Home and Away
back then in 2013
home
The sound or image of this word always bring plethora of memories and emotions. I started reading “home and away”, by Sara Ahmed, and just the topic made me to think of what home and being at home meant to me. And how I am thinking about “being at home”, only after leaving home. The absence of a familiar terrain and known faces makes a person close to himself and the the place he calls home. Understanding what “home” means by examining the relationship between migration and identity made sense. The void that migration creates opens a new dimension.
The examples of the nomads and migrants made me think about the meaning of home and what it meant to me. Home may mean different things to people: where one was born, or where one studied/lived, or where one’s family is.
The nomads, I believe have a critical consciousness, which resists them from settling into predefined social modes of thought and behavior. The movement for them is a form of privilege rather than transgression. I think there is an inspiration that may be taken from the nomadic lifestyle. They are on constant move, and choose homelessness considering the world as their home. When we can look beyond the very place we call as our home,and accept the changes that a place, society and culture brings with itself, then we may call ourselves the “citizens of the world”.
Migration creates new identity. When we move to a new place,we start noticing the minute details around us. We feel we are strangers amongst a group of people who belong there. We seek a sense of belonging. We feel we are not at home, inspite of being in one’s home land. We proudly and confidently say, India is my homeland. But do we feel the same when we travel,or when we meet people whom we have never met before.
It’s truly said that “Home is where the heart is”, where there the feeling of restlessness disappears. But when we get too comfortable at a place, then desires start building up. And these desires take us away from that comfortable zone. A sense of loss is felt. An urge to explore and challenge our comfort is developed. And the dislocation begins.
I keep feeling to go back to the place I belong, my home, my room. But home is a place of no return. It is the experience one has lived, moments cherished. One can never go to the same place. Every moment it changes, but the memories remain. Movement away is also movement within the constitution of home as such.
Map of Life
The presentation that Tahireh (the facilitator/artist) showed was so simple, yet so complex. I have never imagined that a persons’s life could be mapped with different drinks and how every drink had a story attached to it. And the fact, that the perfect blend of taste, colour, aroma and ingredients can form an incredible journey of one’s life. The flavours of lemonade reconnected me to my home, the masala shikanji, summers, stories and laughters that I shared. The taste and aroma of lemon triggered a series of memories. Home and the locality where the sense of belonging persists intrudes into the senses. The concept of mapping one’s life is a way to relate with self. It takes you to a journey full of memories. And a better understanding of self is developed.
I miss the feeling of a familiar place. At home, even the mornings were familiar, my father trying hard to wake me, the sound that my mothers’ anklets made. They mean so much now, and their importance is realised only when I get up here, every morning, where the only sound that wakes me is the alarm of my phone. It is so strange that the moments that made me laugh then, make me sad and a loss of belonging is left within.
I came to study here in Bangalore from Jaipur, my hometown. After reading the article “home and away”, the very meaning of what I thought home was to me, is changing. I don’t want to call the place, where I came from, my home. I have felt restless and lost. The line captures what I have felt, “of not being at home in one’s home”. The urge to explore and find an environment where I really belong. May be I will find home somewhere else, or may be I will return back and find the inner peace there itself.
My journey to find the place where I belong, begins..
Rediscovering a sense of place.
Reference: Home and Away, Sara Ahmed