Home is such a comical concept to me, & the task of defining it one of Herculean proportion. Some days, home is an intricate mental mosaic of all the places I’ve inhabited. Others, it’s a chimera - a ghost that slips through your fingers just when you think you grasped it.
Lately, it feels safest to put its whereabouts somewhere inside of my being. Is it in my belly, my collar bone, my spleen? I do not quite know yet.
Home, is a chain reaction of sensations. Split-second flashes of memory, distorted by the mists of time.
Riding at the front of my mom’s scooter, those dreamy nights at the Golden Temple when we lived in Amritsar. How the lights ricocheted off the water in the reservoir, home of the many koi I used to love feeding kaddah to.
Stargazing on the rooftop, as my daadu would tell me many myths of all the Sikh gurus. Following him through the winding alleys of Jalandhar, morning prayer & the uncontainable anticipation of answering the all-important question - what’s for langar today? God, please let it be elaichi badaam wali kheer.
Playing in the dirt. No regard for curfews. Feeling like supervillains riding scooters in our DIY gangs of adrenaline-spiked misfits. Throwing caution to the wind every opportunity we got.
All the books I made homes out of when my skin refused to hold me. Outside, looking in. Learning to thrive, not just survive, as The Outsider. The Other.
My ride or die. Mera sher, mera cheetah. My Woogle. The one who saved my life, then gave me new life. I wouldn’t know how to define home without the conversations only his ears were privy to.
The chaos that breeds fiercely on the streets of Delhi. Culture shock, followed by a slow maturing. Reality checks & rude awakenings. Nights of debauchery & being the kid my parents warned me about.
The fateful mistake. The infamous brush with the hand of God. The lover I dared to make a home out of, who made a joke out of me.
FaceTime calls with the ones I haven’t held in my arms for outrageously longer than acceptable. The ache of nostalgia throbbing in my chest. Did I just hear a rib crack? How my daadi refuses to end our calls until I give her a smile so big it hurts my face.
So you want to know what home is? Sadly, my answer gets longer with every attempt to articulate it. But not sadly, my definition of home gets bigger with every breath I take.
Perhaps, home is everywhere I go.
Perhaps, it is nowhere at all.
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