Where do you belong?

"Home is a notion that only nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend."

- Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

"Where are you from?" is a question i used to cringe at while growing up. For i never knew what answer to give. So, i remember as a child giving different answers to that question every time somebody asked me.

As i grew into my teens, i tried to grapple with the concept of my identity. It was then that i figured, since i didn't really belong anywhere i had the freedom to explore and choose. And explore and choose i did; today i am a practising Christian.

But by the time i was an adult i realized, just because you choose to feel comfortable with something, someone or somewhere doesn't actually mean you belong there. There lay the problem; for a larger multitude of the something, someone or somewhere still reject you being part of them. You are back to square one.

Today, halfway through my life i still grapple with the fact that i belong nowhere:

• I have no homeland, yet i feel most at home in the North East of India; Nagaland in particular. "Language is the only homeland," said Czesław Miłosz. Well in my case i have no language too. But like John le Carré said in The Honourable Schoolboy "Home's where you go when you run out of homes." I find myself running to the North East (or at least wanting to) when in need of solace, peace or just some quiet time of my own. Yet most there would stare at me because i neither look, nor act, nor dress, nor talk like them. But i do love their food.
• But can food truly act as a common denominating factor? "There is no love sincerer than the love of food." proposed George Bernard Shaw in Man and Superman. On my travels i have seen a sense of bonding over food; often permeating the tough fabric of ego and parochial walls that are built up by humanity in an attempt to undo the sense of being dominated over by the others. After all, "we all eat & it would be a sad waste of opportunity to eat badly," like Anna Thomas is known to have said.
• But if food habits alone can give a sense of belonging, the whole world should feel Indian. After all, we did give the world spices. So much so that when William Cowper penned down, "Variety's the spice of life..." the greater world was in process of being awakened to what they had been missing out on. Going by that rationale alone, the world should feel a belonging to India. But that is not so. So, what makes one belong?

William Glasser suggested that "we are driven by five genetic needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun". It is interesting that he would club love and belonging. Is it possible that feeling loved is the most innate and underlying emotion to feeling a sense of belonging?

If so, my own life experience make sense. For i feel a deep sense of belonging to Nagaland and the North East of India because i have always felt most loved and accepted there. David Gemmell would say in Legend, "Live or die, a man and a woman need love. There is a need in the race. We need to share. To belong." 

Where do you belong? And why? What do you think?