Home..

The lyrics of the John Denver song "Country Roads" are ones I have sung often enough, and when I say "Take me home..." I may not be talking of the Blue Ridge Mountains or West Virginia, but it doesnt change the spirit of the song.

I read somewhere the other day that we can never truly go back 'home' to the place we grew up. Because home is a place in time and space that we left behind when we moved away...and that is a place we can never go back to. We can visit to look at the physical location of the place where we spent some good times but we can never really go back.

It took me some time to figure this out. And so I kept struggling with the thought of going back home. But I have been roaming around places all my life... I have attended 9 schools, been to hostels and met so many people. Some may call my life exciting, and indeed it has been so. But I always longed to go home, wherever I was. When we were in Kuwait, where my father worked, home was India, and visits we made there to meet friends and family. Displaced after the invasion of Kuwait to return to India, home became the friends we had made in Kuwait. Once I went away to boarding school, home was wherever my parents and sister were.

And so home was moments snatched from here and there, a cobbled dream. It was a place where I would not be lonely, or judged- where I could cry and rest and heal. I spent more time longing for home than actually living in one. And when always in that state, as with anything we dream of, we gave the 'home' dream colours that it did not possess.

Time passed, and I grew without realising it. I longed to set down roots. I longed to have a more anchored existence. I got married. Home was such an intense dream even then. And every time there was a dissonance with the picture I had painted, I exploded, imploded and ripped myself apart.

Motherhood became imminent, and I was sentenced to bed rest, courtesy of several complications. Sitting in bed, listening to music, and staring out of the window, I started to feel calmer. When I felt my daughter move within me, and answer me with kicks when I spoke to her, I felt peace. Looking into her tiny, perfect little face, I realised home wasn't a place, it was a person.

Home is where the heart is. And so, home is anywhere you put a piece of yourself, your heart. Home is the fragrance of my sleeping child. Home is the rush of unadulterated joy as she rushes into my arms for a little hug, just like that. She is a part of me, a part of my soul that I set forth into the wind, to set sail and conquer the world.

And when she sails away, what will home be then? A memory? Who knows...I certainly don't. And I don't want to. Home will come to me then. For now, I am there.