REMEMBER watching a typical Indian TV serial portraying the typical b****y mother in law and the victimised daughter-in-law, with Mama and my Masi (maternal aunt) in the living room back in my house in Gurgaon, India. Masi came all the way from Bangalore, which is in southern India, to Gurgaon to visit us for a week. As far as I can remember, Mama was and is the closest to Masi in her immediate and extended family. And I am the closest to Mama in my immediate family. For some reason, I would watch those pathetic TV serials every night with Mama while having dinner. But I just enjoyed spending time with her. Whether that be watching her favourite serials, admiring the way she knew exactly how much spices to add while cooking, or trying to paint a picture of her childhood which she still fondly talks about.
We had been living in Gurgaon, an hour’s drive from New Delhi, for the past eight years. This is the place that my mind runs back to when I think of my ‘childhood’. Memories cloud my mind and flash in quick succession. Everyone has that one place. Whether this be that of a local park, a pool, a room or a nearby lake, these preserved snapshots infuse our brain. And even though we grow up, move to different places, change schools and create multiple sheets of memories, the foundation layer of our childhood remains the strongest.
For me, it has to be this house. I simply loved it.  Not only because my room was painted hot pink and blue which the 11-year-old me was in love with, but because it was our house. We haven’t bought a house ever since that, so obviously, that house holds a very special place in my heart. Especially the balcony, where I remember witnessing my first red moon, even though all we could see from there were the labourers building a shopping mall. In fact, they could pretty much see through into our apartment. A bit creepy actually.
It was quite literally raining sweat that day. The month of May can be torturous in northern parts of India, with temperatures shooting up to 40 degree Celsius. The fans were working their best on full speed and the air conditioner was blasting chilled air but nothing could cool down the worry that was insidiously taking over my nerves. Mama, being the messenger that she was between me and Papa, had told me a few weeks ago, that Papa got offered a ‘great opportunity’ within his company to work abroad in Penang, Malaysia. And today was it. The day he was supposed to find out whether or not we’ll be leaving India, which had been my home for the past twelve years, forever.
I still vividly remember the expression on Papa’s face when he came home that night. The wide smile was enough for my heart and brain to be sucked into a vacuum.
He threw his hands up in the air like a majestic king and pretty much announced,
‘It’s final. And it’s a yes!’.
Mama’s face clearly reflected the sudden excitement and joy that took over her. As if going abroad was our sole purpose in life and she had achieved it.  On the other hand, well, Masi was as confused as a freshman on the first day of college, as she wasn’t told of this move at all at that time.
Saying that those words struck me like a blow would be quite an understatement. The muscles in my cheek tensed up and my chin started to tremble, as if to release the shock in a futile way. At first, it was just numbness seeping into my veins, which turned into little pockets of tears, which later turned into me crying the entire Ganges. I could easily have flooded the apartment with my tears.
I could not envision myself living in another country. I mean, India was home, the place I spent all my life in, where I went to the same school for the past eight years. What if I didn’t make friends with foreigners? Firstly, how even did you make foreigners your friends? What if there were no Indians? Although these questions clouded my thoughts for the next few months, the thing that kept me awake for several nights was the sheer horror of leaving my friends, especially my closest friends, Arshia and Aparajita.
I remember how Mama tried her very best to convince me that it will be great for the family if we move.
‘It’s a great opportunity for him! It’ll be so good for his career. We’ll get so much exposure. Think about it Sana’, Mama went on as she flipped the roti (Indian bread) on the tawa (Indian pan).

As far as I remember, she had always called me Sana. I thought I was lucky to not have a nickname like ‘Sweety’ or ‘Pinky’, which are typical Sikh nicknames and are overused to the point that every Indian knows at least one person with those names. Why can’t we be more creative with names? I don’t know.

I watched her flip the roti several times before it was ready and it was time to put the next one on the tawa. Whatever she was saying was floating past my head. His career? Opportunity? ‘Expo-’ what? What about me and my friends? My school? My crush? Nobody cared.

