Living in an alien land, far from home, wears one down in invisible ways. The everyday negotiations of identity and quiet tests of belonging gradually chip away at the self. And yet, residing as a stranger within the territorial limits of one’s own country is more disturbing. It’s not a question of adapting to a new language or a different set of cultural norms but a constant reminder that you are a square peg in a round hole. Existence may precede essence, yet lived experiences shape our identity. Belonging, then, turns into a lifelong pursuit. This quest for belonging is not just personal; it is shaped by the world around us. Take India, a country that prides itself on its multilingual, multicultural diversity, yet is quietly divided. Across cities, small islands of familiarity form around language. Language unites, yes, but also builds walls. It includes and excludes at once. A few among the privileged South-Indian diaspora, cushioned by elite institutions or cosmopolitan circles, contend that they’ve never felt excluded in the North. Their stories matter, but they cannot stand for all. For instance, it’s true that South Indians remain politically invisible in Delhi, despite a sizeable population having lived there for a long time. Life in Delhi was tough for many early settlers from the South. Anyone, anywhere from the south of the Vindhyas, was reportedly called ‘Madarasi’. Even today, those migrants from the middle-class and lower-middle-class continue to confront challenges and ‘othering’ that rarely find expression in polite company. Their lived reality frequently gets dismissed. Truth, after all, is never singular and speaks in many tongues. Each such truth deserves to be heard and held in empathy.It is from this place, I reflect, not to fault any individual or institution but to find solace. For many first-generation skilled migrants who live in the national capital, estrangement is not a distant idea but an everyday reality. I hail from Tamil Nadu and get broadly labelled a ‘South-Indian’. I’m tired of navigating the same age-old stereotypes around ‘South Indians’, only to be met with awkward attempts to connect through ‘aiyos!’ (the word has now entered English dictionaries). I’ve often wondered why the North-South divide persists. Is it the old North-South rift, still simmering in silence? The long legacy of the South’s resistance against the hegemonic language? The subtle racial undertones that mark some as ‘inferior’? Or is it simply a personal wound blown out of proportion into a larger issue? It’s all of these, carefully woven into one seamless discomfort. I’m branded an outsider long before I know what I’ve done to deserve it. This sense of feeling out of place follows me into every space. In the workplace, I try to let my work speak for itself. But I still find myself working twice as hard to be recognised for my contributions. Recognition comes, but slower. Rapport forms but is rarely organic. “Do in Rome, as Romans do,” say people who advise me to adapt. But, the persistent effort to mingle already feels one-sided. And it isn’t my fault. Further, speaking of envy or subtle hostility may seem impolite, but it is prevalent, even if rarely overt; often cloaked in humour and coated in civility. Sometimes, such pressure chisels resilience. At other times, it invariably exhausts me into silence. While the presence of similarly placed peers is soothing, the sense of displacement deepens when layered with other intersecting factors. For someone like me, whose ancestors are believed to have migrated centuries ago from parts of Andhra Pradesh or Telangana, and with the traceable lineage of few generations that served the Southern Railways, life has always been itinerant. We’ve lived in different cities, but fully belonged to none. Each transfer meant learning how to fit in all over again, yet failing. I was a perennial outsider in every school, always the newcomer and never the one who belonged to the local rhythm. Tamil Nadu, known for its rich linguistic diversity, embraced us, yet never wholly. Despite my commendable proficiency in Tamil, my tongue was still ‘Telugu. However, what I’ve inherited is a diasporic, diluted variant of Telugu, not ‘proper’ enough. Revealing my roots often meant being excluded or mocked. So, I learnt early to conceal and smooth over my differences as a survival strategy, hoping to feel accepted somewhere.At home, we are composites. Our ways of life have amalgamated the different cultures of the cities we’ve lived in, our cuisine imbibed those we’ve tasted, and our tongues spoke the accents that we’ve come to hear. That hybrid comfort has made us cosmopolitan and adaptable, but it has also left us unanchored. I’ve often wondered, rather yearned, if I’d ever have an immutable hometown or a language to call ‘my own’. It does make me, in some sense, ‘stateless’ within my state and ‘tongueless’ within my tongue. I feel like I belong everywhere yet nowhere, and speak everything yet belong to none. Ontological insecurity has always been a part of me; each city and each tongue offered partial shelter but none a sense of unqualified belonging. Growing up Tamil, but not quite, Telugu, but not entirely, and Hindi, known scarcely at all, I arrived in Delhi. And now, less than half a decade sojourn in this city that fascinates as much as it alienates me, the question resurfaces with greater force: Where do I truly belong? Who am I, really? Am I not ‘Indian enough’? Then, am I simply a ‘South-Indian’? If so, why does this collective identity, unapologetically plural, evoke discomfort and condescension? Perhaps the unstoppable rise of ‘the South Indian phenomenon’ across the world says it all. Perhaps, we unsettle the fantasy of homogeneity, traverse geographies seeking education and employment, yet carry our identities without embarrassment. Possibly, we maintain a delicate equilibrium between preserving our identities and opening ourselves to the larger whole.It’s at this crossroads, an ancient Tamil wisdom from ‘Purananuru’ returns to me, “Yaadhum Oore, Yaavarum Kelir”. It means, “To us, all towns are our own and everyone our kin.” Penned a few millennia ago, poet Kaniyan Poongundranar still resonates, as Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam invoked in his 2007 world peace speech in the European Union. It is not a naïve declaration of a borderless utopia. It is a radical reminder that belonging is neither a fixed inheritance nor a privilege allocated by birth, but a practice of relating to the world without hostility. However, that thin space between the ideal and the real has shaped the hyphen I inhabit: between Tamil and Telugu, between Tamil Nadu and Delhi, between the South and the North, moreover, between familiarity and estrangement. It’s a fragile place, but a home of sorts.Belonging, I have come to realise, is not guaranteed by soil, tongue or blood. It’s a slow and deliberate labour of assembling oneself in spaces that prefer us fragmented. It’s an ongoing search for resonance. Perhaps it’s not about being included or excluded. With my few South-Asian friends here, I am beginning to learn that it’s about creating our own circles of warmth, however small. Perhaps, it’s time to redefine ‘belonging’ by fostering a sense of community. Rather than trying to discipline or assimilate, it must be inclusive of heteroglossia and diversity. Maybe the hyphen between identities isn’t a vacuum but a space that accommodates my hybridity. Hence, I choose not to sand down my edges. As the United Nation’s ‘Global citizenship Education’ urges us to nurture respect for all and build a sense of belonging to a common humanity, belonging need not mean assimilation into a singular identity; it can be solidarity, dignity and shared human belonging. So, I let Telugu poet Annamayya’s song ‘Brahmam Okate’ (all essence is one), ring on my phone even as Amma and Naana call me to converse in Tamil. Perhaps, a true sense of belonging begins when we stop apologising for who we truly are and maybe, it begins again, each time, we whisper with quiet conviction, “Yaadhum Oore, Yaavarum Kelir”.Swarna Latha R is a Doctoral Research Scholar at the Faculty of Legal Studies, South Asian University, New Delhi.