Anu Vaidyanathan | Longing and belonging in Edinburgh

When I was 15, I moved to Chennai to get into IIT. I had been watching too much of Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood’s escapades in Where Eagles Dare prior to my departure from Bangalore, and made a plan involving cloth bandages and a cultural programme at the school to distract the missing guards from my great escape. ‘There was a drunk, rowdy audience member in my show tonight,’ Kelly Coughlin says, ‘and the room was a hundred degrees hot.’ The downside of the weather being dry and warm means most performance spaces seem ill-ventilated. ‘I belong everywhere’ Somewhere in the second week, I plan and produce a short documentary alongside two acts I’ve greatly admired since my Fringe debut in 2022. It doesn’t take more than 24 hours after my stint is over, when, during my way back home, a passenger cuts ahead and, when confronted, lets out a racist chant, ‘Why don’t you go back to your own country.’ I can’t help but think, ‘Because I belong everywhere.