Manya, my younger sister, was too small to even fathom what exactly was happening. I cannot even recall how she reacted to this news. She was seven at that time, almost five years younger to me. We were not what you can call close at that point of time, but I was very possessive of her. I was that typical older sister who would get worried if her sister got late while coming back from primary school.

I felt helpless. That is what I felt for the next few months. I could not do anything. My eyes brimmed with heavy tears while stifling sobs tore from my throat. Why did we have to leave? Mama brought up all the positive sides of this move to make me accept this happily. But at times, even though parents try to gloss over the armour, you cannot help but notice the chink. I thought Papa was earning just fine. I knew we were not crazy rich but we surely had everything. At that moment, I didn’t say anything to her and just sulked back to my room. Not even the hot pink and blue walls of my room could offer me any consolation that day.
~~~~
It was a Monday when I told my friends at school that I was leaving. I remember my best friend Jaya breaking down in the last row while I was at the other end of the classroom.  It is true when they say that it is harder for the person who is left behind. I was about to move to an entirely new place, make new friends and hopefully call it home someday. But Jjaya and Swati would have to go to the same school every day, attend the same classes, loiter around the same corridors, but without me.

That was one grim Monday. Not just because I had to break this news to everyone, but also because it was a class test day, like every Monday. And for the first time ever, I had not prepared for this science test on ‘Light’ at all. Being the huge nerd that I was, this was not something I usually did. But the truth is, I simply couldn’t bring myself to study at all, let alone take a class test seriously. The lack of motivation to do anything sunk deeper and deeper within me. Why should I care when I’ll be leaving the school soon anyway? In fact, during that test, I even exchanged my paper with my partner to answer a question he was stuck on. The rebellious me was clearly surfacing.

Apart from leaving my friends, the other thing that scared me was not being able to see the guy I had been crushing on for the past two years. The luxury of having a Facebook account or WhatsApp was not something I was entitled to back in 2010 and as a result, that immediately eliminated any possible future attempts of me stalking him or pathetically trying to strike a conversation with him. I mean, I would never ever see him again. Looking back, primary school crushes are an amusing and fascinating phase of life. Despite not knowing the person, they seem to be the first sweet love of your life.

Aww?
Anyway, would I miss him? Undoubtedly.

TWO MONTHS, several farewells and countless emotional breakdowns later, our plane landed at the tiny island called Pulau Penang, which falls on the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia.  Known as the ‘Peal of the Orient’, it’s literal translation is ‘Island of the Areca Nut Palm’. Famous for its UNESCO world heritage recognised city, Georgetown, it’s aerial view highlights the turtle shaped outline of its borders on the Malaysian sea. As a result, unsurprisingly, it is listed as one of the best ten islands to visit in the world by a recent survey conducted by CNN. Although this place became more of a home to me than India after four years, my initial thoughts and feelings were confined to that of anxiety, fear and shock.

My first shock was the language. I was oblivious to the fact that Malaysia had its own language called ‘Bahasa Melayu’. Letters were stringed together in odd combinations which were hard to decipher. It was the feeling I got when I attended my first French class in Gurgaon. Strange looking words with consonants and vowels threaded in unexpected ways. This heightened my feeling of alienation which now coursed through my body. My eyes followed new, unfamiliar words such as ‘Tandas’, ‘Keluar’ and ‘Selamat Datang’ and searched underneath the signboards for their English translation. And there it was, my first word in the vocabulary of Bahasa- ‘Tandas’, which translates to toilet.

As we collected our ten billion suitcases from the conveyer belt at the Penang International Airport and headed towards the taxi stand, I felt like I would break down right there and then. A lone tear streamed down my cheek as the arrival gates flung open. Despite knowing that we had to move, my mind was not prepared to enter this new world and start calling it ‘home’. This was not home. This would never be home.
As I looked out of the red ‘Teksi’, my eyes landed upon a large billboard advertising the ‘International School of Penang’ (Uplands). Mama eagerly pointed it out to me, but all I could feel was utter despair. I had forgotten how to make friends after being in the same school with the same classmates for the past eight years. And that poster with a group of students in a tropical themed uniform just fuelled this fear.

Papa’s company had arranged for us to live in an apartment/hotel for a couple of weeks until we could rent a house or an apartment.   In the meantime, however, the worry that was eating Mama away was whether she would find her chakla - belen (rolling pin and rolling base) to make those perfectly round roti (flat Indian bread). I was genuinely worried too. I missed roti made by Mama. Taking the roti away from a North Indian is like taking rice away from a Chinese person. (Unless you’re Manya, who couldn’t care less as long as she got any food) What if we just had to survive on rice for the rest of our lives? Because that was exactly what we did for the entirety of our first week in Penang. We ordered ‘Chicken Fried Rice’ all the time due to our lack of understanding the names of local dishes like ‘Char Koew Teow’ or ‘Nasi Goreng Ayam’.  I was not going to order a dish the name of which I could barely pronounce.

Fortunately, Mama found her extensive cooking equipment at an Indian grocery store and that day, I could say with certainty that she was the happiest Indian woman ever to walk this planet. I was arguably more excited because it meant that after a month, I finally got to eat food cooked at home by Mama, the best food.
~~~~~
The next phase that awaited us was house hunting. Papa’s company had hired a housing agent who showed us about three to four apartments and landed houses for two weeks. Instead of paying more attention to the houses, I gazed at the roads with a sense of amazement. No plastic bags. No food wrappers. No waste food. As kids, we do learn in school that throwing rubbish on the streets is not ideal, but in India, very few people care to follow this. Till date, it saddens me to see people in India treating streets like rubbish bins. Although urban India is in a better state then what it was fifteen years ago, there is still a long way to go before one can stop smelling the trash on the streets and alleys. Piles of plastic, food and other waste appear periodically after every two streets or so in the smaller towns, where unfortunately there is no legal consequence of littering. In Penang, however, the roads spread out like long black carpets which were cleansed almost every day with the tropical showers. Unlike in India, these showers did not leave their traces as potholes.

