How human connection helps us grow
Updated On: 24 May, 2024 04:46 AM IST | Mumbai | Rosalyn D`mello
Living far away from home has irrevocably changed me. I don’t know if I will ever feel ‘settled’, but I’ve learnt that I like exposing myself to people as there is much to learn from interactions
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The commune of Tramin in South Tyrol, northern Italy, where I have lived for four years
Just when I made my peace with being perceived as an outsider in Tramin, my marital ‘Heimat’, I suddenly found myself at the heart of numerous interactions with locals. Over the course of the four years since my move here, my sense of relation with the town’s inhabitants has had an upward trajectory. I presume my growing fluency in German has a role to play. In the beginning, for the longest time, I had to suffice with being greeted either with a ‘Griaßdi’, the Südtiroler dialect variation of ‘grüß Gott’ or uncertain, polite smiles that acknowledged my existence. I had no doubt that most people knew I was my father-in-law’s daughter-in-law, because it is a small town with only 3,500 people. But if there was ever more of a curiosity around my identity, it never reached me.
As a result, the first year of mothering felt inalienably lonely. I spent hours and days caring for an infant without having anyone to exchange notes with or even rant to beyond my partner. I saw other mothers go for walks with their fellow mother friends. At the swimming pool, where I spent a lot of time last year, the other mothers smiled at me and were warm, but it never translated into conversation. Elsewhere in South Tyrol, because most people mistook me for our child’s nanny, I was rarely ever spoken to or addressed directly. Sometimes, in buses, I even felt the kind of hostility that is reserved for immigrant mothers of colour. I felt alienated from all my friends back home because mothering left me with too little time to catch up. I slipped off the radar professionally. It was only after incidentally stumbling upon a prolonged freelance gig that is ongoing that I began to feel intellectually nurtured once again.
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