Home?

What exactly is home? 

I keep finding myself bumping into this question. It’s a simple question with deep implications and different ones for different people. 

What is home? Is it just the house that provides one shelter? Can it only be the social definition of ‘home’? Do people from the same family, living in the same house always have the same home? 

I sit in my room with the relentless sounds of hoarse drilling, deliberate hammering and constant sawing float around the house, reaching my ears. The day I returned from Sahyadri, I was surprised by how different circumstances were now. I could see the shift in the mood in the two floors and it was almost like I could feel the house echoing with anticipation and eagerness. When I returned I didn’t eat in front of the television like I used to. Instead I sat facing the midnight blue velvet of the bed in my parents’ room, chewing monotonously on rice and rajma. It was weird. 

It felt different. Even as I napped during the day, I couldn’t drown out the boisterous noises that the construction instruments defiantly caused. I was taken aback and ached for my old house, so peaceful with its stillness. I’d noticed the difference in my mother also. Usually, she would make me unpack my belongings the first thing, but this time was different. She was troubled with the incoming workers and had to supervise their non-earnest work, with as earnest a heart as possible. My father, too, seemed just so burdened by the carrying through of this task.

I loved my room, though. It was just what I wanted, with a Bluetooth speaker, a snug wooden table and a majestic bed. One of the walls has a big window that faces a wall that seems outrageously boring at first but when you spend days after days in front of it, it starts telling you stories. Stories buried deep inside, ones that the dirt and unkemptness narrate.

 The wall is wrinkled as if with time and there are quite a few vertical, parallel lines that are probably impressed upon it by dirty rainwater or mud-water that might have managed to seep through. These lines depict the amount of pain the wall has borne, the countless number of times the wall saw invasion or maybe, the number of times the wall willingly gave a haven to helpless refugees. There are some bumps on the surface and coupled with other scratches and craters, the wall is fraught with scars and bruises that refuse to heal or be healed. The wall is beautiful with its blemishes that it has embraced, the stories it has to tell and the broken image that it is willing to broadcast, unbothered by the eyes that stare at it. 

My mother, she is a perfectionist. She shall have something perfect or not have it at all. It is just another trait she has developed thanks to her adamant and determined nature. She wants everything in this new house made as if the reason for its very existence was to be a part of this house’s amenities. The other day, she was arguing with a worker who had apparently polished the tiles earlier. Boy, was it a shocking conversation. 

The worker was filling in some cracks or crevices that the tiles bore with a paste meant for this, and it amused me. Seriously, I thought, I didn’t even realize we had different tiles for the bathroom and the room. But, oh, my mother was enigmatically bothered by the flaws in these and made sure that the worker repaired as many as possible. While I found this affair of repairing and filling in the floor silly, it was a real problem for my mother. 

Days have passed since that first day when I was so very disconcerted by the idea of this new house, but today, there are just so many things I love about it. It’s almost like it keeps surprising my every day with the missing pieces that are still being put in place, and each brings us closer to completing it. This house isn’t the same as the one before, it can’t possibly be and while, I miss some elements from the one before, I shall take in the uniqueness of this one with pride, too. 

And slowly, I have realized what home is. I don’t think it’s merely the place, the building or the amount of time spent there that defines home. It’s the people there, the beliefs, the cultures, the memories, the surroundings and most importantly, the experiences. Not just the ones that are consistent of the house but also the ones that people carry with themselves, the unforgettable experiences. I think that is the most defining character of a house, the irreversible, the past and the expectations. 

This is what truly makes a house, home.