Home
Dinesh K Kapila
What is Home, People often say I
am going home. It resonates within all of us. Is it the property you own, which
you can sell if required. Is it the place you reside with your family. Where
you centre all your activities, be it cultural, educational, domestic etc.
Or is the meaning much deeper,
somewhere where you find security. Your zone of comfort so to say or security,
where you find comfort in just being you. Or is it the place where you build
memories to last and provide solace and a degree oh happiness in the tough days
or in the times when you cross over to maybe seventy – eighty years or fall ill.
Home is actually within. I could
say that. Many do so. Somewhere deep down it is built, your home, and it stays there, forever. As we grow older,
I find when friends discuss home, I silently assess where are they leading, the
context and the deeper meaning. It can be both fascinating as mostly in essence
it is similar. Somewhere where your parents were around and built a place with
love and affection, which then became your castle and refuge. This then
permeates to the neighbourhood and all that goes with it, the friends, warm hearted laughter and
old shopkeepers who know you from ages. All this sub consciously gets thrown
into the maelstrom within us but then miraculously pops up on some occasions,
be they happy or sad. It connects with mundane
activities such as the baking of a cake on a lovely spring day with the aroma
wafting in the air, the warm happy aroma stays on in the mind after
decades. Or a song sung on a happy
occasion by your mother or a group of close relatives or even a daily chore
which somehow stayed with you. We all carry such memories deep within. I can
still recollect some memories from the bungalows we occupied in cantonments years
ago, moving from pace to place, would they be accurate, I dare say, not surely,
but the mind remembers as though it was yesterday.
At times I discuss home with my
Dad. It is something we at times may talk about. His mind travels far back in
time on some occasions. We hail from a city called Hoshiarpur in Punjab. This
was home for years till Dad retired and settled down at Chandigarh . My
Grandfather built his mansion there. Home as we would say. It still resonates somewhat
for me as my memories are now mainly at Chandigarh but for my father and
logically and obviously the connect is deeper. Once I drove from Jammu to
Chandigarh via Hoshiarpur. A colleague accompanied me. We drove in around
midnight into Hoshiarpur and it was a silent affair as we drove through the
empty roads and streets of the city. I cursorily told my colleague that we
hailed from this city and once had our own home here, before post a dark phase
for our State, we all of the extended family went our ways. Little did the colleague know what was going
on in my mind, as I drove through. The memories were there and they came alive
in my mind again. Happy memories. Of fun and laughter on summer holidays and
then staying tucked in during cold foggy nights in winter breaks, if we had
gone over from wherever Dad was posted. The mind does maybe colour up such
memories in warmer hues, but they are surely comforting.
As we left the city behind and
the tree lined highway opened up, my memories of home were playing in my mind
while my brain focused on the driving. As the trees flashed by with the
headlights lighting up each tree as we drove by, I was thinking it all looked
so familiar. But truthfully, changes were there but the mind remembers only
what it connects with and has stored deep inside. Driving late night as it is
so very strange and different, there is silence, traffic is lighter, you are
enveloped in your own thoughts and each fellow passenger is an island of
thoughts into himself. Then memories well up from within. I was thinking all
this as we sped away.
When I reached Chandigarh, the
next day I told Dad that I drove through Hoshiarpur at night. He was silent,
then asked me about which roads I drove on. Then quietly, if I drove by the
home, I said yes, it has changed, it was dark and I just drove on. He nodded
but left it at that. Who wants the present to intrude on the past on such
occasions. And practically, who knows us
now in any case out there. But the mind has its ways of staying familiar and
rooted in and I understood where my father was at that time even if he just
asked a question or two.
You have to journey within, as
they say to explore life. Similarly, your mind tends to explore within when life
takes you down certain routes. Then Home is where it finds refuge and solace,
if not happiness. The mind remembers Relief, comfort and love simultaneously in
that context and then moves on stronger.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comments
Post a Comment