in April 2016, i arrived in Germany to pursue a Masters degree at the University of Göttingen. i was working as an au pair in Viscri, Romania, in 2015 when i heard of the public education system in germany. ps: this is not an endorsement! i could study without paying hefty international student fees and, once i had the degree, i would just have to be employed for 2 years before i could get my permanent residency. i was an artist / cultural researcher with a weak passport. And this was the best move possible for me. i didn’t know this back then.

there was a burning desire in me to keep going, farther and farther away from the source of my memories, towards newer ones. but i couldn’t name that momentum or its desire. the pull forward was magnetic, ever so guided. I didn’t know i was looking for home, lest that i was looking for myself, and the inevitable culmination of the two. i was 22 years old with a dream to become a writer. i was determined to exceed life and stroll around Europe, and one day, the world. i gave germany 2 yrs max. it did not seem a thing of permanence. by the time i arrived in göttingen, i’d lived in about 6 cities and 3 countries and i wanted to move around more.

i liked the idea of a rinse, lather, repeat attitude to life. i liked leaving right about the time i was expected to be split open / level up. i did not like it when people got too close. i was afraid to be seen in change, for i loved to change and play. water moves me. i shape shift ever so often, so as my roles/modes wilted away with seasons or loosened their grip on me, the transparent agony of relinquishing one idea of me to adopt another in front of familiar faces pushed me to start afresh. i played many parts, the anonymity decontextualised me into titillating freedoms and narratives. in the empty, in the hidden realm, away from the eyes and moral codes of my caste-endogamous Christian community, i was finally a poet, a writer, with a room of their own.

i didn’t know i was in hiding. and better still, i didn’t know i was on my healing journey already. it was just a break from my reality, a pause. the real life, the other life was simply waiting for me to come back better equipped to it. in 2016, there was still a part of me that believed i’d go back to get betrothed and married off in an arranged marriage to a Christian dude. i was running away from the peer pressure of an arranged marriage. i was afraid of it, of how i was always unable to express my discomfort or assert my body-and-soul autonomy, afraid of my religion and the dictates of community. i was afraid of coercion for i had no idea of a thing called boundaries. personal choice is a privilege. in caste-endogamous commmunities, personal choice is disrespect to the community, bearing consequences for a network of invisible kin. we grew up with the one intent of becoming those Tamil Christian wives… emulating mother Mary, becoming vassals for perfect Christian families. Go forth and procreate. Except my womb was as misplaced as i and we both exuded such pain, as if we’d simply have to expend it all, on the way, in our becoming. i was nowhere close to standing up against the church and our tightly knit community from within. i could tell i was different, i just had to journey to meet another like me. i needed to meet me. so i slid into the liminal with my spectacular ethereal.

i have been a foreigner in germany for a decade. after close to 4 years in göttingen, i moved to Berlin, where i’ve lived for the last 6 years. i met myself in this decade, embraced words like queer, and trans. i collected other labels, many that constrain me, many that wring me out violently. i am still battling with this lonely existence and its nostalgia for the scent of my/a hometown. this life opened a special door for me, and yes, it opened to a microcosm of fresh breath here, in the city of failure and shame… here, i suffocate in other ways, i’ve bargained with other fears, and propel to find balance, equanimity and retribution in choppy waters.

As i attempt to recover myself from a maddening search for safe ground, i see i’ve stopped dancing, somewhere at the fag end of this decade, the fatigue set in. it is terrifying to be a foreigner in 2026 Germany. there is a price, the migrant tax, for all the efforts to stay afloat in alienation, a continuum of abjection and violence, a heart that heaves.

when i tell the story of my decade in germany, i can only tell you, that i am the prince of my story. i came here to heal, and i have. i’d like to tell you this could have happened elsewhere, but no, it only happened here.

in a recent poem, i wrote,

an overnight train crossed several borders in thicket sleep
i’m no foreigner, no immigrant, no trespasser, no coloniser
i woke up one day in my land, i arrive on time.

– burning cycle i, Prairie Schooner