Imagine a Venn diagram with two circles, but they don’t intersect at all. That’s basically what college and home are for me. I am not naive — I knew that university and home would be worlds apart (quite literally) but the difference still takes me by surprise sometimes. 

Honestly, it isn’t even the big aspects like driving on the opposite side of the road, or the colder weather or even the multicultural student body. Rather, it’s the little things, such as slipping into Hindi unconsciously. My first week here, I was hanging out with some students from Los Angeles and we were talking about the next time we would meet. I said “pakka,” which means “yes, for sure” in Hindi, out of habit. I was really surprised because as someone who conversed in English 99% of the time even at home, I didn’t really expect to face a “language barrier.”

They probably didn’t notice the language switch in the mayhem of bidding adieu. But, I noticed how I unconsciously slipped into my mother tongue and just expected others to understand because that’s what I have been used to my entire life. Today, when I hear fellow Indians on campus slip into Hindi, it’s comforting to know I am not alone. And it’s extremely ironic how I speak in Hindi more here with my Indian friends than I did back home, mostly because we want to talk about the people around us. 

Another glaringly obvious difference is how others, such as my friends, perceive me. My high school friends saw me as the Edhita who was so gullible she believed anything people told her or had a huge crush on Niall Horan (ride or die Directioner). But, my USC friends see me as the political science and intelligence and cyber operations major or someone who is extremely particular about hygiene. 

There is not one “correct” version — both are facets of me. While high school friends see the more childish, innocent and less “I am carrying the weight of the entire world on my tiny shoulders because I refuse to work out” version of me, my college friends see the adulting (and surprisingly not failing at it) version of me. My high school friends know who I am, and my college friends are seeing me evolve into who I will be. And I don’t know how I feel about this.

I guess all of this emotional turmoil and difficulty being completely content in either place boils down to the fact that I didn’t think of college as home. Last year, I refused to call my dorm my home. Home is Mumbai; home is my mother’s laughter and my father’s hugs; home is the roar of auto rickshaws and the smell of street food; and home is constant. How can I change what home is? 

Saying goodbye to home after summer was one of the toughest challenges I have ever faced. And perhaps, it was because I thought I was leaving home and going to college and not leaving one home to go to another. This semester, I have made a conscious effort to make this home. 

One step that’s helped me is cooking. Yes, making pasta is so much easier, but cooking Indian food is worth the extra effort because it’s so comforting. On the odd day that I don’t give myself food poisoning (yes, it happened and no, I don’t want to talk about it), my food actually tastes like home, and I feel so at peace. It’s so surprising because if two months ago someone had told me that I, the girl who hadn’t even turned on the gas till she was 16, would look forward to cooking, I would have laughed. But, college has a funny way of turning your world upside down.

Don’t get me wrong, I am so ready to go back home (managing an apartment is not a piece of cake) but I am trying to reconcile the two versions of me. This summer, I wrote an article for the Daily Trojan where I expressed my hope to balance the two versions of me when I went back to college. And looking back at just this one month, I know I am fulfilling that wish and taking steps in the right direction. Without realizing it, living abroad made me connect with my Indian roots more. 

I don’t think there is one guide or quick crash course on how to bridge the gap between your two identities. Just like while cooking an Indian dish, where you estimate the quantities of spices and then adjust according to taste, you try making small yet meaningful changes to your life and hope it ends with the perfect dish, aka a balanced you. 

Edhita Singhal is a sophomore from India writing about her experiences as an international student in her column, “Foreign Footprints,” which runs every other Tuesday.