Home....

'Should be somewhere at home' - Kanishk said this to me last week, when we were discussing the whereabouts of one his tshirts, and I was surprised on hearing that. 'He WAS home', was my first  thought. Thanks to the lockdown, he had been with us for over 2 months - the longest he had been with us continuously without any travel in between. Thanks to boarding school, and then college and post-graduation away from us, and then setting out on his career, he had not lived with us for a long time, though most of his belongings stayed with us.   The 'home' he was referring to was the flat he had rented just 4 months earlier with his friends. Slowly, over the next few weekends, some of his possessions had moved to his new residence, and now it was 'home'!

I thought of my life in contrast - even as a child, I had never had the luxury of a room of my own. I stayed home while completing my studies, and then while I worked. The possibility of moving away from my parents' home was not even an option. I got married a couple of years later and my husband and I moved into a rented flat. It took a long while for me to be able to call it 'home' - not because it was sparsely furnished or because most of my family was elsewhere, but because I didn't feel any attachment to it. I could only remember and miss the familiar furniture, furnishings, kitchenware that I had left behind. Maybe my mother was also startled the first time I spoke about 'home' referring to my marital home!  I cannot recall when it happened, or even whether she even noticed it. 

Kanishk talking about 'home' just felt like someone has snapped the umblical cord, all over again 24 years later. I am glad he is able to make himself at home so quickly, and I want him to be comfortable, happy and 'at home' wherever he is, but I can only fervently hope that he will always consider this place also as his home.