Home is....

What makes a home?

Is it the place where your home is? As in Mumbai is home for me. No matter what I am doing, if the news report says Mumbai, I rush to hear what it’s about. But I no longer live in Mumbai.

Is it the people you live with, that make your home? So then by that logic, we’ve stayed in some 5 cities in the last 15 months, each should feel like home to us. After all our family was together – and that’s all that should have mattered to get a home-like feeling.

Or is it the things that you have in your home? Your possessions, your belongings. The couch, the dining table, the lamps you fought and bought together. But then aren’t these things materialistic? Couches can break, tables can get old and lamps go out of style – and you get rid of them to get new ones. So, does that mean homes are recyclable? Renewable? Transient?

As I unpacked my belongings, I kept thinking. My table. My lamps. My clothes. Each article has a story. Where we bought it, how we transported it, where we used it, the deal we got on it (how can you forget that ?) Each piece of furniture, each scrap, each itty-bitty thing has a memory attached to it. Memories that we packed away and left in storage for 17 long months while we moved from place to place figuring out where we wanted to be, what we wanted to do.


And then it struck me – memories make up a home.

Memories of the place. The heat or the snow storm. The unusually hot day in Dec – when we took off to Boston Commons and saw the ice rink melt. The cold and windy day, we were to fly to India. The hospital where sonny was born.

Memories of the people you were with. Sonny’s first birthday in Schaumburg, Il. And how we shared his birthday cake with the hotel employees – the only people we knew there. The nurses on duty when sonny was born. The nurse who visited me home to teach me the breast-feeding technique.

Memories of your possessions. The scratch on the table. The stain on the mattress caused as one inexperienced mom tried to change her newborn without using a changing pad.


Yes, I thought – that’s what makes a home. The memories that you knowingly or unknowingly form in each place. With the people you are. With belongings you have.

And I sat down and wept – for each memory. For each place that we’ve left behind. For each belonging that we have re-discovered. For all those people who helped make those memories.

And then got up with a resolve – to create more memories here.
To create a home.



P.S.: The amount of crying I am doing these days – I could give Nirupa Roy a run for her…glycerin bottle :)