From anxious 35 to at-peace 36

The captivating view from the train from Auer to Verona. Pic by Rosalyn D’Mello

Incredulously, as we neared Domigliari, moving further from the Alps towards Verona, the dense rain-drenched grey sky loosened up to reveal vast expanses of blue with an array of picturesque white clouds hanging over the horizon. It always amazes me, these perceptible shifts between regional borders, like when you cross the Brenner from North Tirol towards the South and the shift in landscape draws your attention, instead of meadows you see vineyards and apple fields. By now I've lost count of how many times I have taken the train between Auer and Venice and back, navigating between a site of work and ongoing research and a place that has become home. On Sunday, July 11, I returned to Tramin after almost three weeks of being away, of using Venice as a base as I travelled to San Marino, taking the train to Rimini, and to Sardinia, taking a flight via Rome. On the boat I encountered a most unusual homesickness, on the one hand I missed Mumbai and Delhi, on the other I ached for Tramin and the familiarity of my life there. Returning on Sunday felt like a homecoming. My partner waited for me on the platform at Auer and I ran towards him like a cliché. We celebrated a recent job offer I received with lunch at Alte Post, our favourite restaurant located down the stairs from where we live. I feasted on the chef's preparation of Jakobsmuscheln and duck. That evening we went to our friend Kathrin's home in Bozen for a pre-finals barbecue, which turned out to be a complete meat fest with generous portions of excellent couscous, grilled paprika, grilled aubergine and home-made pita. It felt so good to be ‘at home' with people around whom I have grown so comfortable.

Before and during my trip to Sardinia I had been proofreading a text that was about the Mapuche people and their struggles with reappropriating lands snatched away from them through the machinations of the nation-state of Argentina. It felt like an extension of some of my own recent reflections about what it means to belong to a place, to have a sense of being from it to the point where it is also of you. When we've been conditioned to believe we are entitled to ownership of land, that nature is something we must tame or exercise agency over, how do we transform the future potential of our dynamics with a place? I read an Instagram post about how choosing not to buy land is one plausible way of espousing a stance against colonialist or settler occupations. It means questioning our complicity in the continuing disenfranchisement of indigenous populations.

Although I met my partner in Südtirol, I never imagined moving here. I was sure I wouldn't be able to evolve an existence beyond the context in which, though I may never have fully ‘belonged', I still made sense. My partner was happy to move to India and find a new life for himself there. I had conceived of moving out of Delhi, because of the pollution, and finding a place for myself in Goa, a piece of land upon which we could build something small and farm. But a range of events, from the terms and conditions of my Stay Permit to the Pandemic made us realise that the only viable option was to move to Italy. Every day this decision is validated on various counts: the kind of work I'm able to find, the quality of life, and the immense social support I am receiving by way of health care and other benefits. Every day the number of days since I left India increases, and new opportunities coming my way make returning seem even more distant.

On Friday it'll be my second consecutive birthday spent in Italy. I'll turn 36. When I look at the photograph my partner took of me last year, at a restaurant in Bozen while we were waiting for Kathrin, Liron and Sarah to join, I see instantly how significant the transformation has been. While I was happy to be where I was, I was also anxious and insecure about how we were going to make do, how I was going to retain my personhood in a totally new context. I was still so fresh-off-the-boat, barely two weeks having passed since we were done with our quarantine. I remember the full-bodied intensity of the bottle of Lagrein Kathrin had opened after dinner. It would taste so differently now, I'm sure, because my tongue has grown so much more sensitive, is so much better attuned to particularities. This year I will be in Venice. I haven't made any plans. My partner arrives the day before and we'll likely be beach bums. My dear friends Johanna and Anton arrive in the evening. On Saturday we will celebrate the feast of the Redentore with the rest of Venice, during when a bridge composed of boats will connect the islands of Venice with Guidecca. I wonder, already, how I'll retrospect next year at this version of myself, the most ‘at peace' I've ever been.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx

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