“Every voyage is a departure and no destination is ever fully home,” this is a quote from Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake . It resonated with me so much that it made me think what “home” meant to me. They say home is where the heart is, and that it need not always be a place or a building even; it can be a person, a feeling, an inanimate object, anything that sparks comfort in you.
But invariably when I hear home, what I think about are the various houses that I have called home over the mere 25 years of my existence. Being a former Air Force brat, I have had quite a few changes in my place of residence during my formative years before settling down in my home State of Kerala.
Starting from the shared accommodation while my dad was posted in West Bengal (being a toddler then, I have no memory of the place, but have only heard stories of it), followed by the Air Force quarters in cities such as Kanpur and Coimbatore, which was always preceded by stay in civilian locations for a few months till the accommodation at the official places came through, to staying in many houses of my relatives and grandparents from both sides during summer vacations, and at a rented apartment in an amazing neighbourhood in Kerala to finish my schooling, I have had quite a ride, so I had believed.
But my future then had much better plans. If the ride till then had been one on bumper cars, what lay ahead was a legit roller coaster one. From hostels in coaching institutes to those in college and a new house in my current city, emotionally they have taken a toll on me like no place has ever before; maybe that is what they call “adulting”, and clearly I have not aced it.
Each time I left a place for another, it was with a heavy heart, wondering if the destination was worth leaving behind. This invariably happened to all the places in the past 25 years, irrespective of my age at the time, though the reason for it was different each time.
We are constantly in search of comfort and peace, we look around for a place or a person for that matter to call home, but I do now realise that the only place one will find that, is within yourself. As long as we are in peace and comfort with our own selves then where we live, how we live, who we live with are matters of little or no concern. But I do also realise that it is easier said than done. Future is unpredictable, and the mere thought makes me restless, in addition to that, to cancel out all the background noise (which is a job well done only by the noise cancelling headphone) and to focus on your inner voice is a mammoth task when you are simultaneously trying to build a career, but to know that my peace and quiet is in my own hands is an empowering thought in itself.
