“They each knew one homeland, while I carried two, and somehow two always felt like not enough.”

“But I have since realized I am not the only one. There is a whole group of us, children of immigrants, first-generation Canadians, who live in this in-between space.”

The smell of cumin and cardamom filled our kitchen every Sunday. My grandparents’ voices rose in Punjabi, steady and warm, weaving with my parents’ conversations and my brother’s laughter. Around that table, the world stretched far beyond our Canadian street. 

I was in Punjab—not as a visitor, but as a grandchild growing up inside a homeland, carried across an ocean and rebuilt under our roof. 

My parents had come first, carving out a life in Canada with the hope that their children would grow into new opportunities. Later, they invited my grandparents to join us, and suddenly three generations lived together. 

The house was never still. My grandfather’s radio hummed in the mornings, Punjabi hymns rising with the sun. My grandmother prayed aloud before breakfast, her voice steady and unwavering. My parents traded stories and responsibilities over cups of chai. My brother and I raced through the house, slipping easily between English and Punjabi. 

At home, Punjabi was the air we breathed. My parents made sure of it. They corrected me if I slipped into English when speaking to my grandparents. They reminded me to answer in Punjabi, to remember who I was, to hold onto the culture they had carried across the ocean. 

But at school, the opposite pressure pulled at me. English made me invisible, just another Canadian kid. If Punjabi slipped into my speech on the playground, I was met with confused looks or mocking imitations. 

Connecting with classmates meant letting go of pieces of myself. Holding on at home, letting go at school. Each day felt like stepping across a border. 

Williams Lake was small and steady. The community was tight-knit, life predictable: rodeos, hockey games, school concerts and town parades. Everyone seemed to know everyone. The air smelled of pine and woodsmoke. 

I loved the familiarity, but inside that comfort I carried difference. 

It showed up in the smallest ways. My friends brought sandwiches of white bread and ham. I unwrapped rotis from foil. They spent weekends fishing or camping. I spent mine inside with cousins, watching Bollywood movies or listening to stories my grandparents told about Punjab. They talked about cabins at the lake. I listened, smiling politely, with nothing to add. 

Sometimes the teasing was harmless, and I learned to laugh along. But other times, it stung. 

Canadian kids reminded me that I looked different, that I wasn’t like them. South Asian kids reminded me that I wasn’t Indian enough, calling me “white-washed” for speaking English so easily or not knowing every Bollywood reference. 

I felt like I was constantly being picked on from both sides. Indians from India told me I was too Canadian. Canadians told me I was too Indian. 

They each knew one homeland, while I carried two, and somehow two always felt like not enough. 

The confusion followed me home. 

My parents, who were balancing their own in-betweenness, pushed me to keep Punjabi alive, to honour their traditions. But they also saw how much Canada was shaping me. 

They wanted me to succeed in school, to blend in enough to have opportunities they never had. 

It left me in a tug-of-war: Canadian outside, Punjabi inside. Sometimes it felt like I was disappointing both sides at once. 

Trips to India only added new layers. The moment we landed, I felt the shift. 

My parents told me not to speak English in public, especially in bazaars. If people heard my accent, they would know I was Canadian. They would treat me differently, maybe charge more, maybe see me as soft or spoiled. 

I remember walking through crowded markets, the air thick with dust and the smell of fried snacks, my eyes wide at the swirl of colors and noise. I longed to ask questions in English, but I swallowed the words. 

My parents’ warning sat heavy in my throat: don’t let them find out. In those moments, I wondered which part of me I was hiding, and why I couldn’t ever seem to be both. 

India was vibrant, alive and in many ways familiar. I laughed with cousins, shared meals that lasted long into the night and walked in the villages my parents once knew. 

But even in the laughter I felt distance. My accent gave me away. My Canadian habits slipped through. 

I was welcomed with love, but always noticed as different.

Back in Canada, the cycle repeated in reverse. I was too Indian for my Canadian peers, too Canadian for my Indian ones. 

