"The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” - Maya Angelou
A Home that never let go of you
There is a beautiful cartoon video in YouTube titled ‘Leaving home’ (by Frame order) which apparently earned 50 + million views. Although you can visually enjoy this video by clicking this link, let me narrate the underlying story of the video for the context of this article.
A seemingly teenage boy in the cartoon is tied to his home. He is reluctant to go out and earn a living. Over-attached to his mother, he is still dependent on her for his daily doings. The father, on the other hand is tough on the son. He wants his son to venture out and explore the world. He pushes his unwilling son out of the house. The mother bids good-bye to her dear son with a heavy heart. The boy begins his journey to a closing door behind. He is soon caught in a cyclone en route which pushes him back to his house. The next day is a rainy day. The strict father still pushes him out again. The boy is now swept by the flood which safely delivers him back to home. The hindered bon voyage resumes the next day and this time it’s the scorching sun that guides him back to home. The trend continues and every time the boy attempts to move out, he somehow finds himself back at the safety of home. In one of the scenes, the house itself follows the boy dutifully and engulfs him back. The frustrated father gives up. On one unfortunate day, the loving mother dies from her chronic illness and the family is shattered. As they recover from the loss, the uncompromising father sends his son out of home once again. The boy ventures out, never to come back this time. The video concludes with the father painfully looking out from the window with a slight expectation that his beloved son would come back!
You could interpret this wonderful video in terms of the importance of mother. i.e., Mother is home and home is mother. Once you lose your mother, you lose your home. However, there appears to be another hidden message in the video relating to the concept of ‘home’ itself.
I am a snail
A snail carries its home (shell) along with it. Humans are alike. we carry our home wherever we go, psychologically, of course. The story in the cartoon above is not fictional. I can very much relate to it from my own life experiences. I have almost always been home sick throughout my life. I refused to stay in hostels during school and college days. I decided to be a day-scholar although my college stayed 45 km from my home. Soon after my graduation, as a perfect plot of the fate, I was posted to a job in Pune, around 1200 km farther away from home. Of course, now I could not commute to work everyday from home unless I owned a private jet. (If I owned a private jet, I wouldn’t need a job anyway!). There was no option for me now. I had to move away from home. It was with great distress that I left home and boarded the train to Pune. It was hell of a journey as I felt like a plant being uprooted from its home soil. However, I must say the opportunity excited me as great as it scared me. New job, new location, new friends, and new possibilities! A new unknown world awaited me and was calling me with open hands. I landed in Pune, found myself a P.G, reported to work, made friends, and quickly adapted to the ambiance and what not. Everything was perfect for a week or so. On one fine evening, Alas, my evil home sickness began to slowly surface grinning at my poor self.
I had a few friends/colleagues who hailed from Mumbai. On Fridays, the job training used to conclude early by 4:00-4:30 pm. My friends used to rush to catch the train/bus to Mumbai as it is only a 3-hour journey from Pune. Seeing this, I used to come back to my PG heavy-hearted. The unbridgeable distance of 1200 km fell on me. I cried and wept all night. The unfamiliar language, food, and culture fanned the fire. I recalled the sweet days where I used to come back home from College on a Friday evening with a pleasant thought of the weekend ahead. Mom’s warm tea refreshed me, while my favourite TV sitcom ‘Small Wonder’ being played on the TV. My family was big, it was a family of seven, my grandparents were alive. We used to have a chatty dinner together, a stomach-filling south Indian dish! Now, I am all alone in a PG in a remote land with a north Indian roommate (he was in his own sweet world) (no WhatsApp, no video calls back then) eating a packed roti and subji with an alien taste and smell! I miss my Gradma’s rice upma badly!
