Traveling unlimited

As a busy and productive sabbatical semester in North America draws to an end and I prepare to return to India, I am in a mood to relax and reminisce about my migrant life.

Traveling has been the most constant feature of my life.  As a child of a central government employee with a (very) transferable job and later as an academic, I lived in many different parts of India and later in North America.  

In particular, during my childhood years. I was never sure when and where I would be going next.  I have been to a dozen different high schools in the northern, western and north-eastern parts of India.  It was a very common situation for my father to arbitrarily return home some evening with a transfer order, usually to a town in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a school year.  It was awkward and difficult to adjust to a new school curriculum and teaching system in a different state and in the middle of the year, but my attentive and super-disciplined mother managed to pull me through. 

While it was great to live in various parts of the country (often called "tribal" areas by the city dwellers) with very different cultures and make new friends, it was equally painful to say goodbye to them abruptly and move on within a few months. In the internet-less era, I have burnt a lot of midnight oil (literally so because of electricity problems in these  remote towns) writing letters to friends in other remote towns which probably never reached them.  

I remember moving from a warm part of the country to the Himalayas in the chilly month of November and then moving back from the pleasant weather in the hills to a hot and scorching summer in the plains in the month of May.  Experience in dealing with sudden changes of climate was useful to me when I moved to a very cold place in the east coast of North America for grad school.

The first place where I stayed for five years at a stretch was my PhD university. Like many grad students, I grew very attached to PhD city and found it emotionally overwhelming to leave.  For a long time, I naively considered it home.  The attraction has weaned off over the years as almost all my friends there have also moved away, but I still feel excited at the prospect of visiting it again.

After that, I did postdocs in two more cities in North America.  By the time of my second postdoc, I got tired of all the traveling and instability and very much wanted to go to some place where I could live happily and permanently for the rest of my life.  I was almost ready to become a citizen of this country, when life threw up some pleasant surprises and I found myself in N1, back in India.  If all goes well, N1 might be the place where I will "live happily ever after", but who knows what the future holds?

Anyhow, within a few months of my stay at N1-city, I found myself ready to make another 5-month visit to North America.  Before returning to India, I plan to visit PhD city, postdoc 1 city and another city, where my postdoc 2 mentor now lives.   

Moving around was fun when I was a child and all the planning was done by my parents.  I just enjoyed life while my parents did all the hard work.  As a grad student/postdoc, I was in charge of my own moves** and it wasn't all that fun. The move back to India required strenuous planning, but was exciting nonetheless.  

Traveling after joining N1 has been the most fun because now I travel with the assurance that I have a secure, permanent abode to return to.  

** My North American friends helped me a lot with all my moves, something that I will always be grateful for.