Last week we booked tickets in anticipation of our trip back to India, my first return since leaving in June 2020 amid the Pandemic. I am nervous and elated. My patience with bureaucracy is waning. Through various forms of human and divine intervention, I was able to get a five-year stay permit and our child finally got his passport three weeks ago. It felt thrilling, to know that we were now mobile. We’re still in the throes of applying for OCI (overseas citizen of India) status for my partner and child; a process that seems needlessly long-winded and confusing and involves our travel to Milan next week. But we’re holding on to hope that it is successful. 

Mid-April is when we expect to be in India, when summer’s heat begins to assert itself. We had to decide where we would go within the limited time we have, since I have my teaching work ongoing at the university, and we are expected to spend more time in Goa, since our family decided to celebrate our parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. This has meant that we may not visit Mumbai at all. I had to choose between Delhi and Mumbai; and that means choosing between two notions of home. All my best friends live in Delhi, though, so our child will encounter the tandoor heat of April.