As we discussed in class, Salman Rushdie’s Imaginary Homelands has a lot to do with the past and how it is viewed. Rushdie starts off telling his story and how he moved from India when he was young and although he did not live there for most of his life, he still sees it as home. His early years were chaotic as India and Pakistan separated and he had to leave his childhood home behind. The past becomes a wonderful and mysterious place for him as he remembers parts of it and refers to a few photographs for the rest. However the past did occur in one way and one way only and as Rushdie states later on, there are millions of versions of India and “his” version is only in his mind. When he returns to his childhood home everything he dreamed and imagined is suddenly gone, as he is faced with reality and the “true” version of his past. This does not ruin his memories but the image he had built up in his mind is now replaced by what he has seen. It seems like such a strange experience to go through but at the same time, Rushdie has another home, and although the past is not what he thought it was, I think that gives him inspiration with two different homes and two upbringings to draw from. I found this clip which has Rushdie talking about being a writer from two different areas which was interesting to hear, let me know what you think of it.
I completely agree with what Rushdie says about what home is to people. I believe that one's idea of their own home can be very different from what it is really like if they lived there only during their early life. In our early lives, we do not form a large amount of memories that will last to be remembered when we are older. That is why our homes, if we left them early in our lives, are mostly imaginary. We simply cannot recall what our homes were like in detail, so we are forced to fill in the gaps in our memory with imaginary details. We could just as well never explore our past homes through our minds, leaving them as the small flashes of memory that they really are, but I think we are compelled to explore our homelands and imagine parts of them because we believe they made us who we are today.
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