Kristopher
In 2017, out of the blue, a friend asked me if I was interested in a job opportunity in Belfast. Until then, I had lived all my life in Mumbai. In fact, because I love travelling so much, people have asked me if I'd consider moving, and every time I'd just say no (without even considering where the move would be, or why). I just loved Mumbai and the life I was leading there, that much. However, when that opportunity came along, I felt I should try living away from Mumbai at least once - after all, if I didn't like it, I could always move back. My wife Shruti always wanted to experience life outside India as well, and so we decided to give it a try.
Moving to Belfast was easier said than done though. Almost everything that could crop up to make the move difficult, seemed to happen. The job opportunity took much longer than I expected to be finalized. The visa and immigration paperwork took over half a year to come through! Shruti and I had already quit our jobs in anticipation of the move, so we were living off our savings for a few months. And when everything was in place, the friend informed us that he had decided to pursue a job opportunity elsewhere and was leaving Belfast barely a week after our planned arrival!
Despite all obstacles, we packed our lives into 4 suitcases and bid farewell to Mumbai and after almost a whole day of flights, we landed in Belfast. One of our bags didn't make it through, and we were even left stranded on the street outside our AirBNB with the rest of our bags as another guest had locked it and left without returning the key!
Thankfully for us, our luck seemed to turn around after these series of obstacles. I remember those first days in Belfast very clearly. Everything was very different from Mumbai. I was used to a city that never sleeps, with public transport operating almost 24x7, so massive that it took a couple of hours in a train to get from one end to another. Belfast was the exact opposite. I fell in love with the green spaces, the crisp and clean air, and the fact that I could get anywhere in a short bus ride or two. Even the unpredictable weather (all 4 seasons in a day as they call it in Belfast) was endearing in a way. In a couple of weeks, by a stroke of luck, we managed to rent an apartment which was the only one we viewed, and it was actually perfect for us! Once settled in, we had only two problems to deal with - public transport was quite cumbersome to use to get around, and we knew nobody in this city. I solved the first problem by learning to use rental bikes. When it came to getting to know people, it was the opposite - people actually approached me! Within the first two weeks, I was inducted into a small group of friends at work, who I would have lunch with daily - and a few Fridays later, they invited me to hang out with them after work to grab a couple of drinks too! Thankfully, we had arrived in June, and summer gave us plenty of opportunities to explore the city and even some of its surroundings. By the end of that year, I felt like Belfast was a place I could call home. In fact, I was surprised by how quickly we adjusted to life here - during our first holiday, which was a month in Mumbai, I realized I felt as much at home in Belfast as in Mumbai!
After that visit to Mumbai, I decided it was time to embrace life in Belfast. We had already purchased cycles, but we also signed up for free cycling courses to increase our knowledge and safety. I signed up for driving and riding lessons (I was eager to get back on a motorbike, but I thought if that didn't work out I could drive a car instead). We purchased a tent and tried camping. We even did a couple of cycling vacations across the country! In the first year since we arrived in Belfast, we managed to visit Scotland, England and Wales (besides visiting as much of Northern Ireland as we could by public transport and on cycle - neither of which are very easy ways to explore this country!). We found a couple of walking/hiking groups and tagged along with them, and people were surprisingly willing to give us lifts to walks and hikes too when we told them we don't have private transport!
A little over a year after we arrived in Belfast, I asked my parents to come visit us. They had never travelled outside India before. They were as fascinated by this city as we were when we had arrived, and they still have many fond memories of their time spent here. The 3 months they stayed with us was the most time I had spent with my parents in a while. While they were here, I got my motorbike and car license, purchased a motorbike, and even rented a car for a weekend. My parents had never owned a car in Mumbai, and that was their first ever "road trip"!
A few months after my parents left, the pandemic struck. Shruti and I were back to living as if we didn't know anybody - but this time, we were more worried about the situation in Mumbai. We were scared, not for ourselves but for our parents, who besides being far away were also old and vulnerable to COVID - and worst of all, there was nothing we could do to help. We struggled to get through work, our minds back in Mumbai. No amount of phone calls or even video calls can compensate for the feeling that we may never see our dearest ones again. Life in Belfast during the pandemic seemed to be a breeze compared to that in India or indeed most of the world. We couldn't meet people, but could go out and exercise, and at least could say hi to our friends from a distance if we saw them in outdoor spaces. I increased my cycling to compensate for working from home. Our parents on the other hand were completely cooped up indoors. A year later, we were vaccinated well before they had the vaccine available in India. We came to terms with our worries and made the best of our circumstances. And I think it was around this time that I felt that I had to start giving back to the society we found ourselves in within Belfast as well, out of gratitude for how much easier our lives were here compared to back in Mumbai. We also realized that living in Belfast was more than just a temporary phase - it was the place we wanted to call home for the foreseeable future. We decided to buy a house.
As we love hiking, we found the Cave hill area appealing. There was one house for sale we happened to view, and we fell in love with it! We considered other houses, and other parts of Belfast, but no matter which house we viewed, we inevitably compared it to that one. After a few months of house hunting, looking for our perfect "forever home", asking friends for advice and saving every penny we could, we decided to go ahead and buy it. We were very nervous - we had only lived in this country 3 years, and here we were, making the biggest investment of our lives! Though the purchase process had its nervous moments, once we had all our stuff moved over, the joy and excitement was unlike anything we had ever experienced before. This was the first place we could truly call "our" home!
Our first few weeks in this house were chaotic, to say the least - we had very minimal furniture, and other than the kitchen, everything else had to be done up from scratch. My work from home arrangement was using the laptop on a garden chair in the living room! All the chaos indoors was compensated by the joys of the outdoors though. Being able to view cave hill from our bedroom window as soon as we woke up, sitting in our cheerful garden with a cup of tea when the sun was out, and evening walks after work. Every day we spent in this house reassured us we had made the right decision. We thought Belfast city centre was peaceful compared to Mumbai, but our new home took peace and tranquility to an unimagined level! Our neighbours were friendly and welcoming, helping us with things we weren't familiar with. A neighbour even offered us his lawn mower, when he realized our lawn needed attention! Barely a month after we moved, I happened to meet someone from the area who loved hiking up cave hill, and we decided to form a walking club. I have met dozens of lovely people from the area on my walks with the club, and some of them have become close friends - closer than I was even to my neighbours in Mumbai! Besides local walkers, I started volunteering to litter-pick to clean up public spaces in my area, planted over 60 trees, and also received training to lead people on organized walks and cycle rides. A chance conversation with a colleague put me in touch with the sailing community in Belfast, and I managed to embark on my lifelong dream of learning to sail a yacht!
The more I think about it, the more I'm surprised about how well I fit into this society, and how everything seems to be falling into place. I still miss my family and close friends back in Mumbai, and losing my dad to an unexpected illness earlier this year (and being unable to attend the funeral because of travel restrictions) is a reminder of what I have given up to be here, but despite all of that, I still feel that decision to move here was the right one for me, and Belfast is where I now truly belong.
