My earliest notions of Indonesia were formed by my grandmother’s stories, which she began to share more and more often after my granddad passed away. With melancholy, she spoke of how she’d visit friends by rickshaw without ever making an appointment because “everyone always had time for each other.” She told me about the gamelan that sounded from the neighbour’s house. She sometimes ate street snacks such as satay, kue lumpur or es sirup, sold by street vendors with wooden carts, their voices echoing through the narrow streets to attract customers. “I could smell the cloves and jasmine before even entering the street,” she said.

I’ve always said I feel at home in India the moment I land. From the start, India—the language, the life—always felt oddly familiar. I thought it was the food, the chaos, the warmth. And maybe it still is. But maybe it’s also because something in me recognises the reverberation of where I come from. When I hear an older woman speak Hindi, even if I don’t understand the words, I melt a little, and I always wondered why. Now I have a theory: it’s because somehow, my grandmother is there, in the tone, in the cadence. India feels familiar because it resonates in me with something deeper, something cellular.

Of course, India isn’t Indonesia, but there are overlaps. Echoes. Shared shapes.

I was supposed to go to Indonesia in 2021. I had my ticket to Jakarta, where I would meet my Aunt Desy and cousin Irma. But Covid hit, and the world—and my trip—was put on hold. I cancelled the ticket and used the money just to survive. Told myself I’d go again soon. But for some unexplainable reason, it never became a priority.

But now, three years later, I’m going.

Not to Jakarta, where my family is, but to Bali, for work. It’s just a week, and Indonesia will be competing with meetings and a big presentation about Indian business culture for my time and energy. And yet…it feels monumental. Like a quiet reunion with ghosts I’ve never met but who have always been with me.

Walking through my family’s past

I’m not sure what to expect. Will the air smell like my grandmother’s clothes? Will the rice taste like her kitchen? Will I recognise the streets even if  I’ve never walked them? I feel a strange ache, not grief exactly, but something neighbouring it. A longing for stories I never heard, for places that held my people before history pushed them away.

I feel pride that I get to go but also sadness because they had to leave. And I am curious about who I’ll become after this trip. But there’s also that quiet fear that returning to a homeland I’ve never known might make me feel even more displaced.

But right now, I am feeling mostly reverence: for what they survived, for what they left behind. for the parts of them that still live in me—in the way I light incense, in the way I give time to people, in the way I cook without measuring, they are there.

I inherited that painting of the Holy Cow from my grandmother, which now hangs on my wall in Amsterdam. I have always associated it with India, but after this week, I might finally be able to associate it with home.