I am now on the road for more than a year now. That is, I am no more living at my home - my parents' home. Only once before this, was I on the road literally. It was a brief period of four months in one of my employments when I was on a business trip out of town each week. But I didn't realise then what a home means to a human being.
Recently, now that I have completed one year not just outside my home but outside the country itself! In this brief period, I changed my residences three times. I just moved the third time actually. Just the other day, I was walking back from a departmental store towards my new residence - mind you, these are all residences and not homes. I realised how within a matter of week, this place was feeling as warm as a house.
Then I realised how I had felt warm walking back from any place to the small 17 sq.mt. apartment when I first came to this country. In that 17 sq. mt. was a kitchen, a bed and a bath and wardrobe! It was conjusted would be an understatement. Yet, I felt the same warm, apna feeling whenever I approached it at the end of the day.
Same happened with the university dorm that I next lived in. And the same feeling has happened to me when I have reached this new place. Now, these feelings are nothing compared to the feeling I have felt whenever I have returned to my home, my city which is Mumbai. Yet, there is a feeling of belonging to these places of my residence which is unmistakable.
I realised then that you may actually not need a palatial bungalow to feel at home. And then, we are no different from those dogs who are grateful to anyone who feeds them. We are warm towards any such surface which lets us keep our aching backs on at nights. Hence, it is the habit which our backs have developed in them due to the indulgence imbibed into them by our material minds which decides whether we struggle for happiness or are content with where we sleep.It is then no surprise that a labourer living in a hutment at the end of the day is still very happy to be back home to sleep on the hard earth.
Is really the house or the walls of brick we build for ourselves so important when all that our tired backs search for is a surface to lie on for the night? Homes as we can identify are from its residents and not the walls. Then, why do we humans ascribe so much importance to them that we fight with our very own to wrest control of the walls when we should be fighting to keep the flock together! Point to ponder isn't it?
