Tags
Anjali Mariam Paul copyrights, Blog, Bloggers, Chennai, Family, Grandparents, Home, Journal, Life, Love, Madras, memories, nostalgia, Querencia, Small things, The Misguided Wayfarer
It has been a while since I posted because I have been sick and had to head home to be checked up. All is well, apart from the weakness which will soon wear off as the medication’s effects kick in. I am home after nearly a year and the house I left behind isn’t mine anymore. To begin with, there is no room which has all my belongings which I can look at and reminisce about the past, just some trophies and awards gathering dust and cobwebs on top of the pelmet. Soft toys which look like tanned versions of themselves as there is a layer of dirt over them, books hidden away in cupboards so that things which are needed everyday can be at an arm’s reach. The smells are not familiar… nothing is and it bothers me.
I am in all honesty, living out of a suitcase and my present place of stay will also soon be packed up as I am moving out again when I head back. I am a nomad, in all sense of the word and I can’t seem to express how much it bothers me that I don’t have a single place which I can call home.
I was telling a friend how it is nice to have a bed which you can call your own to come back to and he laughed. I don’t know whether he was laughing because he got me or because he thought I was thinking too much about it. Think about it for a second won’t you?! You have no place to go back to where there is familiarity because you’ve either moved around too much or you have siblings who have converted your bedroom into something unrecognizable that you are left stranded in the middle of your house… looking for your home?!
I dumped my stuff there and headed to my granny’s place where I have memories of so many things even though there is nothing here that is mine. Every room holds a memory where I would hide in my grandpa’s closet and steal coins from his coin box… the bathroom I got locked in when I would be naughty… the mirror I would sit in front of and have my grandmother comb my hair… the shelf I would climb to get to the books on the very top… the door which would jam up and leave me locked inside for hours… a house which has nothing of mine but has every single memory of mine entwined and sealed forever. I sleep on the same bed I shared with my grandparents till I was 10… I would sleep in-between them and kick them as I rolled around in bed listening to my grandfather’s snores and granny’s heavy breathing… I wish I could explain the happiness I feel as I make this entry feeling so at home in a house which is not really my own… but still a place that I can call my very own…