Homes...

mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,

be it ever so humble, there's no place like home*

Home.. it's a very emotional word.. almost sacred.. in many ways... I have no home.. not in the physical sense that most people are used to... this is yet the story of my many homes.. the bundle of emotions that come with that and expectations of the future...

may be surrounded by
a million people I
still feel all alone
just wanna go home...**

The home I first remember had bee hives and plastic pools and a vegetable garden, I have vaguememories of picking beans and uprooting radish... The rest fades away in a sense of swirling brown furniture and some white walls... I don't know what became of it.. maybe someday I'll go back to it... 

There was a another home.. it was larger and more airy and I recall harmonium lessons... but that's most of it...

The home I grew up in.. in Jangpura - B is gone.. well it's still there but its been transformed into something ugly and functional... this home... my home went through many physical transformations.. yet it holds the only sense of home for me.. of standing still.. of belonging... I grew up here.. two decades worth of life, school friends and girl friends.. tents and beds, cupboards and wall posters, collages and carpets.. nights spends and days and afternoons, meals and parties.. birthdays and get-togethers.. many years of becoming who I am.. shaped in this abode.. yet.. today it is no more.. it was and will always be only in my mind the way I want it to be.. my home my only real home.. exists now only as a figment of my own mind.. 

After this my life has been a plethora of apartments.. 

Chennai.. three years three apartments.. Wallace Garden, Kilpauk and Harrington Road.. three makeshift lives, in three different stages, no real attachments.. you move from place to place taking with you little symbols of yourself.. books, curios, quilts and other scatterings, trying desperately to personalise an impersonal space.. trying to make it something you can call home.. very personally.. in a strange land.. in a new place.. you struggle to create a space of familiarity.. of comfort.. to come back to..

Bombay.. two years and two apartments.. different stages same building, same job.. you reach the city of dreams.. the one you always were drawn towards.. towards it's soul.. and you create again.. after being uprooted.. a sense of space you can climb into at the end of the evening.. to sink into a large beanbag and smoke a sheehsee and watch tele.. an look around the four walls.. bear now.. company accommodation... where someone else has been and someone else will be.. and while its yours.. you try your best to fortify that sense of mine..

Another aeroplane, another sunny place,
I'm lucky I know
but I wanna go home**

and between Chennai and Bombay... Gurgaon.. a beautiful home.. yet almost a guest house.. no time.. short visits.. by the time the sense of belonging grew it was always time to leave.. year after year time after time.. no time.. a home needs time.. time to belong.. to share.. to experience.. to create memories which you can carry.. on..

Delhi.. home again.. in some ways.. and in many more ways.. back to Nizz and the familiar.. another attempt of transplanting your life form one set of four walls to another and another struggle to adjust... but this time it was different.. human.. there was much more to coming home to this home than ever before.. thank you my hobbit.. for in some ways a real home after so long.. you can try as much as you like to personalise your space with as much of yourself but the only thing that makes it truly personal are the memories and love.. and the memories of love.. and for that.. you need someone.. to share that space with you.. truly.. and that makes it home.. people not just you care about and care for, but those you love, home is about being loved where you are... in some ways...

another year.. more travel, more apartments, Singapore & Ithaca, Nanyang Heights and Maplewood.. smaller rooms, more impersonal this time.. almost transitional almost knowledge that this time don't invest emotionally in this space.. it is transient.. passing..

and into a new tomorrow.. forward always onwards.. to a new home, to create a new home, somewhere else, another little haven a sense of slipping back into the familiar.. into that little comfort zone.. and again with someone.. with love.. with the one i love..

Let me go home
it'll all be alright
I'll be home tonight
I'm coming back home**

so many homes.. and none... homeless almost... but yet hopeful... 

*cf: John Howard Payne, 1823

**cf: Home, Michael Buble

five weeks....

as I sit today five weeks into what will undoubtedly be a career and maybe life defining two semesters at the hotel school at Cornell.. I cannot but help think that this may in fact be worth it.. the costs are staggering.. financial and emotional.. this frantic pace if globetrotting which began in singapore and which will culminate there many months from now... will undoubtedly lead me onto experiences i'd never imagined.. yet the journey may itself be as rewarding as the goal.. as many a wise men have said over the course of the eons..

one so often get caught up in the melle of it all that one forgets to enjoy the little moments of pure joy and sorrow.. what is life if not the justaxpositioning of the two basest of emotions...

swimming in the waterfalls and gorges of the six mile creek by my second day in.. catching my first of many wide mouthed bass.. discovering a discreet little tobacco shop that sells al-faker.. wearing the Cornell Hotel Society pin on your lapel.. driving on the wrong side of the road and realising it was indeed the right side no matter how loudly the decades of conditioning were screaming warning signals inside your head..

day trip to the over rated niagra falls.. discovering the iPhone in it's many incarnate wonders.. endless afternoons at college town bagels.. walking the proud and historically rich halls of the statler filled with a sense of pride and belonging... watching the sunset at nine in the evening and discovering bright sunshine and a pretty drizzle at six... the magical taste of ying ling hitting the palette.. the endless nights spent over excel solver and powerpoint... the thrill of winning and the numbing disappointment of defeat... the casual glances and the occasional unashamed racial slur...

being part of something so grand and so welcoming yet being completely isolated in the vastness of it all... being constantly connected via technology and the realisation of the desperate need to be so...

sitting alone and puffing your very being in clouds of sheesha smoke.. grasping the familiar so tight that it slips away... new accents new people new lives.. same me...

in just five weeks.. and there are another nineteen to come... what will they bring...?