HOME
I left home when I was 18, after finishing my High School, or Class 12th examination, as it is known in this part of the world. Not a big deal though, considering I was the quintessential small-town teenager then, with just one goal in life — to escape the juggernaut of an industrial city. Adding to that was the societal pressure that if you did not make your way out of the city after finishing school and settled in one of the few colleges within, you are bound to become a thug or a coalfield smuggler. As expected, and just like any other societal norm, it was absolute crap, nevertheless. Long story short, I headed out.
Graduation years were never easy, considering I was from a different board of education, with different lines of thoughts from my batch mates and with different interests in life. It didn’t help that I had no political influence in my upbringing, and it was almost a crime if you did not have a vociferous political opinion in college. Unsure about my allegiance about anything, most declared me as an outsider. Kind of suited me though because I was any ways a fish out of water all the time, saved me from the forced encounters. Probably this was one of the contributing factors when I decided to go to another city for post-graduation.
If you think from a logical person’s perspective, 21 is an important age for an average Indian man. That’s the age you can legally marry, start consuming alcohol (well, in most states!), can openly take calls from the opposite gender in front of your parents (old school much?) and yeah well, that’s all. For me though, I could just freely travel, and I was pretty happy about it. I went to a different state, different culture and different people who were indifferent about my poor knowledge of the native language and literally took my case, left, right and center. I wasn’t much bothered though and soaked up all that came my way.
Two years later was the strangest possible city slash state-change though. I had gone to my brother’s house to celebrate the completion of my formal education. The plan was to take a break for a couple of days and then head home, to ponder about future. Fortunately, or unfortunately, keeping in tandem with my unbounded restlessness, I landed myself with a job within the next 2 days, and I never got back home. Mondays were never the same and I was literally sucked into the corporate responsibilities, often working round the clock on an official and a freelance simultaneously. A few years down the line, and I realized it might as well be a good time to start looking after myself. The terms mental health, depression were still dismissed back those days, so I blamed everything on anger issues.
The next shift was slightly towards the more positive, I daresay. It had its own crests and falls, nevertheless, I still managed to withstand both, though not without taking a fall or two in the process. Didn’t realize when five years had gone by, and bit by bit, with blood and sweat and maybe sometimes tears, things started falling in place or apart, depends on how you see it. Rarely, I still do keep coming back home, as I am now, though the frequencies have decreased drastically. What was once every couple of months, a decade back, has reduced to maybe a couple of days in a year or two. Each time I visit home, I feel less at home. There was a point of time, when I used to be jealous of those friends, colleagues, who got to stay with their folks, or maybe stayed close enough to pay a visit once in a while. I didn’t realize when I stopped complaining that I don’t get to go home often and instead took it as a conscious decision.
Maybe a handful of you, who have had a similar trajectory would understand, but what is home? Is it a bunch of people who gave birth to you and tended to you till you could do things on your own? Or is it the place whose smell reminds you of your earliest memories? It definitely is not the place where whenever you go, the over-friendly aunties would be like, “When did you grow up so much?”
I am happy for the handful of you, who have reached till here, and can call a place, a person, a feeling, Home! A few of us are still on the lookout.
