HOME TRUTHS: Nazli

Nazli has travelled from Sri Lanka, to India, to New York and Adelaide, and
now calls a Melbourne filled with children and grandchildren home.

Name Nazli

Age I am in my 70s.

Lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Please finish this sentence: Home is … where my family and loved ones are.

Describe your childhood home 

I grew up in a beautiful home in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. My childhood address was 94 Horton Place, Colombo-7. It was a very large and spacious home with a beautiful garden full of tropical fruit trees, including a large mango tree and a beautiful jackfruit tree. It was a home where my large extended family gathered and spent time together. The house was known for its warm hospitality and any visitor was offered a meal. My father was a successful businessman in the shipping industry. The house still exists in all its glory and is now the residence of the US Ambassador to Sri Lanka. Thinking of where I grew up fills me with warmth and joy.  

Did you ever have to make a home away from home?

As a girl I moved to India for a number of years with my family as my mother and father opened a film studio in Chennai. Chennai is also where I completed my university degree at Madras University. Soon after I married, my husband and I moved to New York City for 2 years whilst he completed his Masters of Law (LLM) at Columbia University and I worked at the United Nations Headquarters kindergarten - it was a very interesting and energising time. I would say that my most significant life move was when I migrated to Australia in 1975 from Sri Lanka with my husband and three young children under 5. It was a challenging move as I left behind family and familiar surroundings, but it was exciting to come to a new country and explore a different culture in Australia. We ended up spending 28 years living in Adelaide, and in the early 2000s we decided to move from Adelaide to Melbourne for family reasons which also meant leaving behind our community of friends who had been a treasured part of our lives for three decades. Now after 17 years in Melbourne we have made many friends here and we have had the delight of being close to our grandchildren.

Where’s home for you? 

Melbourne is now home but with modern technology we are able to stay in close contact with family around the world. Being migrants we have family spread around the world and staying in regular contact maintains that sense of connection which is important to us. In recent years, we have made annual trips to Sri Lanka to attend family weddings which are like reunions for us, and we can take part in the many gatherings that are part of the celebration of getting married in Sri Lanka. 

What does home mean to you?

My home is a place where people are always welcome. We have a large collection of books and enjoy reading. My husband and I also enjoy the garden very much and that gives us a sense of peace.

Do you have any home truths for people dealing with the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic?  

We usually have the family gather at our home for regular dinners and that is where all of seven of my children and my eight grandchildren share time together. We can no longer have these gatherings due to the Covid-19 restrictions. Now when the children visit they visit briefly from the footpath and we talk to them from a distance whilst we stay in the house. We had three wedding invitations in the month of April but they were all postponed. Now it is Ramadan and we would normally go to the mosque and gather for Iftars but the mosques are closed and there are no community functions. We have started to walk daily in Princes Park and Coburg Lake Reserve and we find the fresh air and movement helps us and perhaps we are now exercising more than we did before. We regularly get to see our youngest daughter who lives in the next suburb as she is in isolation also and works from home; she is expecting a baby which gives us something to look forward to. Another of our other daughters lives with us which is helpful. My husband has a nurse visiting our home daily for his diabetes management but we have replaced those visits with tele-health which has been a big difference. We always had friends dropping into our home but now it is not possible but thankfully we have each other.

Interview Maria O’Dwyer Illustration Grace Lee