India, April 1 -- Whoever said you couldn't be in two places at the same time was wrong. Immigrants live in exactly that condition, constantly split between two worlds.

There is the host country, where they build their lives and livelihoods, and the home country, where their roots remain. Between the two lies a complicated process of acculturation - part assimilation, part erasure - never entirely complete.

Their identity becomes a shapeshifting, complex mass, shaped by the cultures, regions, and people they encounter. Anything that happens in the home country, from sociopolitical tensions to public health crises, from the governance of a political party to even the threat of war, indirectly affects them. At the same time, developments ...