Sukoon

Home

When you’re used to packing your bags and moving every few years, this word has a transient meaning. You learn to make a home out of wherever you go. A four bedroom bungalow with a garden and a one bed temporary accommodation all feel the same. Because you adapt to both and don’t get too attached to either. Most of all, in your heart you know it’s the people and not four walls that ultimately define the meaning of home.

Cut to this nugget, where my parents dropped anchor 13 years ago. I know the contours of each wall, the crevices and the angle at which the sun hits the rooms every morning. Though I no longer live there, each time I visit, the four walls seem to reach out to say, include us in your definition of home. And then slowly over time I began to realise they are the same walls I carried my whole life in boxes and trunks, that changed colour and dimensions over the years, adapted themselves to fit different geographies but made sure the comfort and love remained intact. And after years of trudging about, one day they decided to anchor themselves in one place, just like their inhabitants.

Home. No longer transient. And today is as much about the walls, as it is about the people enveloped within.