After house hunting for about three weeks, we finally froze on an apartment, ‘Marina Bay’, that was halfway between our school and Papa’s office. Apparently, Tanjung Tokong, the area in which we were staying, was quite the hub of the island. The most popular shopping mall was a 10-minute walk, there were small grocery stores scattered alongside the road outside the apartment, and most importantly, it was one of the main stops for our school bus. The location was, as Papa had said, ideal. But there was something that made me feel uncomfortable. The feeling of not being in my own bedroom with my painted walls was suffocating. My bright pink and blue walls had been replaced by a vintage green patterned wallpaper. The petite white study table which had been dotted with stickers of Barbie was now replaced by a huge, vacant study. I even missed how my house in India used to smell, a subtle characteristic smell which would instantly remind me of it. All this house smelled was of cardboard boxes which contained all our belongings from India, and untouched hard wood furniture.
We had been in Penang for just over a month now, and the only thing that appealed to me about this place was the view from my room and the balcony. It was facing the sea, eastwards. Every sunrise would be different from the previous and I would always take a photo of it with my Nokia. At times, it would be a clear morning, with splashes of yellow, orange and red bursting from cracks in the sky, setting the clouds ablaze. Other times it would be a grey one, with the sun barely visible and tones of black and white suffocating the clouds. I have a collection of about two hundred photos of this ethereal landscape, something I am extremely proud of.