I learned to adapt, to switch effortlessly, to read a room and know which version of myself to present. But underneath, I carried the ache of never being fully seen. 

Leaving Williams Lake for Langley felt like another crossing. 

Langley was bigger, busier, more diverse and yet also more anonymous. After years of familiar faces and neighborly waves, I was surrounded by strangers who never looked up. The sidewalks were louder, the days faster. 

My dorm room was too quiet after a childhood in a multigenerational home. I missed the hum of life: my grandparents praying, my parents talking late over chai, my brother thundering up the stairs. 

The silence pressed in on me. It reminded me that home was not just a location, but the people and voices that made a place feel alive. 

At the same time, Langley gave me things Williams Lake never could. In classrooms, English carried me through essays and lectures. 

On buses and in markets, Punjabi returned in unexpected ways: overheard conversations, greetings from strangers, phone calls home. 

For the first time, both tongues had a place in my everyday life. And yet the tension never vanished. 

I felt it when I returned to Williams Lake and could not explain why my life no longer matched the rhythms of my childhood friends. 

I felt it in India, where cousins saw me as Canadian no matter how fluent my Punjabi. 

I felt it in Langley too, when classmates bonded over cultural references I didn’t know, or when I struggled to explain to them what it meant to grow up balancing two homes, two sets of expectations, two versions of myself. 

Too Canadian in India. Too Indian in Canada. Too rural for the city. Too restless for the town. 

Always shifting, never still. My identity moved as quickly as my tongue. The fear lingered: I would never find a true homeland. 

For years that fear felt heavy. The confusion was constant. 

I felt like an outsider among Canadians who only knew one homeland, and like a stranger among Indians who also only knew one.

I carried both, and instead of being celebrated for it, I often felt questioned. The comments, the teasing, the constant sense of being slightly out of step wore me down. 

I wanted to belong fully to something, to be understood without needing to explain. 

But I have since realized I am not the only one. There is a whole group of us, children of immigrants, first-generation Canadians, who live in this in-between space. 

Our parents push us to hold onto a culture we never fully lived in, while schools and peers demand that we adapt to a culture our parents never fully understood. 

We switch tongues, switch mannerisms, switch selves, depending on where we stand. We are asked to integrate and to preserve, to blend in and to stand apart, all at the same time. My story is also theirs. 

The Nigerian Canadian student who has never been to Lagos but still eats jollof rice at home. 

The Filipina Canadian whose parents tell her not to forget Tagalog, while her classmates tease her accent. 

The Chinese Canadian who celebrates Lunar New Year with family, then answers “Christmas” when classmates ask about his traditions. 

The Mexican Canadian who dances at quinceañeras with cousins, then explains tacos in the school cafeteria as if they are foreign. 

The Indigenous Canadian who feels the weight of living between ancestral traditions and the pressure to assimilate into a country that was built on their land. 

We are stitched together by this strange and fragile thread: never quite enough for anyone else’s standards, yet carrying more than one homeland inside us. 

For a long time, I thought this made me less. I longed for the simplicity of belonging fully to one place, one culture, one identity. I envied those who never had to explain themselves. 

But I have begun to see it differently. To live with two homelands is not a curse. It is a kind of doubling. 

It has taught me adaptability, empathy and the ability to hold multiple truths at once. It has given me the eyes to see how culture shapes people, and the ears to listen when others share their own struggles of belonging. 

Here at this school, I have come to understand that the longing for a single homeland will never be answered by geography. 

India and Canada, Williams Lake and Langley, Punjabi and English—each is a piece of me, but none is the whole. I have learned that my true homeland is not here at all. It is in Heaven, where every tongue is understood, where every culture belongs and where the divisions that once defined me will finally fall away. 

The in-betweenness that once felt like a burden now feels like a glimpse of something larger, a reminder that I was never meant to be fully at home here. 

I do not stand between two homelands anymore. 

I walk with them both, carrying their tension and their beauty, while keeping my eyes fixed on the homeland that waits above, where all tongues will speak the same language of belonging.