Moving from America to Chennai, India made me the person I am today

I don’t have an easy answer to the question, “What is your hometown?” Even though Iwas born in Evanston, Illinois, I have no memories of that place as an infant or toddler; instead, I have distinct memories of our first house in Mt. Prospect, and then later, our home in Oak Brook, a more upwardly-mobile suburb, west of Chicago.While my parents still maintain a residence near Chicago, albeit now in Oak Park, and the area has a lot of fond memories, it will never truly be home. That distinction is reserved to a place that the children of immigrants usually never experience: their parents’ original immigrant home. In my case, and despite my American citizenship by birth, my hometown is truly Chennai, India.

In 1989, and completely against the “Brain Drain” wave of Indian intellectuals who were leaving India for greener pastures in the United States and the United Kingdom, my parents decided to move my kid sister and I back to Chennai (then known as Madras) so that we  ould get to know our grandparents and extended family, and have a sense of culture which was often lacking for ABCDs – the pejorative acronym for American-Born Confused Desis (people from India and Pakistan). It was a remarkable move and one that probably made my parents’ friends aghast.

I could say that my sister and I identify so strongly as Indian and American simply due to our unique arc, but I think that would take away from the effect that Chennai had on our development. It is truly a remarkable place. It is the fifth most populous city in India with a population around 7.2 million people; by contrast, that is the population of the entire state ofWashington … or Paraguay. It is also the capital of the Southeast Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

But what makes Chennai so cool (even though it gets ungodly hot in the summer) is that its people and history have created an amalgam of religious tolerance.

Chennai is home to millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, and to a lesser extent Sikhs, Parsis, Jains, and Buddhists, who have found a way to live and work together in a climate of mutual respect. Due to its unique history, the city is dotted with British-era schools, convents, and churches, and even older ones like the San Thome Basilica, one of only four churches in the world built over the grave of an apostle.

The sounds of church bells and hymns sung in English and Tamil weave with the sounds of Hindu life, from the thousands of small and large temples that dot the city, ranging in size from literally roadside altars to the massive, beautiful, urban, and stone koval (Tamil for “temple”) like Kapalieeswarar in Mylapore,which dates to the 7 th Century CE.

Add to this the many hundreds of masaajid (Arabic for“mosques”), Shia and Sunni, and their muezzin, calling the faithful to prayer in Arabic through loudspeakers, their voices layering and competing with the busy sounds of a city constantly on the move. If you ever get a chance to visit, the Thousand Lights Mosque on Mount Road is especially cool.

This multi-faceted religious culture has in turn created a climate where there is mutual respect between people of different groups, which filters down into daily life. While the most spoken languages in Chennai continue to be Tamil and English, it is a place where many other Indian and even foreign tongues are spoken, and where people from around the world have not just visited, but stayed. I would be lying if I said it didn’t have its own problems, and like most Indian cities, long-time residents accept that tranquility is often fleeting, replaced often by insane traffic, and constant noise.

But with that also comes a sense of magic. While Bengaluru, Kolkata, Mumbai, and New Delhi always get the lion’s share of attention from the media, Chennai will always be home to me.