Every day I would watch the sunrise about the same time as I heard the morning Muslim prayer, the ‘Salat al-fajr’, from the loudspeakers on the main road. Although initially this bothered and distracted me, as prayers were held five times a day, I later came to associate them with feelings of homeliness and security. Despite not being a religious person, there was something about the sound, its intonation, its pitch and its melody, which washed a feeling of calm over me. Some music just does that, doesn’t it? That one song, or that particular sequence of notes, or that instrumental piece which gently flirts with your senses and drowns you in a pile of memories; almost indescribable. Something that transports you to the past while flashing slides of events, one after the other. Even now when I hear the prayer, my mind finds its way back to my time in Penang.

As we tried assimilating into this new culture and environment, one of the major obstacles was the Malaysian accent and the Malaysian Ringget. Now, this Malaysian accent has subtle differences as it can overlap with a South Indian or a Chinese accent. And initially, it appeared to be a labyrinth of words which was almost impossible to decode. It is well known that the Indian accent has strong consonants as we are taught to annunciate all our vowels. The Malaysian accent on the other hand, includes shortened words where some consonants can almost not even be pronounced.  For example: ‘Also’ becomes ‘Oso’ or ‘cannot’ becomes ‘canno’. I also began noticing the addition of ‘lah’ and ‘meh’ at the end of a sentence and soon realised that was an example of what is called ‘Manglish’- Malaysian English. This vocabulary of Manglish consists of words originating from English, Malay, Hokkien, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tamil, Malayalam and, to a lesser extent, some European languages. ‘Lah’ as I realised is a ubiquitous slang added at the end of a sentence and does not carry any meaning to itself as such.  Other unique sentences and phrases that greeted me were:

‘Can!’, which means ‘Sure!’
‘Where got?’ which means ‘Where is this?’
‘Cannot’, which means ‘No way’
‘Walao eh’, which means ‘What the hell’
In four years’ time, I couldn’t have any conversation with my Malaysian friends without using every single one of the phrases listed above.

However, my current biggest reason for anxiety was not the accent, or the language, but school. 23rd August 2010. And this date was approaching. Fast.

THE much-dreaded day was here. My first day at ‘Fairhigh International School’ or as it was usually called, ‘Highmont’. Highmont was initially built on Penang hill, now a tourist attraction, as a school where local expatriates could send their children to when a communist insurrection threatened the peace of Malaysia. Established in 1945, it had gone through three main campus changes. In 1967, the school moved from Penang Hill to the sea side on Kelawei Road which would have been a 15 mins walk from my house. In 2001, the school finally moved to the hillside with the beach being a 10 mins walk.

I stared at my new uniform with not just shock, but also horror. It had a traditional Malaysian ‘batik’ design printed on it with yellow and green stripes running down along with printed leaves. It looked as if I was a tree straight out of the Malaysian rainforest. Thankfully, they changed this design after a year to a green polo t-shirt and skorts.

As I slipped into my new uniform, my anxiety began to increase drastically. Beads of sweat formed on my forehead as I began to create scenarios of the events about to unfold on my first day. I began rehearsing lines in my head, lines which I would be saying to other students at school. The truth is, I had forgotten how to make friends. I had been in the same school in India for a good eight years, and now it seemed like an arduous task.

As I came out of my room, all ready, I saw Mama’s face beaming with excitement. By the way she pressed her lips together and curved them in an encouraging smile, I could guess what was coming. A photo. She had a habit of taking a photo on the rather tumultuous days of my life; my last day of school in DPS, and now, the first day of Uplands. WHY?! But instead of getting annoyed at her, I chose to fake a smile as she clicked. I noticed that my face wore the expression of a 5-year old child that was forced to smile for a family photo. My cheek muscles were so tense that it made something as simple as smiling a painful exercise.

      The bus ride was wow, one interesting experience. The first thing that caught my eye was the air conditioning. Holy s***. Now that was a novelty. In India, we used to crave for air conditioning in buses. Although now most buses have air conditioning installed, when I was there, we had inhaled half the world’s warm polluted air by the time we reached home. The cold blast of air in this bus made my hair jump out of my skin while my jaw was firmly clenched along with my wrists as if I was about to enter a WWE fight.

