Dipika Kohli
By Dipika Kohli
Anyone who’s moved to a new school in the middle of the school year will very much be in the know about what it’s like to experience the awkward feeling of ‘not fitting in.’ How suddenly, all of what’s around you is quite brand new.
I was still in elementary school when my family moved to North Carolina from Michigan. Everyone in my new class kept asking me, ‘State or Carolina?’ (Referring to NC’s storied basketball teams. No one cared about the Detroit Tigers.) While I never fully adjusted, I did learn to shoot hoops. Kind of.
A great deal of flailing, though, happened to me in that critical adjusting phase. I missed my old friends, the people on my old block. The accent that matched mine. Snow. Especially snow, and snow days. I had to adjust to the idea of not being in band or getting to go to a high school I’d been fixated on because they had a swim team. Field trips were different, too. They took us to places where the Civil War was fought, and stuff like that, instead of I don’t even remember what.
But it wasn’t all gloom. It’s what you make of it, right? Mindset, attitude: those things matter. Little by little, I found my footing. I befriended other classmates who, one by one, moved to my school from other schools. (This worked in the same way later in life we would cluster with other ‘blow-ins’ as they called us, in Ireland.) One time, on a long-awaited trip back to Michigan in ninth or tenth grade, I had a weird moment of recognizing something many of us who live between worlds will. This feeling sinking in that says, Oh, I am not from here, anymore, either. Ah, to be in-between worlds, and know it.
But I must admit, now, looking back on the abrupt shift to the Southeast that used to be so angst-inducing, if we hadn’t left, I wouldn’t have become the person I am today. The person that says, ‘Sure let’s just go?’ And moves to a new continent. Easy, perhaps, because I’d had my experience early in life being swept out from familiar shores, at least that was how it felt for me, only to wash up on land so foreign I had to start over. Customs, styles, foods, accents and an overall lack of familiarity: so much newness, all at once.
People I don’t know love to ask me some variation of: ‘I wonder why you wander so much! Why, though?’
Could it be that wayfaring is just second-nature? Or maybe all the people who told me to stay put, to settle down, to stop going places and to quit being one of those people who travels with zero intent (they think) of doing the hard work of putting one foot in front of the other to build a career, yes, all those people, could they be the reason? Collectively? I think so. I think being told not to do something so often, so quickly, so without invitation, was the exact reason why I did it. Moving. Changing things. Trying anything. Why? Because I could.
On the plus side, I intuited early on what I’ve heard lately from people my own age. We have to run our own race. Even as a kid, I was on to this, somehow. I’m not sure why. Maybe because of my grandfather.
My father’s father had encouraged me all the times I met him in my early life not to get too tied up with any one particular way of thinking about things. He had a gentle way of making lessons for me on ‘going and finding it out, for yourself,’ for example, beaming when I got going or came back from some adventure to a corner of India I said I was going to go to, after quitting my first job and writing him a letter to ask for advice on how to best see the country, a bit. It was all very new. It was also plenty good: safe places, easy travels, and getting to learn, grow and change. Just as I imagine he had hoped I could and would. Perhaps it was the inspiration I found at this impressionable age, on those shoestring-budget tours over to, say, Rajasthan or Himachal Pradesh, that sealed it. A philosophy. One that became me, through and through, that says: you don’t have to have a lot to be a lot.
Simple things, not too many of them, along with some choice sentimental items I’ve been with for years and years: that’s me. Stuff like this surrounds me, here, in this place where I’ve landed, too. Such objects form my ‘decor.’ Pretty unflashy. But raw and real. I wouldn’t go so far as to call this minimalist, because I don’t know what I think about trends. But simplicity and care in choosing well, I feel, has a lot to do with knowing what isn’t you, as much as what is.
Dipika Kohli is an author who is based in Phnom Penh. Discover her books at kismuth.com and other projects at dipikakohli.com.
