She is leaving San Francisco after 20 years, another drop in the exodus of our friends who have returned to India.

She spoke yesterday about ailing parents, and about wanting her two-year-old daughter to experience “by osmosis” language, culture, heritage, and family. She also articulated her doubts and fears on returning. Not having lived in India since high school, she wonders how they will adjust to being there.

The key, she said, is to have no expectations.

“It’s so hard to leave. We’re so spoiled in San Francisco – the people, the food, the weather,” she sighed. “And California – the beauty – it’s incomparable.”

I felt a rush of emotions. First, an emptiness thinking about the city without her. We see each other rarely, but it’s a comfort to have someone who remembers the person you were at 19 in a city you didn’t arrive in till you were 30. She is a part of my roots here, now being severed.

In the news for being unaffordable and near bankruptcy, it was a pleasure to be reminded of the stunning beauty we take for granted as Californians, and the shelter and refuge that is my San Francisco.

And, finally, sadness. There is no rush of Pakistanis returning to the homeland, even with lowered expectations. To the UAE perhaps, but not to Pakistan.

Another friend of ours who moved back to Delhi in his mid-thirties, spoke of the dissonance of returning to a place he had always referred to as “home”, but which was unrecognizable as the country he had left at 18.

Pakistan is unrecognizable now too. In many ways, there is no home to return to.

I used to dream of returning and giving my (at that time unborn) child the transformational experience I had of spending my high school years there.

Little by little, I’ve put that dream away.

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