A simple question overheard in a crowd of football fans turned into a meditation on what "home" means for anyone who has built a life across borders. Writing for The Hindu around Independence Day 2026, an Indian-born professional now living in Texas describes a weekend escape to New York that reframed his own complicated answer.
The setup is familiar to millions of expats: after nearly two decades in Sweden, the writer relocated to Texas for work a year ago and has never shaken the feeling of being in transit. When a stranger in a Brazilian shirt at a Times Square World Cup fan gathering asked where he was from, he froze. Born in India and raised in a small town he rarely mentions, educated in Delhi, settled in Sweden — every honest answer required a story. The easy option, saying "India," felt like a small betrayal.
New York became his test case for a different America than the Texas he knew. The city was ramping up for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with fans flooding Times Square ahead of a Brazil versus Morocco group match in June, Knicks gear blending into the crowd. It was exactly the kind of layered, unpredictable place he had been craving.
The essay's most affecting encounter happened the next morning at Carnegie Diner & Café, where he met Yuriy, a Ukrainian-born US citizen of 14 years. Asked the same question, Yuriy answered that he currently belongs nowhere: in America he feels like an outsider despite his citizenship, and returning to Ukraine would mean army enlistment papers he cannot answer without losing his ability to come back. When asked about his children, though, Yuriy smiled — for them, America is simply their world.
The contrast gave the writer a new way to hold his own answer. Compared with migrants like Yuriy, he has the luxury of a home he can actually return to. Invoking Edward Said's observation that birthplace and belonging can be separated, he lands on a resolution many long-term expats will recognise: he is not from one place but stitched from several, and "where are you from?" depends on which part of him the asker means.
Why it matters for travellers: this is a portrait of the migrant experience that surfaces constantly on the road — in hostel kitchens, airport queues and city cafés. It also doubles as a gentle argument for travel as perspective-shifting: a short trip from Texas to New York was enough to change how the writer saw both America and himself. Anyone who has stumbled through the "where are you from?" small-talk ritual will find their own hesitations reflected here.
