HOME. The word instantly evokes a canvas of memories, emotions and wellbeing. But what is home really? Is it the physical space that the house occupies or more specifically that room that you call yours? Or is it the family members you love and cherish? Or simply the city at large? A nebulous, yet powerful concept, perhaps defining it as challenging as finding that sense of belongingness anywhere else.

As I left my nest recently, it was defining in more than one way. We all leave home for trips, studies or short assignments. But there comes that one departure that is definitive for you know that there is no coming back. The permanence sinks in as you realize that though that room may continue to be yours, your soul will seize to inhabit it. The walls may adorn the paintings and photographs as they do today, but they will merge with the background and fade in your memory. With this bitter-sweet nostalgia one left, expecting to miss home terribly, but excited at the opportunities that lay ahead.

From the spacious room with its queen-size bed and the comfort of home, one found oneself inheriting a pigeon-hole to be shared with a roommate. Never a hosteler, the magnitude of change and adjustment was profound. The struggle outside i.e. work front was less daunting than making the room a space for oneself. How was one to weave the tapestry of home into the barren walls of a hostel room? While my roommate, a veteran hosteler, made her half cozy and warm, I found myself struggling to define myself in the 10 square feet that I could call mine. For her Tibentan flags, colorful trinkets, stuff toys and photos, I thought hard what I could put up that would represent me. My room back home had evolved organically over the years. Here, the shelf was empty. Or was it me; struggling to find her identity in the sea of humanity that I had suddenly found myself drowning in?

As time elapsed, not for a day was my room ‘home’. But to be fair, it did offer a comfort zone where I could let my guard down. So, is half-way home an appropriate term? Only time would tell. The corner bed overlooking the glass panes came to symbolize a sense of security and relaxation. Slowly, over the course of the month, the shelf came to be occupied by a few books, some essentials (primarily cleaning agents) and in a small corner, a religious idol ensconced with incense sticks as offering. Is this what I felt symbolized who I am or were these my instruments of refuge when the world outside seemed to close in on me? Each offered an escape, even if momentary, from reality. As I plan a career that will see me move from place to place, constantly brace uncertainty and perhaps, involuntary solitude, would these be my constant companions? Would I be able to recreate the sense of ‘home’ in a home away from home?

Short of divine reassurance, a month-long travel from the training station i.e. Mussoorie, transformed my outlook of ‘home’. As one faced the drudgery of a vigorous 10-day Himalayan trek, followed immediately by the dispersal to remote rural villages in the plains to finally an exquisite resort-like environment in a newly constructed tourist vicinity, one yearned for that corner-bed by the glass panes. The familiarity of the hostel, the hustle-bustle of campus, the mundane daily meals and the spirited camaraderie came gushing back. Did the hostel room represent the house, the bed my room, and the closed campus my city? Was a place of stay, replete with a social support system, enough to be called a home? It is said that familiarity breeds contempt. But perhaps, when it comes to the idea of home, it is the very definition of convenience and contentment.

But if only defining the idea of home was so easy. Before heading back to the training station, one took the weekend off to visit what one might call the ‘original’ home. As the plane entered the airspace of Delhi, my heart skipped a beat. Was it possible to be in love with a city and yearn for it like it was your betrothed? While the pollution had turned it into a gas chamber, to me it seemed to be fuming at my absence. As I drove past the regular routes, stopped by the local market, reached the house and met everyone who make the city home, the last two months instantaneously faded in the background like a dream. Was I back to square one? Is there only one home for all of us?

Indeed distance makes the heart grow fonder, but it also creates spaces and voids. From small things like missing the height of the steps to remembering the switches to the more important things like knowing what is happening in the lives of your loved ones, you realize that life moves on for everyone. So, while the story of my mess food was not relatable to my audience, I was equally indifferent to the problem of repainting the house or unaware of the tribulations being faced by my childhood friend at work. And strangely, one was more cued into the lives of the new faces one had only recently befriended. Though none of it makes you less at home, you are somewhere divided between two worlds.

So then, what was home now, was it the one in Delhi or the one Mussoorie? Or were they both somewhere in between? Do material things, buildings and people make up the home or is it the basic instinct to survive that creates a network of comfort we call home? I wonder, if I will I be able to create this for myself as I move from house to house, city to city and country to country. How will I shift homes? Or will I be the home? If you still ask me, how to define home, I am at a loss of words. But the feeling is so overpowering that I feel it resides somewhere inside me…