{"id":5800,"date":"2014-01-08T10:32:21","date_gmt":"2014-01-08T05:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/?p=5800"},"modified":"2021-02-20T15:07:00","modified_gmt":"2021-02-20T09:37:00","slug":"a-long-way-away-from-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/2014\/01\/08\/a-long-way-away-from-home\/","title":{"rendered":"A long way away from home"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘<\/a>The Global Soul’ is not my favourite Pico Iyer book (though he is a favourite anyway) mostly because I couldn’t connect to three out of its six chapters. I picked up the book because, in addition to it being a Pico book, it was about a subject that has fascinated me for a while now – the concept of ‘home’. This, in a multicultural world whose corporate citizens are rapidly making sure that\u00a0‘Everywhere is made up of everywhere else<\/em>..’ I remember writing about this<\/a> almost three years ago, in the context of another travel book and my visit to what I still consider home – Cochin. It was evoked by the presence of the same brands that I might see in a mall in Bangalore, the disappearance of familiar landmarks, and the residents referring to new landmarks that I really didn’t know of.\u00a0It is perhaps unfair to expect that even as I changed, the idea of home would remain a constant. Maybe I will get used to that in a while too.<\/p>\n

I had wondered whether, in our pursuit of convenience and familiarity, we might end up creating a homogeneous world. Now I wonder if we might be one of the last generations to live in a truly heterogeneous world, as, in addition to the corporate imperialism, culture also becomes the most exported and imported product, courtesy technological advances – real and virtual. Home is, as the t-shirt goes, where the wifi connects automatically, and I’d be able to recreate it anywhere, with all the props made available to me.<\/p>\n

Every year, around this time, there is usually a home visit, and I would be chronicling<\/a> it, this year there isn’t. Our regular visit targets are missing in action, and going there doesn’t make sense. I wonder if this is how it begins,\u00a0and a couple of decades later, when I’m traveling, a bout of homesickness would hit me, and I would realise that it wasn’t Cochin I was thinking of.\u00a0I’ll probably feel sad then, and guilty. But for now, I am closing my eyes, and recreating Cochin in my mind, with no props. I am able to, I can sense the wistfulness as I walk through the streets (without Google) and they haven’t changed. It’s heartening to know that while I have left Cochin, it hasn’t left me.<\/p>\n

\"picoiyersrilankaimg_0140\"<\/p>\n

until next time, homegrown can be grown?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘The Global Soul’ is not my favourite Pico Iyer book (though he is a favourite anyway) mostly because I couldn’t connect to three out of its six chapters. I picked up the book because, in addition to it being a Pico book, it was about a subject that has fascinated me for a while now […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[412,7],"tags":[318,376,775,4395],"class_list":["post-5800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-yesterday","tag-cochin","tag-home","tag-pico-iyer","tag-the-global-soul"],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5800"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15696,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5800\/revisions\/15696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}