Home

Home.
From the umpteen number of times I've packed and moved, sometimes bundling up friendships and relationships and memories..mostly just clothes and junk and at othertimes, expectations and dreams and even hopes both bright and awry.... I have but one, nay two entries in my journal, both at different points of time, one when I left the City of my education, unfinished..full of hopes and friends whom I considered closer than family and another a year later, when I was leaving the city of my birth when all those previous opinions had been dashed..with a new quiet strength replacing it.. And this is what I'd written...

Interpretations of people and situations change, they bloody as well change for people do change, relationships change and even whole cities change.
Pune is the place I've been calling home now..My grandest love for a City where I continue to have the best memories and the worst screw-ups.. It's still home but what of the one I left behind 2 years ago..so desperately wanting to run away??

By now,as much as I had said that it was never a house or a building that makes a home, but the people in it; I've realized that it's not the people either.
Home is still wherever you go, wherever you choose to lay your head in peace, that place you go to at the end of a day - any day.

But what home really is lies in the sense of belonging and contentment one gets from being in any particular place. Therefore, home is not defined by the person or the place or the situations but the feeling. The feeling of belonging.

This special feeling is so important that it explains why some people still love any weird, hurtful place that brings so much pain, or has people that treat them more like furniture than a human being. It is that sense of belonging, a strong bond maybe even a feeling of kinship with that particular place, of being one with it not just because of growing up there at various times or happy memories but even because of going through painful experiences... It doesn't matter, what happened inside that place you call home, it will be home to you... and it will still feel like home every time you return. Especially the ones that always keep the door open to receive you back despite anything,nothing and everything.

My favorite Metallica song goes..

"Off the beaten path I reign
Rover wanderer
Nomad vagabond
Call me what you will

But Ill take my time anywhere
Im free to speak my mind anywhere
And Ill never mind anywhere
Anywhere I may roam
Where I lay my head is home"

Home is merely the feeling. And I'm so glad I have many such places.

***
my parent's home, city of my birth.
my maternal grandparent's home, city of my birth.
my paternal gramp's house and the temple, place of my childhood.
the 3 farms, here and there.
my apartment, Pune.
The neighborhood Barista, Pune.
my bestesht friend's home,Pune.
The sexy flat, Chennai.
Factory guesthouse, some village.
the solitary beach, anywhere.
and almost just there...my boyfriend's home.
but most definitely, his arms ;)
***