Forget Sonia Gandhi’s upcoming memoir. Belonging is loaded with more baggage than the train taking you home, or where you think home is. Few other words carry such a load: physical, political, social, emotional, and economic. Even grammatical. Adding an “s” at the end turns it into an object. A noun that’s also an apt verb. In myriad places, some person/group is objecting to another’s claim of belonging there. It ranges from road rage to Gaza — and that’s been going on since the Old Testament.

As for the book allegedly nixed by Penguin in India and saved by Harper Collins, raucous objections to its author have been relentless. How dare she claim any ownership rights to Indian polity? So what if her in-laws are an Indian version of political royalty? So what if she’d been the perfect traditional Indian daughter-in-law to the first Mrs G, quite unlike the homegrown younger one? But then, in the wider context too, the paraya dhan daughter could become a pariah even in her marital home (read land in Sonia Gandhi’s case).

Belonging is a shape-shifter. Every club is an exclusion zone — the posher, the greater push-outer. In housing societies, belonging is a durwan........

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