On a hazy winter afternoon not too long ago, I was recollecting memories with a woman who
had travelled to faraway lands but seemingly not far enough. Her experiences were too
similar yet seemed unique enough to suit her. Now, this might seem a disarray of emotions
like the flutter of the wings of a flock of birds, analogous in a contemporary sense. The lady
was one such bird trying to flee the burdens of her soul, yet the flutter of her wings couldn’t
be heard. So, she travelled all over the nooks of Europe, the secrets Asia held and the
liveliness entrapped in North America. On one such inconspicuous occasion, I asked her the
question which had plagued my mind for uncountable years. “Where is your home? Is it the
innumerable hostels you stayed in with friends long forgotten, the luxury hotels with services,
too many to count or is it the house you stayed in for the entirety of your childhood?” Her
answer underscored not only her wisdom but also her overt nature to answer all of my ‘silly’
questions. She replied in a rather modest and non-ostentatious manner which begrudgingly I
understood a few years too late.
“Your observations aren’t wrong, my child and they are perhaps the most socially accepted
ones. Yet my question to you would be, why does home have to be a place? And for that
matter why even a singular person or an experience of bygone times? My home is a
multitude, a myriad of heterogeneous things of everyday life. If I find solace in visiting my
fruit seller every morning for the simple purpose of buying his goods, should I not consider
his stall to be my home? Is it not the only comforting feeling in a generation of rushed
mornings with too many cups of coffee? In this similar context, my friends and my family too
are my home. My dead husband provides me comfort with the knowledge that he loved me to
his last breath, my son and daughter video call me every night to provide some notion of a
family that isn’t broken because of their jobs in opposite sides of the world and my friends
trying their best to live another day of this long, fulfilling life. All of this is my home on a
personal front. Materially, the old age home I stay in is my only comfort on nights too cold
when I am unable to hug my loved ones to sleep. The owner is much like my mother, calming
my nightmares from dares gone wrong while travelling in buses and trains and tucking in the
blanket after I am asleep. Yet the nightmares continue to haunt me long after she’s gone and I
continue to question when these nightmares will end or perhaps my end might be sooner?
However, these nightmares too provide a reassurance about the continuity of life and I wake
each day hoping it will be better than yesterday. All of these thoughts, experiences, people
and places are my home. So, when you say ‘Home Sweet Home’, include all of those
questioning clauses about what, who, where and what not.”
And with the final word penned, I had finished writing the autobiography of my
grandmother. Astonishingly, within a week she had left us forever to a new home(heaven) as
if she was waiting for me to conclude her story with such a conflicting question.
-Ritika Bardia XII-H
