The Journey of Home
How I learned to associate home with more than one place and feeling
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What is your home? Or your place? How do you define it?
These are some of the questions to which I didn’t have a concrete answer for a long time. Or rather, I didn’t want to answer or internalize a quick answer.
This might seem idiotic to many people, considering the fact that I grew up and stayed in the same building for like 25 years, before moving to a different city. So the answer is obvious, I could point to this particular building and that will be the home for me.
One of the podcasts that I religiously listen to is The Seen and the Unseen by Amit Varma. In a lot of the episodes, he asks the guest, what is home for them. And a lot of people come up with very poignant answers. While my experience might not be that diverse, and the answer to the question might not be very poignant, but still they make me think about what would be home for me.
The answer to this, I feel, is not that straightforward. While, technically, the building where I grew up or Kolkata (or Howrah), the city in which I grew up, is home for me. But the feeling of “Home” is quite unique, and it is not always reciprocated by mere physical and geographical entities.
Even after living in another building for almost 18 months, in another city, I don’t feel I can call this my Home either. So what is home anyways?
For me, the idea of home is associated with comfort and to some extent familiarity. While coming to Howrah (to the building I grew up) from Kolkata, there can be a route which goes from Red Road - East Bengal Club - Eden Gardens - Howrah Bridge. That route, for some reason, gives me a lot of comfort. I feel like it is home. There are other instances of that, even in another city.
Whenever ‘the uncle’ from the coffee shop smiles and makes the filter coffee the way I like it without even asking, I feel at home. Whenever the corn seller near my place asks me “Why am I late today? It is already so dark”, I feel at home. Whenever I could make the morning coffee before 6 AM and have it while the sun rises, I feel at home. Whenever I catch up with an old school friend over dinner and we talk endlessly about different things, I feel at home.
The building and the city I grew up in will always be home to me. The familiar people and the homecooked meal from the mother will always have some degree of comfort. But there are so many other things and feelings that I have started associating with the idea of “Home”.
Maybe home is not a fixed place or a feeling, but a journey of finding comfort and familiarity in different places and people. As I continue to explore new places and meet new people, I hope to find more homes along the way. What about you? How do you define home for yourself?
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Very nicely written!