The Home Never Lost

Early winter mornings in Kolkata were very different for me in my childhood. Enjoying the warmth under the quilt would not last long, because I had to attend school at seven in the morning. Coming out of the quilt was like a war won against the cold outside, but what was more important to me was to transform my thoughts into something unknown and untouched. Neither the cold nor the heat in summer stopped me from being the heroine I was in my head. I am still a heroine in my mind today, and I know I will remain the same till my death. During the winter mornings, I used to feel like a woman in a chiffon saree dancing in the snowy mountains like the Bollywood heroines. In summer, I used to lock my mind as the protagonist of my latest read. In spring, romance with an unreal character engaged my head, and when it rained, I knew it was all myself in my character, with no influence of a book or a movie. All of these dramas were witnessed by the home I once had.

I do not remember at what age I started developing my world of fantasy with my celebrity crushes. I used to dance, giggle, sing, talk, and reside with them like no one was watching me. This is because my home used to guard me from the real world. My home was my friend. It decorated and protected the corners where I had my moments. The less-used corner of a room was my place to play a teacher at a school. I had a set of imaginary students sitting in front of me while I taught them, scolded them and rewarded them. The same space sometimes turned into my kitchen to cook with water and talcum powder. The same corner also saw me reading fairy tales. The kitchen wrote a few stories with me when I entered my teenage years. That didn’t last long. While journeying through my adolescence period, I had a window to sit beside in an empty room, with doors closed, and the sky outside staring at me. That room protected my world. It never whispered my secrets to anyone. It embraced me like a pearl inside an oyster shell.  And then that window remained alone when I started college. I had no time to sit beside the window. The less-used corner of another room remained unused forever. 

The home was rented, yet it was my home. I craved it when I began a new life away from my hometown. New job, new friends and a new set-up in a new city never stopped me from longing for my home. I had the chance to run to my home whenever I wanted, till the time my mother was alive. The home was alive with her, and it died the day my mother passed away. Due to some legal reasons, I had to give it away to our landlord, and since then, it has become my heart. With age and time, I have been travelling, meeting people, visiting my city, staying with my friends and extended family, but among all these, I could never run back to my home. I tried many times to let it leave me, but it has clasped me so tightly that I have no strength left to throw it away.

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