Honey, I'm home.. or am I?
Girl 1: Lived in the same house in Bangalore for 23 years, might move to another one soon-ish and is in London rn.
Girl 2: Moved from Mumbai to Dubai to Mumbai again to Gurgaon to Bangalore to London and back to Bangalore.
As you can tell, we’ve had wildly contrasting experiences with the word ‘home’. It’s going to be a long one today y’all.
Tango with Darshita
In less than 24 hours I will be on a (long, long) flight back to Bangalore after 6 months of barely surviving/thriving in London. I’m currently plonked on my bed surrounded by should-I-or-shouldn’t-I packing options and these are the thoughts: should I take my memory box back because damn it’s gotten heavy? but like what if I regret it on a sad-ish day? should I send my books back home? hell no this is home, my books should stay where I am. Okay so what should I really take home?? Wait where is home?
Um like Avani mentioned, I lived in the same house in Bangalore for 23 years — no, for real. A few years ago when my family decided to begin the process of moving, I was heartbroken. It was one of the reasons I restarted therapy tbh; I even have a secret tatt to remember my garden by. When I got my dream internship/job in Delhi in 2019 I was terrified because I couldn’t imagine life outside Bangalore - it’s the best city in the world - I would scream.
The same severe attachment prone human has now fully rooted herself in Southeast London. Even though the vacay is barely for 3 weeks, my feet are already colder than impatient Londoners at peak hours. Who will love my plants when I’m away? Am I really going to miss the iconic April heat wave? Will the OG home still feel like home? I think the last one has me most terrified.
Of course life in Bangalore has gone on without me, I’m sure my blue towel is not on the bathroom shelf as it always was - am I ready to confront that reality yet? You know, to be in Indiranagar and not know what the cool, new restaurants are, to have to ask people for recommendations in MY city?! (big big yikes) On the other hand, I’m still getting used to big bad beautiful London, ngl I have to whip out maps ever so often and as much as I want to claim it, the city isn’t fully mine yet.
In fact my lease ends in 4 months and then I’ll be starting all over in a fresh home, a new neighbourhood with a different nice little park. And if I’m being honest, the next few years are plush with change, scarily that excites me in a way it never did before and forces me to ask, is “my home” going to feel different because I am different? And really, is that such a bad thing?
Tango with Avani
I’ve had the same sob story since I was born and no one is more familiar with it than my parents. It centres on why we kept shifting every 2-3 years in my childhood, which in turn meant I had to rebuild my life in a new city, new neighbourhood and new school more times than I can count. The meaning, feel, look and whereabouts of my home has always been a dynamic concept, and continues to be even today despite living in BLR for over 10 years now (minus the 3 years I spent in London).
Yeah yeah, I know the drill. Cue the - Home is not a place, it’s a feeling. A house is only a home because of the people in it. You are your own home.
I’ve heard every possible variation of the above sentiments but I refuse to accept any of it. It’s funny because I used to crave stability, but every time things get stable they also get stagnant really quickly. Uni made it even weirder. Suddenly, I had 2 homes. One was a tiny but wholesome flat in North Acton, London that I shared with the best flatmate ever. And the other in Bangalore where my family continued to stay and where I’d spent the entirety of my adolescence in. Both of these anchored me in different ways, but I always missed one when I was at the other. I love how the sunlight, rare as it was, filled the living room on a warm May afternoon in LDN, and I resented the fact that the same sunlight never drenched our BLR house simply because there’s way too many coconut trees blocking it.
I missed my family so much when living alone, but when I was with them for summer vacations, I craved for the independence I had for the rest of the year. When you have two places to call home, something is always missing since you can’t experience both of them together, like EVER. This used to leave me fragmented, since I’m someone who attaches their identity and sense of self to their home/abode/whatever you want to call it. On the other hand, it also made me feel so lucky and grateful because not everyone can have this sort of a privileged dilemma. Somewhere along the way, I found excitement, longing, happiness and sadness at 2 doorsteps on opposite sides of the globe and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
OOPS we did it again! (Random recommendations to tango with, curated 4U
I had the worst hangover of my life on the weekend and this is what fixed me: a very encouraging friend, four cheese microwave pasta and Purdey’s Rejuvenate.
Forget NYC, London, Milan and Paris and cast your attention to Tokyo Fashion Week which surpasses them all and is so underrated that it hurts. The street-style is just on another level.
Goodbye Teen Vogue weekly horoscopes, hello Pattern. The bestf finally got me on the freakishly accurate astrology app and I hate to admit it, but it’s real as hell.
If trees could speak by Elif Shafak made me emotional in ways I can’t put into words. Hug a tree, please.
My favourite Bollywood couple is pregnant and I’m ecstatic - can you imagine Anand Ahuja as a father? Rhea Kapoor as the aunt?!!
Watch Blair Waldorf aka Leighton Meester as a normal Croatian tourist who gets pinned for her ‘BFF’s’ strange death in A Weekend Away.