Stockholm Syndrome

by NINAD JOG

"Are you visiting Norway?" the old man asked me. He and his female companion were sitting across from me on the ferry to Bygdøy, a peninsula across the harbor from downtown Oslo.

I told him I was visiting Oslo for the weekend from Stockholm.

"So you're from Sweden!" he said, in an aaha moment. "You speak good English."

I smiled at him. I didn’t return the compliment because he had a strong accent, and I wasn’t feeling particularly charitable. I told him I lived in the United States, but had gone to Sweden for a few months to work on a software project.

The old man scratched his head. "So you must be a U.S. citizen," he said. I told him I was an Indian citizen, but worked for an American company and lived in the U.S. on a work visa.

The man was flabbergasted. He took a few moments to digest what I told him. Indian information technology professionals whizzing across the globe on work were not quite as common in the mid-1990s as they are now.

I didn't tell him the project I was working on was coordinated by the British branch of the company I worked for, and I had spent almost a month in London before I came to Stockholm as I waited for my Swedish work visa and honed my computer programming skills. It would have looked like I was showing off.

Short of stature, bald of pate, off-white of complexion and wearing Gandhi-style round-rimmed glasses, the man appeared to be in his early sixties. I asked him if he was from the Middle East. He said yes, he and his wife were from Israel. They were taking a tour of Nordic countries.

We made small talk as we admired the ink-blue water, the sunny skies and the unusually warm late summer weather and saw the Oslo Town Hall and the kids skateboarding on the harbor diminish into the distance.

When the ferry docked at Bygdøy Harbor and we lined up to leave, the man placed his hand on my shoulder. "Can I ask you a question?" he said. "Which country do you consider home?"

I was stumped. That question would have been laughably easy to answer if it had been asked a little over five years earlier. Back then, I had never left Indian shores, although everyone else in my family had. While my father had visited several countries on work, my mother, my sister and even my grandmother had visited Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore on vacation.

But I moved to New Delhi after graduating from college, and stayed there for almost a year as I worked my first job at a small software company. I then moved to the United States to pursue a Master’s degree, and started working for a startup software company based in a Northern Virginia suburb of Washington D.C. It was through this company that I had landed in Stockholm.

***

As I rode in my Swedish boss' car on our way back to Stockholm, I reflected on the many changes I had been through during the previous five years. I had known I would visit the U.S. for higher studies, but I had not been so sure that I would enjoy living and working there. I had never even dreamed that I would get a chance to work in Europe as an employee of an American company.

My boss dropped me off at the Svit Hotel in Solna, a suburb of Stockholm where I had been staying. I opened the door to my room and plunked myself on the bed. And that's when it hit me: I was home. A place that I had been thinking of as no more than a way-station felt like home now that I had returned from Oslo. I might as well have told the Israeli tourist that I thought of Sweden as my home country, I mused.

I soon moved into the studio apartment of a co-worker from the client site who had quit her job and left for the U.S. to move in with her American boyfriend. Living in the studio was a welcome change from living in a hotel, although I missed the hotel's breakfast smorgasbord delicacies and the shorter commute.

As summer gave way to autumn and the trees started shedding their green clothing, I began to look forward to the Thanksgiving break. I could have visited India or I could have visited the U.S., since the airfares to both destinations were comparable, and the client was willing to pay either of them. But I chose to visit the U.S., for I missed my friends more than I missed my family.

I was very happy when my plane landed at Washington's Dulles airport. As my housemate Anand whisked me in his car to our Greenbelt apartment, I was sure I had made the right decision. For I had missed the U.S. even though I had been away for just four months. I might as well have told the Israeli tourist that America was my home country, I thought.

***

My roommates had moved to a new apartment during my absence. That wasn't news; in fact I knew where exactly they had moved to, and Anand had been kind enough to move my belongings into my room at the new apartment during my absence.

But I was nonetheless in for a shock. My belongings were still packed in two dozen or so boxes that were stacked in a closet, for I had sublet my room to one of my former roommates who had been planning to move away hadn't found a good place to move to. I didn't have the energy to open the boxes during my brief stay, even though I had labeled them neatly. I decided to let go and live like a visitor.

I caught up with my dozen or so friends during those three days, and visited many of the familiar haunts - Greenbelt Lake, the University of Maryland and Lake Artemisia. Yet my sense of disorientation was acute, for I was a guest in my own home.

***

I felt sad as I left the U.S. to return to Sweden, for the holiday was over, and I was going back to the land of approaching winter and increasingly short days. But much to my surprise, my sadness turned to joy when I opened the door to my apartment in Stockholm. For I felt as if I had returned to the cozy familiarity of home.

I didn't stay on for in Stockholm for much longer though. I had few friends outside of work and it was too cold. The days were short; it would get pitch dark by 2.30 in the afternoon. Food was also a problem, since I ate predominantly Indian vegetarian food and was afraid of trying out other cuisines. And the only gay club that I visited had its doors shuttered, either because it was closed or because it had moved.

While New Delhi had been a place of hate at first sight, I had fallen in love with picture-perfect Stockholm during my first month there. And yet the ends could not have been more different. My hate had turned to love within a year in India's capital, but just the opposite had taken place in Sweden's.

I decided to return to the U.S. around Christmas. The British branch of the company pleaded with me to stay; they offered to double my salary. They also extended my Swedish work visa by another year, certain that I would not turn down the offer of a fatter paycheck.

But I stuck to my guns. For no amount of lucre could have leavened the loneliness that had gripped me in its vice. I felt homesick; homesick for America. Come Christmas, I was back in the U.S.

***

My stay in Sweden did have its share of lighter moments and odd consequences that continued to reverberate well after I left Sweden.

I remember when I stopped over in London on my way back from Sweden, and went to a restaurant in Leicester Square for lunch. "Tack so mycket!" I said to the waitress when she served me my food, as I sat at the table lost in my own thoughts.

The waitress was startled. "Sir, would you like something else?" she asked.

"No thanks," I said. "I meant to say Thank you very much!"

Upon returning to the U.S., I was quick to resume an activity that I missed doing in Sweden: jogging around Greenbelt Lake.

"Are you crazy to go jogging just now?" my other roommate Anurag asked me one Sunday morning. "It's snowing heavily!"

Sure enough it was, and the ground was already covered with two to three inches of snow. But that didn't deter me from jogging along the mile-long trail around the lake. For the snowy cold of Washington D.C. felt warm compared with Stockholm's unforgiving bitter cold. But those days are long gone; I don't think I can go jogging in freezing temperatures anymore.

***

As I look back on my stays in Sweden and in New Delhi, I can see that I lived in three of the world's capitals - New Delhi, Washington D.C. and Stockholm over the course of six years. I also stayed briefly in another - London, and visited yet another - Oslo. Although that's a record that is easily bested every year by tens of thousands of jet-set people, I cannot help but marvel at it, for I have never equaled it since then.

I don't think I will ever regret telling the Israeli tourist what I told him on that bright summer day just off the coast of Norway: that I thought of India as my home country. For I was far more attached to the land of my birth back in those days, even though I had left it for good half a decade earlier.

My stay in Sweden didn't last more than five months, although I talk about it as if I lived there for five years. But having thought of that Scandinavian country as my home on two different occasions, I won't be surprised if I fall prey to the same instinct yet again at some point in the future.

Of all the people who are susceptible to being stricken by the Stockholm Syndrome, I may be a leading candidate.