Mein Hoon Hi Nahin Is Duniya Ki — Wandering Between Worlds

“Main hoon hi nahin is duniya ki.”
This line from a Hindi song has always echoed inside me.

This world is not for me.
I don’t belong here.

That feeling first came to me as a child, sudden and strange, impossible to explain. Even now, it returns sometimes, as if from a place I can’t name. A quiet ache, a tug from somewhere else.

Everything around me feels like a play unfolding, a beautiful, loud, colorful drama. And yet, I watch it from a distance, as though I’m not meant to be part of it.

It’s odd, because my life is full of love and belonging.
I have a wonderful relationship with my parents.
I’m close to my sister, my cousins, my friends. I love and cherish my kids.
I belong to people, to places, to memories.

And still, I don’t belong to anything.
It’s a strange feeling to fit so well and still feel as if you are from another world.

Recently, I watched Constellation, a show about a woman who returns from space only to realize she has slipped into a different version of her life. Everything looks the same — her home, her daughter — and yet something is missing. She aches for the world she can’t return to.

I understood that ache.
Sometimes I wonder if I too belong to another world, a version of life that exists just beyond reach.

And yet, for someone who feels she doesn’t belong here, I was happy, deeply happy, when my mammogram results came back normal. It felt like a great relief, that I still have time in this world, and how much I wanted it.

Maybe that’s the truth.
I may not always feel like I belong to this world,
but this world has embraced me anyway.
And in that embrace, I forget the world I once longed for.