While admiring the soft and cushioned seats of the bus, I peeped at one of the students sitting in front of me and saw him listening to music on his Ipod with earphones plugged in. This could have easily been the biggest shock of my new school life. I was convinced that he would get into deep trouble in school once someone found out that he had an electronic device with him within the school premises. I mean, does he think he is too cool or what? But as I looked around me, I realised that everyone was doing the same. Lost in their own world. My mind raced back to the day when I witnessed a student being called off for bringing his phone to school back in Gurgaon. It was almost equivalent to committing a felony. Well, phones were allowed here. Okay. That was a first.
As the bus came to a stop, the feeling of unease in the pit of my stomach climbed to another level. Changing schools feels s***, and changing countries feels f***ing s***. And here I was, having to battle my way through both. Things simply could not get any better . I hesitantly took small steps towards the building painted in white with windows spread like large dark metallic sheets on each level. I read the massive board with ‘Fairmont’ written with its motto engraved in green right next to the front gate. Everything was happening too fast for my brain to absorb and comprehend. Too many new faces. Too many westerners. Too many reunion hugs. Too many smiles.

            Seeing other students hugging their friends broke me more. Instead of hugging anyone, as if I could, I hugged my books closer to my chest and climbed the stairs to the second floor to my tutor room, that I was told about on the Orientation Day. My eyes searched for the sign ‘8-S’ amidst the chaos of the first day. I soon found my class and stood in front of the locked door, not knowing what to do. I lowered my eyes to the puce pink tiles in order to avoid awkward looks from other students, and started biting my nails which is still my go-to reaction in stressful situations.

          After hanging there for about 10 mins, I realised that everyone was supposed to go to the Multi-Purpose-Hall, or the MPH, for the welcome back assembly. The MPH was rather odd looking for an assembly to be held at. It had basketball nets dotted along the gigantic walls, badminton double and single lines taped on the floor, a piano sat on the stage, and storage cupboards placed underneath the nets for sports equipment. Fairmont evidently took the saying ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ way too seriously. Was this some kind of circus? I missed the hall in my old school where we had cushiony seats and a beautiful stage where all performances were held.

            As we settled into the MPH waiting for the assembly to commence, a girl with rimmed glasses and long black hair tied back into a ponytail walked into the hall. I noticed her hastily scanning the hall for a vacant spot. When she could not find any, she came and sat next to me. I guessed she was unable to get a seat next to her friends, and saw this as a golden opportunity to strike up a conversation.
‘Are you new, too?’, I asked.
Sorry?’
‘Are you new to the school?’ I repeated.
‘What?’
‘Are you a new student here?’ I asked for the third time.
The assembly had begun and she quickly replied,
‘Let’s talk after the assembly.’
S***. This was not how I had rehearsed my first conversation in my head. Why didn’t she understand me? Had my voice been drowned out by the loud and discordant chit-chatter around me? Was I being rude in asking her this? I was both confused and scared.
The assembly was pretty damn useless for me. Teachers in prissy skirts and dresses came up and welcomed the students to another academic year and uttered things that flew past my head. Although I was aware that they were speaking in English, their accents made it sound like a whole new language to me. A language which I could barely fathom. The way they rolled their ‘r’s and twisted the English words seemed daunting and intimidating. To me, their sentences seemed to be neatly wrapped up in layers of gibberish.

As the assembly ended, I walked back to my tutor room with that same girl. Her name was Joy. We exchanged a few lines until she found her friends, leaving me alone. At that moment, my heart was pounding so hard that I was afraid students around me could hear the rapid pulsation.

As we entered the class, our tutor instructed us to leave our bags in our allotted lockers. I stared at her and blinked rapidly, giving my brain time to understand what exactly she had said.

LOCKERS? Like actual lockers?

