There are phases of life and growing up. For us, who have taken to our adopted land like fish to water are blessed to enjoy the best of two worlds. While there is familiarity in celebrations of our home, the land we are from takes us on a treasure hunt to keep our ancestral traditions alive.

As we become more aware of our psycho-emotional well-being and acknowledge burnouts more commonly, back in the day “Gau jaana” or visiting your ancestral home during summer was the norm. It didn’t matter if that gau was the hottest place on the face of the earth. A bleeding nose was a small sacrifice for the destressing that your father or mother usually needed.

A simple life may be stripped of all modern amenities, but it is also meant to deal with the stress of keeping up with the rising costs to maintain this lifestyle. Since I never had an ancestral home to go back to, these places were just where the extended families lived. Most of these, who opened their homes and hearts to us, were where we headed to next.

Perhaps that is why I feel so rooted in Maharashtra and its culture. It is, after all, where my heart, home, and soul wandered in my formative years after all!