OF PAIN AND PLEASURE
The funny thing is, with the passage of time, something does happen to long-term foreigners which makes them more like real exiles, and they
do not like it at all. The homeland which they left behind changes. The culture, the politics and their old friends all change, die, forget
them. They come to feel that they are foreigners even when visiting "home". Jhumpa Lahiri, a British-born writer of Indian descent living
in America, catches something of this in her novel, "The Namesake". Ashima, who is an Indian emigre, compares the experience of foreignness
to that of "a parenthesis in what had once been an ordinary life, only to discover that the previous life has vanished, replaced by something
more complicated and demanding".
…
But we cannot expect to have it all ways. Life is full of choices, and to choose one thing is to forgo another. The dilemma of foreignness
comes down to one of liberty versus fraternity--the pleasures of freedom versus the pleasures of belonging. The homebody chooses the
pleasures of belonging. The foreigner chooses the pleasures of freedom, and the pains that go with them.
(complete articles below)
Being foreign - The others