An essay exploring the meaning of home, after a life lived on traveling for a while

Some weeks ago in Lisbon, I was asked to fill out a form where I had to write my address. In between countries, as I was then, I asked the receptionist if I had to write my Indian address, my campus address (because of which I was travelling), or the French place where I was living for the past few months. She shrugged nonchalantly and went back to chewing her gum. I scribbled something and returned the form but in that moment I was already thinking about this – about home.

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My life, particularly in the last two years, has been semi-nomadic. I’ve flitted across cities and in the last few months, countries, jumping from hostels to hotels to houses. Such have been the demands of my schedule that I cannot recall staying in a city for more than 3 months at a stretch. Even within cities, I’ve not had the luxury of staying put in one place. Just when I was beginning to feel a sense of ease in a place, I had to pack it all up and move.

When you’re moving about like this, you do begin to question the idea of home. Do the people living with you make a house a home? Does your duration of stay have a role? Does being surrounded by your belongings help? Is having a favourite nook in that space a factor? Or is it entirely internal – whatever brings a sense of comfort and familiarity? It’s not an easy answer.

When I was travelling through Europe, strangers who engaged in a bit of chat would often ask me what I missed about home. I would reply with the most obvious answers – food, and my family and friends. But I suppose it was deeper than that. What I missed was a sense of familiarity. Of being able to step out without needing an automated voice to take me around. Of not having to wait to observe the others to figure out how the transportation worked. Of being surrounded by a language I spoke that would make its way into my ears even when I was not eavesdropping.

But this notion stuck with me. This lens of ‘what do I miss here?’ Back in campus, I missed my family and friends. For the first few days in France, I missed the privacy and space of my hostel room. As I travelled to other places, I eventually started to miss that bed in the rented accommodation in France where I was finally getting uninterrupted sleep. But this sense of missing out was not perpetual. It was a wave that came now and then. At times it engulfed me and I could feel myself going under. Otherwise, it touched me and went away itself.

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What I also noticed was that I was a different person in different places. I was questioning the notion of who I was. The way I am when I am in Delhi changed when I was in campus, by myself. I felt myself changing in Europe when I was bereft of the security and protection that my sheltered campus provided. I had experiences that shaped me in pointed ways in these places and I now wonder if I switch into modes based on where I am.

I now get asked which city/country did I like best, which I feel is a proxy for where I felt most at home. And interestingly enough, I did not go about viewing it through the lens of ‘what did I miss?’ Instead, I was just focussing on what I loved most when I was there. I doubt I have a definitive answer because when I was there, I was viewing these countries through the eyes of a tourist – with wide-eyed wonder, curiosity, and as an outsider peeping in.

Back home, I’ve been surprised when tourists would stop and take pictures of buildings I would never even care to notice but I know now that an unfamiliar place makes you hyperaware of things. Even the most mundane things seem to carry weight. I remember how at 11 in the night, a woman in Budapest walked with us in the opposite direction just to guide us to the metro station. But I unfortunately also remember the times when people clutched their bags a bit tighter and avoided sitting next to me in public transport. Neither would have stuck with me for as long as it did had it happened in my hometown. These instances, sparse as they were, helped me see things with an outsider’s eyes. It didn’t do much to me as a tourist. But for that part in me that wondered if I could hope to make a home there, it definitely shook things around.

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I have a strange way of remembering things. I tend to use music and literature as bookmarks to establish where I am. Memories of cities and things that happened in those cities are earmarked based on what I was hearing or reading at that time. Listening to a song will send me back to what I was doing in that moment just as much as mentioning that place will evoke an urge to revisit the book I was reading then. And believe it or not, there is always something going on in my head. My own background music accompanies me everywhere, so to speak. My mind is a veritable bedlam which barely gets a moment of peace.

After months of travelling, days of exhaustion, and moments of homesickness, imagine my surprise as I stepped into the noxious air of my hometown and then into my home that the tune playing in my head was…nothing! It was an odd silence inside my cranium, one I’m not used to. And perhaps in this confusing absence of noise and activity, in that point in time when I felt a comfortable emptiness, I discarded my checklists, my lenses – that of missing out and that of a tourist, and didn’t need anyone else to confirm to me that I was well and truly, home.