On being home - Makaan aur Ghar

Part 1 of a series on home

“Home is not where you are born;
home is where all your attempts to escape cease”

―Naguib Mahfouz

I have been home, in the truest sense of what the word implies, for over a decade now. I have been content exactly where I am, with who I am and in what I feel. Life has been really good. I have been really lucky. But this wasn’t always the case.

I grew up in an abusive house with Maa and Bhai being my only faint window into what a home could perhaps feel like. We lived in a house akin to a palace. We lived miserable, claustrophobic lives. A golden cage. “Ye makaan hai, ghar nahi!”, my mother would often sum up our situation.
(This is a house, not a home!)

Yet, I was clinging to the idea of a physical home where my loved ones — my two human homes, could reside with peace and happiness. One moment of courage and endless resilient negotiations with this patriarchal status-quoist society, and then this finally happened.

I wrote a “Home Sweet Home” with a chalk on a damp wall of our garage like one bedroom house. Finally, we had broken free from that cage like palace. We were home. Life was good. I got lucky.

We spent the next twelve years building our little nest, twig by twig.

It is said that the mother bird teacher her baby bird to fly. Maa says that it was her children who taught her how to fly away from her cage.

Together, we three built our nest on a branch far away from that seemingly fertile land which was rotten with oppression, injustice and pain.

This was not an easy journey. The journey to build a home usually isn’t after all. Sometimes the storms nearly destroyed us. Sometimes the branch was too weak to hold us. But, we survived. Eventually, we could say with pride that we were thriving. The challenges persisted, but so did we.

“You’ve put all that you have and much beyond your means to raise these kids. It doesn’t make any financial sense to overlook investments! And, till when will you go on with this unsustainable life of being a tenant?” or the likes was often the unsolicited advice offered to my mother. Especially from men who never knew what it is like for a woman to uproot her life twice, after marriage and then separation, while raising two children with no support whatsoever in a hostile society. Yet, they were convinced that they could school her on how to navigate the maze of life.

Her classic response continued to be, “Mera ghar mere do bache hai. Aur waise bhi, poot kapoot toh kyu dhan sanchay, poot sapoot toh kyu dhan sanchay?”
(My two children are my home. And after all, if your child turns out to be rotten then what is the point of saving up money? While, if your child turns out to be capable then too what is the point of saving up money?)

And so, no matter the stormy weather or the weak branch, my human home was always steady, holding me in its arms of love.

But, today, many years later, I am about to leave home.

Goals. Education. Growth. Ambition. Independence. Desire. Exposure. Aspiration. Passion. Wealth. Career. So much awaits me on the other side. But I look at what I have here, my beautiful home, and struggle to gather the courage to leave it all behind.

I will soon be on a flight to London to attend college at the world’s best university. But, I will be leaving behind the world’s best home.

I look at my mother and ask, “How will I do this, Maa?” She smiles at me and says, “Baby bird, your limitless skies await you. It is time for you to fly!”

This is the last time that I am home. Until, I begin to discover a new meaning of home. Until, I learn to hold my human homes in a virtual embrace. Until, I cultivate a home inside my being. Until, I perhaps find a home in another human. Until, I hopefully build a home brick by brick.

Maa now holds me and Bhai in her arms and says in a poignant voice, “Ghar toh ban gaya bacho. Chalo ab milkar makaan banate hai!” (The home is built now, kids. Let’s together build a house now)

This personal essay was penned down in catharsis at the creative safe space of

Ochre Sky Stories

by

Natasha Badhwar

and

Raju Tai

:)

This will be followed by part 2 of the series : On leaving home