Introducing -Spaces called home


The campus diaries never got written till the campus was no longer mine to call home.


Earlier this year, I came to a strange realisation. My parents were moving out of our home in the Holy Family Hospital Campus and moving to their own place in Sarita Vihar. The realisation was – that in the past two years this would be the 6th space that was to become home to me. Six! I heard a friend exclaim when I shared this with her – you must feel quite unsettled all the time. She was only partially right. I was taken by our capacities on owning up to newer places, people and lives. These moves have not been bereft of challenges but it is not the challenge that lingers on in my mind, but the feel of the wall in Pune propped up against which I spent a majority of my time at home; the wooden bench next to the window in Saiha stained with coffee mug rings , the vast terrace in Baroda and Peacocks in Delhi.

My early journal scribbles are dull descriptions of events and people with occasional glimpses of reflections on spaces called home. Strangely in most discussions with Nimesh I found a pattern of referring to myself and changes in me with respect to the city I lived in. This was not merely a point of reference to indicate which year or time slot I was speaking but more about what “me” I was speaking of. The footloose times in Bombay, desperately deranged Chandigarh days, reckless streaks in Delhi, growing up and moving on in Pune, oscillating between content and restlessness with no stops in between – Saiha, and now Hyderabad.
Why then did I not write about the cities I stayed and what they did to me. In Hyderabad its another beginning, another cycle of relating, observing, moving on and along with... I'll probably start writing about home soon to connect to the many mes' i seem to have laid to rest in these spaces.   Maybe begin with the campus diaries.