Initially, I was convinced that I had misheard which would have been unsurprising considering I could barely understand the assembly. But as I stood there in confusion and saw students sulking to their lockers, I knew I had heard her just fine. These were the things I saw in American shows like ‘Hannah Montana’ back in India. Small cupboard like things where you could leave your belongings. Yet another novel thing for me. The chit-chatter increased at the lockers as students complained about the small size of the apparent ‘new’ lockers. Back at home, we used to keep our bags behind us on our chairs and different teachers would walk into the class and teach. We were not supposed to leave our classrooms. However, the system was different here. We would walk to our classes and take our books out of our respective lockers. It felt as if I was in a TV show and that Zach and Cody would turn around the corner and bump into me anytime.
As we settled into our seats, our teacher introduced herself as ‘Ms. Abby’. I was waiting for her to add ‘ma’am’ after her name, but she didn’t. I heard a student asking her a question by calling her ‘Ms. Abby’ and I was a bit thrown back. Another point of difference. We would call our teachers by the first name followed by ‘ma’am’ or ‘sir’ in India. This business of calling teachers as ‘Ms X’. and ‘Mr. Y’ sounded somewhat disrespectful to me. But oh well. No ‘ma’am’ or ‘sir’. Okay.

‘Alright, so who is a new student here?’ asked Ms. Abby.

I got up from my seat and said, ‘Me’.

I noticed heads pivoting and eyes turning towards me. It felt similar to the moment when you enter the class late and everyone looks at you as if you had committed some sort of crime. Except, my situation was worse.

‘Oh, you don’t have to stand up, you can sit down’, said Ms Abby.

There I was. Made a complete fool of myself. I realised that nobody in my class stood up to answer or ask a question. I wiped my hands against my uniform in an attempt to get rid of the slick of sweat that was forming on my palm. I sat soaking in the stares; I was mortified. Had I done this in my old school, I would have been told off as being disrespectful and perhaps would even have gotten myself a detention. I felt so stupid and just wanted to crawl up in a hole and hibernate for the rest of my life.
           As the day progressed, my anxiety did not lessen, however, I was glad that nobody brought up my embarrassing situation from before. Either they talked about the places they had visited in the break, or sounded off about the lack of room in the new lockers. There were new faces everywhere I looked. I missed the comfort of walking up to Swati and Jaya and talking to them about anything. I missed having inside-jokes with them in class, when we would sit together and share juvenile giggles and laughs.

       Homesickness is defined by Thurber et al., in their 2007 article “Preventing and Treating Homesickness” as “the distress and functional impairment caused by an actual or anticipated separation from home and attachment objects such as parents.” Basically, it is a b****. And it clung to me like a bee to its nectar. Whether you are an international student about to begin university, or someone who has moved houses, the feeling of distress and unease courses through your mind constantly each time come across unfamiliar alleyways, fresh faces and the missing faces of your friends and family.
               Three months had gone by since I had left India, yet this foreign land still seemed as alien as when I first landed. I found myself reminiscing about the good old days in India each night before I went to bed, along with my awkward conversation with Joy which I hoped I would make sense of someday. I realised that acclimatising to a change and accepting it is harder than living through it. Sitting in a new bus, saying ‘morning’ to unfamiliar faces or eating local Malaysian dishes were not tough to do. The tough part was getting my brain to accept the fact that this was how things were going to continue and that there was no going back. Bloody emotions, I tell you.

          While impatiently waiting for the yellow sign to appear next to Swati and Jaya's name on yahoo messenger, I mentally made a list of things I needed to tell them about. Things which surprised me, things that scared me and humans whose accents sounded intimidating. Exchanging emails was another common form of communication that time; when my desi brown parents did not allow me to open a Facebook account. I attached photos of my much-awaited first prom, my class photo and even photos of my new house which now did not seem as haunted as before. I guess I had stopped missing the blue and pink walls of my old room.