It is that dream we are sold since childhood. The home is where we want to return.
But what is home ? A space of security ? A haven of peace ?
When I was a small child I would visit houses of my neighbours, my friends and those friends of my parents. I looked at each household and each would have different aesthetics, layout, arrangements and character. I wondered how each of these homes functioned. As I moved into my teens, I moved beyond the infrastructure and the articles in those houses to sensing the presence of the people in the houses and how they interacted. Too young to understand but old enough to pick up nuances of the dynamics, it either confused me or made we want it.
I remember in my twenties, the dream of home was sold to me. I looked at the advertisements of various homes that made bulk of the Los Angeles Times paper and created those various pictures of my home in my mind. But I could not afford them so I told myself to wait for the time to come.
As I built a family, I could isolate what in a home mattered most. Three things . Kitchen, where the smell of food cooking, the chatter of friends and wild stomping of children merged. Where like a true Bengali, we could sit on the table for hours with food remnants drying on our fingers. Garden, wasn’t particular of the size and location, but a place which allowed for the green world and its flowers to cohabit with me. And the third, the bathroom .. this is where I loved luxury; bright, sunny, spacious, fragrant where I could spend time with myself with or without a glass of wine.
Closing on the third decade of my life, the reality was that I never had a home that I felt was my home .. either physically, emotionally, psychologically or from a sense of belonging. When relationships are fraught with tension and stress, and when coming home from a long day’s work is anxiety inducing, I am facing the question of what is home then? And what is that I long for? The concept of home started wobbling.
Often I would find “home” in the quiet walk at the lakes. Sometimes at the loud gathering at a pub in Chennai. At other times when I was sitting quietly with Kaku on that terrace in Chandannagar. Recently, even when as I relaxed among the green overgrowth near the river Brahmaputra in Chanaka.
I felt strange and I couldn’t explain to anyone .. I had a dwelling to live as any decent human would, but home was nebulous, was invisible, was floating and emerged to me at the strangest moment. Fleeting yet warm. Unclear in shape but holding the space for me.
I realized any home we make, even a true home, it’s a limited and passing reality.
On the 20th July 2026, I chanced upon a saying by a person named Jean-Marc Niquay belonging to the Atikamekw Nehirowisiw tribe at the McCord Stewart Museum and I felt I understood my destiny.
“We were at home everywhere. The forest is our home, our drugstore, our pantry, our school, our church. You could do everything on the territory. That’s why when we moved by canoe, we were never homesick. We were always home !”
When circumstances in life denies a “home” … home is us.
Meandering Dialogues 