Unable to cope with the stress from being home sick, I began to intensely request for a transfer. I was told by the HR to stay in the current location at least for six months. After six months of endless efforts and follow ups, I was finally transferred to Bangalore, a city relatively much closer to my hometown. I was the happiest person in the world. I can go home every weekend now. As soon I return to work from my hometown on a Monday morning, I remember, I used to feverishly book bus tickets for the next week in KSRTC website. My colleagues would make fun of my home attachment, I never failed to visit home on every weekend, nonetheless.
Let me impress you
Just think how tourist attractions struggle hard to impress people. Waterfalls that fall from impossible heights, Pyramids that aim to touch the sky, Mega marble structures that reflect the soothing moon light, Tall buildings that offer the breathtaking view of the ground below, Statues causing nausea from their heights, Towers that provide a beautiful background for the kissing couple, Walls that travel the entire length of the nation, Temples with unbelievable carvings, Museums that carry millenniums in them, crowded, well-engineered and illuminous cities that stand as a testimony to the human evolution, Busy commercial streets that promise a A frightening safari in the African savannas, Trekking in the rocky mountains where death is nearer to you than your left hand.
Now, think of your home and how it silently and passively impresses you without any of the fancy features above. Your home could just be a smallest dwelling possible, with basic four walls around and a roof above, still nothing beats the warmth and comfort of the home. Home is the ultimate tourist attraction! Have you experienced the restful feeling of being at home in your own bed after a long and tiring tour around the world? Yes, the tourist places are great, but how long can you stay? The crowd suffocates you, the food is repulsive to you, the alien culture scares you, the climate tortures you and what not.
Mother Earth
Let us now think of our ultimate home, the earth. Astronomers say that our planet is orbiting the Sun in a so-called Goldilocks Zone. Not so far away, not so near. Not so cold, not so hot, and just in place to contain liquid water and support life forms. Not only that, but our planet is also luckily far away from violent supernova, has just the correct inclination to support seasons, our gas giant neighbour Jupiter attracts most of the asteroids which would otherwise bombard the earth, A warm blanket called the atmosphere, an additional level of protection from ozone layer and magnetosphere. Earth is immensely rich with all the features to be called a perfect home. I can totally understand the home sick that Armstrong would have felt when looking back at our ultimate home from the lunar surface. This is exactly for this reason that few scientists oppose the idea of sending humans to a far away star, on a non-returning journey, using suspended animation. They may never find a second home like this and will likely die from the home sickness. I think the space effects on the human body such as the weight loss, motion sickness, muscle deterioration, disruption of senses etc are just various manifestations of home sickness. Protest of the mind against leaving the comfort of home.
A sweet prison
Cosmologists say that if you pick up a random spot in the vastness of the universe, there will be a 99.99999999% possibility that the random spot would be an empty space. Rocky planets are so rare. God is a poor construction Engineer for he wasted a lot of free space. Space is vast, immense, and powerful but can it provide the warmth and safety that the walls do? It may sound lovely and poetic when we sing ‘sky is the limit’ ‘sky is the roof’, but in reality, we love the little prisons called home. We are just giant snails that always carry their home on their backs.
Defining home
Ok. It’s almost conclusion time and we realise we haven’t defined ‘home’. What is a home? Is it just four walls and a roof? Imagine all the walls around us turning completely transparent suddenly on a fine morning. You can see through every house in the street, like a perfect transparent glass. There will be no more privacy, no more security. Or imagine you are being filmed 24 x 7, like a Big Boss show. Yea, the 100 days big boss show sounds thrilling but only with the expectation of the participants that one day indeed they can go back home and enjoy the privacy of not getting taped anymore. So, can we define home in terms of privacy or security?
It seems the term home has fuzzy boundaries. Home can mean a location, a feeling of safety, privacy, and security. It can mean a person, a group of persons. It can also mean an experience, a memory, a responsibility, an inexplicable feeling, a dream, or a state of mind.
Bye-bye home!
Yes, East or west home is the best!
Let me conclude the article with yet another beautiful quote of Maya Angelou:
“I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears, and the dragons of home under one's skin, at the extreme corners of one's eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe.”