Chinese Takeaway. Longing and belonging

File under ‘Things I didn’t expect ever to hear.’ My sushi- and steak-loving son eating palak paneer and roti, eyes closed in ecstasy, repeating, “Dad, this is the life”. There was chicken curry as well, and a dubious dal. The rotis were stony, the dal and the curry suspiciously similar, and the palak an over-blended slurry, but we tore into it as if we hadn’t eaten in weeks. Which we hadn’t, in a manner of speaking; it was our first Indian meal in a fortnight. This after a morning spent searching for Mohammad Rafi songs on YouTube.

Ghar ki murgi indeed. That’s what two weeks in Beijing will do.

So we’re not casual visitors to the Middle Kingdom. We, which is to say my wife, son, dog and I, have moved here. We’re now three months removed from that first crappy taste of “home”, and know there are at least three better Indian restaurants to choose from in our immediate vicinity. My son is such an avid supporter of one that they sent him mithai for Diwali. I may have piled into it without telling the boy.

Don’t judge me — I’d already ordered him three separate boxes of sweets from a local vendor of Indian goodies. This gent, an exceptionally entrepreneurial Malayali, not only supplies the surprisingly large desi community here with besan , basmati and boondi laddoos, but also runs a group on social media that connects subcontinentals. He dispenses advice on immigration issues, and probably performs weddings as well.

He belongs to a type well known in the diaspora and amongst itinerant expats, catering to the needs of a community that famously likes to take its culture along when abroad. Homesickness amongst Indians when elsewhere is an entity so known, so explored, so commercially advantageous, that Pankaj Udhas’s shamelessly manipulative anthem to it is available pretty much everywhere on karaoke (though that song does hark back to a different age; “WhatsApp aaya hai ” doesn’t have quite the same ring, does it?)

I’d regarded homesickness with bemusement when I was younger. I’d dealt with that particular malady as a young boy in boarding school, and had it comprehensively out of my system by the time I went abroad as an undergraduate.

“Why do the young and educated travel,” my earlier self might have carped, “if not to live apart, explore different worlds, live a brand new life?”

What’s the point of being in a different country if your radio has Bollyrubbish on loop, your friends — even the militantly south Indian — speak more Hindi than when home, and your curtains smell of hing ?

“Seek out dal and the company of other Indians,” I might have asked. ME? You must be mad. And yet. And now…

Now that I have a child — who is conspicuously turbaned — I’m more sympathetic towards those who feel unmoored. Even among those of us who wear global citizenship as a badge, who feel that a valid passport and a credit card are all the armour one needs to face a distant place, there are times when you seek out the already familiar.

For my family and myself, this happened over Diwali. I was suddenly convulsed with a need for sparklers and diyas. My child wanted them: he’s in a new place too, and making sense of it; we needed that anchor. The people we had over were a reassuring mix of Indian and not, my son enjoyed explaining what was going on to his peers, the festive atmosphere we managed to create was comforting. It felt right, to be able to have this celebration, even when not in India.

When not, as my son said, at home.

He cried one night, saying he was forgetting Hindi, now that he had nobody to speak it with. One Indian friend in his school already had. But home is where you are, we told him. It feels right to say it. I believe it.

After a long while settling in, it’s finally beginning to be true.

Two weeks in, hunched over that first dodgy dinner, a friend’s words seemed prophetic. “China is just apart,” he’d said. “Sure, you’ve travelled and lived in other places. But nothing will prepare you for where you’re going.”

Like India, like — I imagine — Japan, China is a world, complete in and of itself. You have to swallow it whole, say the wise, which is to say that you confront its totality every day.

But now, three months on, his words seem facile. There is so much that is similar, even familiar, that is now being revealed to me. Kids can get away with anything. The Chinese are far friendlier than they are given credit for. And every day, language seems less of a problem.

No is never no; it’s the beginning of a negotiation. Just as in India, there’s always a way. You just have to find it. And you don’t really have to swallow a place in one go. Not if you live there. You can bite off bits of it to chew over at your leisure, like a bipedal ruminant, to assimilate at a later date.

I’ve had the good fortune to find people, Indian and otherwise, to help smoothen a potentially difficult transition. Of course there’s a difference between travelling for pleasure and moving one’s family. I’ve never spent a morning listening to Rafi on YouTube when on holiday. But I’ve discovered his “effortless” lyricism is a good soundtrack for anyone approaching a new life.

Put in the hard work, as he must have; find the right collaborators, as he certainly did; and it’ll come out looking easy.

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