“A house can be a home but a home cannot be just a house”. Many may disagree with this quote which is understandable as the title itself says of the multi-concepts of home and many people may conceptualize a house as a home. It is indeed difficult to give a definite definition as to what we call a home because of its transforming and flexible nature. Many of us must have often heard from others or sometimes even we use this quote “home is not just a place, it is a feeling”, and when we say feelings, it can be anything that makes us feel alive, that brings us to our senses of belonging somewhere or gives us an identity, a space to treasure and cherish our time spent and beyond. So, the idea of home can be confined either to four concrete walls to some or can be beyond any walls to others.
This piece is an attempt to resonate the multi-concepts of home which I have experienced over a period of time. It also tries to explain how the concept of home transforms based on individual experiences.
Being born in a Lepcha family, I was brought up by my maternal grand-parents. Since my parents were from two different States, I had the privilege of living in two different houses but it also put me into a dilemma to consider which one was my actual home, which then, to a naive mind was just a concrete structure. At one point of time, I shifted back permanently to my paternal house and then I started to realize that my home was what I had left behind. Of course, attachment makes us miss people and places but it was more than that. It was a feeling of living in a different but familiar place while your mind is still finding happiness in the memories of time spent in a different place. Then the concept of home was just beautiful memories.
Life continued and it was not as bad as I thought because my beloved ones who were like sisters to me also lived with us. Years passed and then there came a time when we started to move out for higher studies and my aunties got married. Now the same house which had taken the form of home over a period of time, no longer felt like home. It again turned back into concrete walls and even the memories of the home I had in the past had become vague. Then I realized that home is not just a place we live in but also with whom we live, it is also the people we make beautiful memories with. Home is also the people our souls get connected with and without whom there is a void from within.
After living several years at my paternal house, I moved to the urban town for my higher studies and started to live alone. During the initial days, I was engulfed by loneliness because I was living in a stranger’s house with unknown faces around. It was just a small rented room of a house where I spent almost a decade and gradually that small space became a space of comfort, where I could just be with myself. During that phase my previous idea of home was already a distant memory because by then I had realized that home is also a space, no matter how big, small, luxurious or just a modest one but if that is where we find comfort, if that space does not restrict us with any form of norms or obligations, where an individual can just be what he/she is inside out, then that space is home. So, my idea of home during that phase had transformed into that confined space which I considered as my space, my home.
As mentioned earlier, I had shifted my base to town for my higher education which led me to take up new ventures to know more about my community. In the journey of gaining more knowledge on my land and my people, everything around me started feeling like my own. As a Lepcha of this land, it gave me immense delight to finally understand the essence of being in our Lyang or land where we share our deepest bond with the mountains, rivers and forests that still carries our stories with them. At this point the definition of home transformed into a land which gives an identity to the people. A wave of self-realization started to hit me hard because till now my idea of home was based on individual level but as soon as I considered it from a community level, I realized, I had always been at my Lee or home which is not confined to walls but a space beyond boundaries, constituted not just by number of people but by every living and non-living entities around which is connected through souls and memories that has been passed down generationally through different modes like folklores.
Furthermore, when I stepped outside the political boundaries to a different State, the terrain changed and I could no longer see the pointed snowy mountains, the fresh water streams and mighty rivers, all that was around was flat earth which almost made me reconsider the fact that earth is round. The language for communication changed and even the food, not to mention the taste of water as well, all changed and then changed the concept of home. I was so much familiar with my State even though I had lived in a small space, with few known people round and identified as a member of Lepcha community. In a different State, I felt like an alien. Apparently, the concept of home transformed yet again and my identity was no longer just of an individual, or of a member of a community but a resident of a State, my home was my State. The most interesting thing which I experienced after I started travelling outside the State was whenever return back and reach Rangpo the border check-post, I feel like stepping inside my home, even the air feels familiar. Interestingly, when we consider the political boundaries, this idea of home changes when we travel to a different country and then our home transforms into our country and so we are identified by our nationality. Considering this fact, it does make sense why do we call the Earth our home.
Like I said the concept of home keeps transforming, we never know the one that we call home now may turn into a memory and fade away. Sometimes the change that comes along with time may take away or ruin our homes and put our identities at stake, identity which are engraved in everything that we call our home. Sometimes, the space we call home may no longer serve the purpose of livelihood and we move forward to make new homes and sometimes people whom we consider home may leave us behind.
The quest for conceptualizing home is never ending and that is where the essence of home lies which is why there is a saying “home is where your heart is” and our hearts connects to things, people and places which makes us feel at peace and gives comfort or may be more than that which I leave it to the readers to add and would end with the pressing question, What is home for you?
Mongfing Lepcha