What even is home?
Is it just the place that you go to sleep in every night or where you have your meals? Or is it a person? This is a question that has haunted me time and time again and I think I might have an answer finally, at least one that satisfies me.
We have all heard the saying, ‘A house is not a home.’ However, I finally understood the veracity of this statement when I shifted to a new apartment. As soon as I entered with some of my belongings in hand, I was hit by the smell of fresh paint and wood. Everything felt new and strange, almost as if I had entered a peculiar new land, not just the same flat that I had seen being made over the past few years. When I went to bed that night, my pillows felt different, the mattress not broken into. Everything was different, from the sounds and sights, to the scents and people. It felt too perfect, too staged to be a place I could feel comfortable in. It is when I went down for a walk and was met by the faces of strangers that I wondered if I would ever feel like I belonged here. For a few days, all I could think about was my old home, the place where I had been born, where I had forged my first friendships, where I had learnt to walk.
Over time, as this house started to collect dust and stains, I too became more comfortable sitting with my feet on the coffee table, lost in my books, or running into the house with my feet dirty from the grass in our garden. As the overwhelming smell of paint receded, the house was filled with the familiar scent of my mother’s delicious dal chawal. Slowly, the faces of my neighbors too became familiar to me. Gradually, my house began to become my home.
I am sure everyone reading this has different meanings attached to this simple word ‘home’. To some it may just be the place they live in, or a person that makes them feel like they belong but to me a home is not a physical thing. Instead it is an inexplicable feeling that makes me go warm and fuzzy inside when I hear it. It is a feeling that takes on various forms be it locations, people or traditions. When I think of the word home, I don’t just think of the four-walled structure I reside in but the idea stretches beyond those confines, latching onto my entire complex understanding of it.
I think of a place filled with familiar fragrances, whether of all of my books, the pages of which hold cherished memories and countless smiles or of all the food stalls downstairs when we celebrate festivals in my apartment complex. It is the sounds, whether of my father calling me to get out of my books and come out to relax or of my grandmother listening to bhajans on the television and the traditions, like annual water balloon battles with my friends or the weekly movie nights with my siblings where we spend half of our time arguing over what to watch, these are the things that shape my sense of home. Finally, it is a sense of familiarity, getting to
know a place like the back of your hand and habits that form over time that become a part of the fabric that makes home home.
~ Samaira Vaid XI S
