One of the freedoms of being Indian today is the freedom to leave India, make a home elsewhere. Leaving a country, however, does not necessarily mean leaving behind the part of you that belongs to it.
So, on a sultry New York afternoon, the question “Where are you from?” came as a surprise. We had been talking for 10 minutes. He was wearing a Brazilian soccer shirt, half-wet from the sweat pouring down his bald head.
I hesitated to answer. Shouldn’t he have figured out by now, from my accent, that I was Indian? But was I really from India? Would it not be Sweden, the place I had called home for the last 20 years?
I gave my roundabout answer: I was born in India, but Sweden is home now. For the last year, though, I have been here in the U.S. America doesn’t feel like home, merely a transit point before I head back to Sweden.
I left the last part out. It reeked of homesickness. A disorder I have suffered from ever since I moved from Malmö to Texas a year ago. Texas has treated me well, though, even as I learnt new ways and let go of the old. Could I make it my new home? I shuddered at the thought. I had come here for work, not because Texas was a place I had imagined making my own, and I longed to see a different, less uniform America. Surely, this could not be the only America that existed. I needed a getaway.
New York was the respite I sought.
Nowhere and everywhere
I headed straight to Times Square, where soccer fans had gathered ahead of 2026 FIFA World Cup Brazil versus Morocco group match in June. Knicks fans, the locals, were everywhere and, at once, difficult to spot.
Among them was Ale. Ten minutes into standing together, shoulder to shoulder, shouting into each other’s ears, he leaned in and asked, “Where are you from?”
Where is one from? Why do we have this natural urge to know this fact?
For a migrant, the innocent question about their birthplace and belonging can reopen a complicated geography.
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We ask because it becomes a way to place an individual on our mental map. Humans are storytelling animals; we want to know the first chapter. But for me, the question has become a trap. I have never found a perfect script to answer it without narrating all the transitions in my life.
An easy escape is to say that I am from India. I see the other person’s face relax, as if they have solved a simple chess puzzle. But I also feel conflicted, as if I have lied.
And yet, there is unquestionably a part of me that is Indian. It is the oldest part. India contains my childhood, school years, the small town where I spent the first 18 years of my life and Delhi, where I studied before leaving the country. It survives even in the accent that made me assume Ale should have known where I was from. Sweden may be home, but India remains the place where the first version of me was made.
Even within India, I complicate my origin story. When asked where I was from, I would say Delhi. Did I really belong there? I had only spent four years in the city. I did not want to mention the small town where I grew up in, a place I assumed no one would have heard of. So, knowingly, I lied.
Palestinian-American postcolonial theorist Edward Said writes that birthplace and belonging can be separated. For a migrant, this innocent question can reopen a complicated geography.
Here in Times Square, I chose the easier option, betraying my layered answer for convenience.
The outsider-insider
The next morning, I met Yuriy at Carnegie Diner & Café. Having lived here for 14 years, the U.S. citizen is Ukrainian by birth.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“Right now, it seems like I belong nowhere,” he said. “Here, despite the citizenship, I feel like an outsider. I can’t go back home either. There, the authorities have sent my serving papers.”
Papers summoning him to serve in the Ukrainian army.
“If I do, they will enlist me, and who knows if I will be able to come back to the States.”
We drank the rest of our coffee in silence. Here was Yuriy, alone in a country not of his birth, feeling alien but with no escape.
What about his children, I asked as we got up to leave. Did they feel at home here?
“Oh yes,” Yuriy said, a smile returning. “For them, this is their world.”
There was hope in that answer.
My short escape to New York was coming to an end. The conversation with Yuriy had comforted me. Unlike him, I had a place I considered home and could return to. Such safety, I realised, is not easily available to all migrants.
I still cannot convincingly answer the question of where I am from. But as I left New York, the question felt a little less like a trap. Maybe I did not have to choose one place and betray the others. The Indian in me did not disappear because Sweden became home, just as 20 years in Sweden did not erase where my story began. Maybe I was not from one origin at all, but stitched from several experiences into the person I now carry through the world.
The next time someone asks me where I was from, I would, perhaps, pause, smile, and say: it depends on which part of me you are asking about.
The writer is a U.S.-based professional with an interest in travel and culture reporting.
