”Home is where the heart is”, explained Pliny the Elder. He was, of course referring to people who have a heart!
For most of us home has taken on a truly significant meaning ever since the sinister virus terrified the whole world. With more and more time spent at home than ever before, we must be grateful for this space that has been a blessed refuge.
“Home is where the heart can laugh without shyness. Home is where the heart’s tears can dry at their own pace,” said Vernon Baker
The connotation can vary for this warm word. A place associated with roots and stability, with love and selflessness, with food and nurturing. We are often told that four walls and a roof can only make a house. A home, on the other hand, is always that place which engulfs you in a soothing cocoon of security. It’s a nest to which you fly back at dusk.
Following my husband on his numerous and varied transfers as an army man, brought home to me the significance of Pliny’s wisdom.No house was too small or too grand to be converted into a home. The remote and quaint cantonments, across the hills and dales of India, afforded ample opportunity to live in cottages and mansions alike. The mud and thatch ‘bashas’ or the huge colonial bungalows with their pillared verandahs, never really mattered. The lines of an old Punjabi folk song ring in my ears as I write
“kuli raah vich paayi assan teri , ve aunda jaanda takda ranvi…..”( I’ve built a hut in your path. Please glance at me as you pass by )
Give me a home
That isn’t mine
Where the drooping flowers
In vases that are not dusted
Don’t cry out for my help
Where I leave the grime and sweat
Of my sagging spirits
out on the door mat
And enter with a flourish
Whistling the tune of my youth
Through carefully pursed-up lips
And crash on the cool floor
Instead of decorously, like the lady
Of the house should – on the plush bedspread
Give me a home where the door doesn’t proclaim my name in artistic italics
As if I made it with my own two baby hands manicured to perfection
Or the neatly clipped hedgerows
Jauntily telling the world that the owner just drove into the long driveway
With elan acquired through centuries of bourgeois behavior
A home where the dog
doesn’t wag his tail in anticipation of the insipid dog food from the box
Let him be like humans and pretend that I don’t even exist
As I pull together the last remnants of dignity that I muster up with Herculean strength
Give me a home where the peeling paint doesn’t need to be given a fresh coat
As I gingerly dab my shiny nose with the branded compact
Let the banisters shake and tremble
In tune to my fearful heart
Let the ancient stairs creak with every broken dream
Let the cantilevers leak each monsoon in dripping oozing tears
That often flood my eyes whenever the pain emerges from the upper layers of my epidermis
Give me a house where your fragrance doesn’t creep in on me unannounced through the curtains in your room
Where no bat or ball or cricket gloves
Shout your name in unison
Where cooking smells don’t nauseate me
For that was your favorite food
Where music from the sensitive speakers doesn’t sing “your song ”
Where the Aashiqui in the lyrics doesn’t
Resound with your dulcet tones
Give me a house that is imaginary
So that I do not ever come home
To the incessant calls
of the Chakor
Waiting for its mate
Where the moonbeams
do not stream in
Through the lacy white curtains
Give me a home
That isn’t mine
As Mirza Ghalib sighed
“Koi Veerani Si Veerani Hai, Dasht Ko Dekh Ke Ghar Yaad Aaya ”
While Dr. Bashir Badr advised,
“Kabhi to Shaam Dhhale apne Ghar gaye hote
Kisi ki aankh mein reh kar sanwar gaye hote “
Well, some folks make do with living only in hearts, don’t they? Who needs a home?
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