Where The Habits Have A Habitat

 

How did you celebrate 31^st December? My friend messages me.

I spent it at home. I reply, the words at home evoking a strange nostalgia in me.

I am one of those fortunate souls for whom the word ‘Home’ means several places.

I have had to say goodbye to four homes, and every goodbye hurt differently. But today as I write this from the place that is my current home, I look around and realize that perhaps I am where I am exactly supposed to be.

There are books in every room. Sprawled on the couch, gathering dust on the tv shelf, on chairs that I keep beside my bed, inside my wardrobe, beneath the coffee-table – they are everywhere. And they make my house a home. I spend evenings with the books, lost in the deep recesses of their timeless wisdom. For me, home means sitting on my favorite chair at my usual spot with a book in hand and getting lost in a beautiful and mystical world.

Home is the place where my habits have a habitat.

 

Home has come to mean routines. There is a time for every task, and a task for every particular time. The morning routines of cleaning and moping the entrance of the home and the house itself, preparing tea, listening to devotional songs, drawing kolam outside the house, lighting the lamp in the temple of my home – these everyday tasks have become HOME for me, and I take great comfort in doing these.

Home is not a place. It’s a feeling.

 

Home has come to mean solitude and silence, both which fuel my appetite for reading. The silence of the dawn feels immensely calming and refreshing. I love the first hour of the day. The silence of the afternoon hits differently. It feels like the sigh of the day as it takes a much-needed break before ushering in the evening and finally retiring at night. And the silence of the night? It beckons to rest not just the body but the mind too.

Home is the heart’s resting place.

One of the toughest lessons life has taught me is that the more you resist, the more something will persist and catch up with you. I never imagined leaving my childhood home for good. I remember standing outside my flat one night and gazing around the building and feeling grateful that I live in such a wonderful place. Little did I know then that I would be saying goodbye not only to that home, that building but to the whole city as well!

For someone who used to be addicted to comfort zones and resisted change vehemently, life sure gave a solid blow by making me change not just one but four homes. But it isn’t for nothing that life is considered as the greatest teacher of all times, for it has taught me that the stick that doesn’t bend, breaks, and that wherever I may be, I can sow roots there and be at home, for, Home is where the heart is.