and then swinging headlong into it from the tire swing suspended from the branches above. Fragments return just as Rushdie recalls random fragments of India: school scenes, neon jeep signs on marine drive, bits of Bombay dialogue and clothing that people wore. The past surprises us endlessly with its random bursts of recollection and the precision of little details, making the imagined scene of our homelands that much more real.

As Woodstockers, especially international students, this text as a whole is particularly significant in terms of how we identify home. We live at school live in the hill station on Mussoorie. None of us really identify Woodstock as our home: home is always somewhere else, and we always look back on home through the lens of reminiscence.

When we do return home things will never be quite the same as when we left. As the author Terry Prachett once wrote, "Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” When we return to the starting line it’s not the same as never having run the race

Living in the past, a country from which we have all migrated, serves little purpose in the lifelong race that is life. No matter how much we wish we could return, we will always have grown up and moved away. In that shared loss we find each other, as adults seeking to reunite with what was once untarnished and joyful, untouched by the stresses and concerns of modern life. But in that fragmented mess we become whole. The pieces of India will influence my experiences of Canada for years to come, perhaps the rest of my life. Canada may have stayed the same, but I will not be the same person that left. I will have been changed by my separation, the Canada that was my homeland is now but a memory, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.