kaleidoscope

The plane descends slowly down towards the city that is supposed to be my home. I can see a shining clump of neon lights, something out of the dream of a child obsessed with sci-fi stories. As the plane hovers over the airport, probably awaiting clearance, waiting for another plane just like itself, carrying people who look the same and think the same way, I feel sick. Not physically sick or anything – just plain queasy in the head or something. I already miss college, what I now consider home, or will, at least for the next few years. I’m apprehensive about meeting my family after these few months. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I wonder if the internet connection at home is up and running – I need to stay in touch with my friends.
When I’m not in Calcutta I think of it as home and when I am there home seems to be elsewhere. I am not sure what home is and so I come up with definitions that sound good but don’t make much sense:
Home is a feeling.
or
Home is a group of people around whom one’s comfortable.
or
Home is a time, not a place.
I calm myself and tell myself I am just going through a phase of self-discovery. I figure that it’s about the right time for that. At least that’s what I understood from all the books I’ve read or the movies I’ve watched or from all the music that blares from speakers everywhere I go.
I am a global nomad, I say. I think I read that somewhere.
I’m just sick of the way people are – if Holden Caulfield did it so should I.
I need to go find the answer to life, maybe walk on the razor’s edge.
And then I see myself in a mirror as I walk towards the arrivals wing and I see how similar I am to everyone else who’s walking by and how similar, in fact, everyone is. Everyone has a cell phone, an iPod, everyone wears the same kind of clothing, everyone is humming the same tune, how little everyone notices of what’s around them. I am a child of technology. I am not raw feelings and emotion – I am neurons and electrical signals. I am a global nomad who is searching for a home. I wander aimlessly in the midst of throngs of people who have been rendered perfectly alike and are unable to recognise themselves because they see their own face in the face that walks past on a crowded street. I am not a piece of art or a glittering amalgamation of magical potential; I am an iPod or a car that has so many features that most of them are completely useless. I am defined by everyone around me and they, in turn, are defined by me, and because we have none to tell us what is right have become the generation that can’t know its own name. That is also why I am mass of gibberish when faced with describing myself. I am not the living breathing creature that I should be – I am a random mixture of figments of other people’s imaginations.