{Photo: BFI London Film Festival}
“I have lived for 29 years in America. Longer than in my homeland — India. Yet, home has always been India for me. Because that’s where I feel I completely and utterly belong. Where I have every right. Where no one can displace me. I have yearned to move back to India and I got a chance to do that a few years ago in 2011 and moved back and lived in Delhi for two years. It was a seamless transition even though I had spent my whole adult life abroad. Interestingly though, when I came back to LA in 2013—for the sake of my younger son whom I promised it would just be two years—I found a new sense of belonging for the first time in America, specifically in Santa Monica where I created a new home and life for myself. And the reason is that I feel deeply connected here by the ocean to my son Ishan. I left America because of his death because I needed to be with my family and away from the memories here. But now I find that the enormous peace and connection that I have with his spirit in Santa Monica cannot match any other part of the world. And so now, for the first time, I have two homes in my heart and no longer feel miserable to come back to America. I look forward to both places because they each have a part of me and each give me different things.”
—Shonali Bose, Writer, Director & Producer (Amu/Chittagong/Margarita, with a Straw)
