Regular listeners to MinCat's babble know that I really do believe that home is where I am. When I was in college I used to confuse people endlessly by saying I'm going home, when I meant I'm going to the hostel. It’s an idea that has always appealed to me anyway, and at that time I was so very far from at home while actually at home.
Hyderabad when I was growing up was not the most varied of places, and it current feeling of cosmopolitanism has a lot to do with the huge numbers of people coming in with the ITES boom. I was a freak child, who spoke, read, thought in, listened to music in and watched movies in English. I asked my parents why they wanted me to do things. I was encouraged to think for myself. I was far from conventionally attractive in my teens, if attractive at all, both inside and out. I didn’t really have any friends! My relationship with my parents was very fraught. Small wonder that any place I felt I had more acceptance was easier to think of as home.
College was a great help, and everywhere I’ve been since, including my return to Hyderabad at the pisspot, I have managed to create a home within myself, where I would retreat whenever I needed. Somewhere in 2009, I acquired the most incredible friends in Hyderabad, and sometimes in 2010, my relationship with my parents reached the wonderful place it is at now. I have an extended family, for want of a better word, of friends who cocoon me in love and hatch outrageous plans to prevent me from leaving the bar, and by extension, the city. Amma puts the a/c on for me, and drives me everywhere. Appa doesn’t say a word about late nights. Every moment of the day was subject to my whims. Suddenly, I have a HOME here.
After my short visit home this weekend, I find myself intensely sad, while of course happy to return to my grownup life. I love my job, and that very fact seems to be keeping my head above water at the moment. Don't get me wrong, I am happy in Delhi, despite how difficult I'm finding it to feel community. I have The Drsgon, but she's leaving soon. Despite all my nesting and friend-making in Delhi, I feel like I am, indeed, leaving home, and going somewhere that is not, in fact, home. I seem to have lost that home inside me, or maybe I’ve just lost the optimism that believed I could always find it there. Perhaps, with all this other family-wanting that’s in my head, I feel that I might actually never have any other home, filled with friends and family, than this one with my parents.
Hyderabad when I was growing up was not the most varied of places, and it current feeling of cosmopolitanism has a lot to do with the huge numbers of people coming in with the ITES boom. I was a freak child, who spoke, read, thought in, listened to music in and watched movies in English. I asked my parents why they wanted me to do things. I was encouraged to think for myself. I was far from conventionally attractive in my teens, if attractive at all, both inside and out. I didn’t really have any friends! My relationship with my parents was very fraught. Small wonder that any place I felt I had more acceptance was easier to think of as home.
College was a great help, and everywhere I’ve been since, including my return to Hyderabad at the pisspot, I have managed to create a home within myself, where I would retreat whenever I needed. Somewhere in 2009, I acquired the most incredible friends in Hyderabad, and sometimes in 2010, my relationship with my parents reached the wonderful place it is at now. I have an extended family, for want of a better word, of friends who cocoon me in love and hatch outrageous plans to prevent me from leaving the bar, and by extension, the city. Amma puts the a/c on for me, and drives me everywhere. Appa doesn’t say a word about late nights. Every moment of the day was subject to my whims. Suddenly, I have a HOME here.
After my short visit home this weekend, I find myself intensely sad, while of course happy to return to my grownup life. I love my job, and that very fact seems to be keeping my head above water at the moment. Don't get me wrong, I am happy in Delhi, despite how difficult I'm finding it to feel community. I have The Drsgon, but she's leaving soon. Despite all my nesting and friend-making in Delhi, I feel like I am, indeed, leaving home, and going somewhere that is not, in fact, home. I seem to have lost that home inside me, or maybe I’ve just lost the optimism that believed I could always find it there. Perhaps, with all this other family-wanting that’s in my head, I feel that I might actually never have any other home, filled with friends and family, than this one with my parents.
It gets harder with age. In college, people are more willing to make new friends. As a young office worker, you stand some chance with people who may also moved cities for the job but by then a lot of people from the city already have their set groups. As you grow older, I think it gets worse. The exception may be cities like HK where the population is v.transient. So even people who have set groups see their groups erode over five-years periods or so... so everyone is on the lookout for new friends. Except couch-potatoes of the me-variety.
ReplyDeleteits horribly archaic, but getting married makes a diff. though it depends on the kind of marriage i guess. sometimes i think the only reason i want to get married is companionship on demand!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI'm with you on this one! I appreciate how you say, "I have managed to create a home within myself." I think I have (almost) managed to do that too. After living in LA for almost 5 years, I'm still trying to feel community. Coming home to my cozy apartment--though I love it--can be overwhelmingly lonely.
ReplyDeleteyeah. i think im also upset cos i have to move in a few months, and i dont have a new roommate, and so on. but i lost the home inside me. i think back to ny and it was not too different but somehow i felt i had a world of possibilities. again again maybe...
ReplyDeleteCompanionship-on-demand is pretty much the raison-d'etre of marriage, otherwise known as "someone to lean on when you grow old" (ugh).
ReplyDeleteyeah. or when youre sick, or tired, or had a shite day at work...im telling you we need to open a cuddle shop!
ReplyDelete