Home.
Its 10 o’ 10 pm and its taken me all of 10 minutes to leave the plane, collect my bags from baggage belt and exit the airport gate. Its hot, uncomfortably hot. How is it so hot at 10.10pm?
I drag my half empty suitcase out the Airport gate and catch an auto. The road is pretty empty and the breeze is comforting. We pass the lane I lived on a few years ago, memories of riding up an down to run errands and meet friends on 5 minutes notice come back. The facade is changing though, more high rises and offices are coming up, but interestingly I don’t see construction dirt dumped on the pavements. What an odd thing to appreciate, but I can’t help it, the last few months iv been annoyed and getting exhausted by the poor infrastructure, dusty air and construction dirt just dumped everywhere in Bangalore.
20 minutes down, I am almost home. Every element on the street is so familiar, I know once I cross the school in exactly how many seconds we will cross the line of trees and exactly when the speed bump is gonna hit and just the degree of discomfort its gonna cause. I know as the road curves in, just when to stick my head out so the guards see my face and wave us through without stopping us to sign the register. I know that the moment we pull up, it will take our fattu indie three seconds to come barrelling out, barking, to inspect whoever has dared to arrive, and then to throw himself at me, delighted, and flinch the instant I try to pat him.
Mama's at the door, excited to see me. She tells Sammy to be quiet, or else Papa will wake up and it will ruin the surprise. Sammy listens, as if he understands. She gives me fifteen pieces of news while I carry my bags up, take off my shoes, and pull a set of night clothes from her cupboard. ‘You must be exhausted’, she says, ‘Sleep in my room, the AC’s working better in there’. I am exhausted. I shower quickly and climb into Mama’s bed, and a calm settles over me that I haven’t felt in a week.
Its strange that tonight I feel at peace. The last 4–5 times iv travelled to Pune, iv taken late night flights. Im always unsettled, for some odd reason and I never get proper sleep. I anticipated tonight to be the same, also why I took the next day off from work. But, I’m feeling calm. My nervous system is feeling calm. A yawn kicks in. I take a deep stretch, triple up the ridiculously thin pillows and close my eyes before any new thought enters my mind.
The next day, between running errands, I took a break and relaxed on my old bed, in my old room…looking at the ceiling details, then at the palm trees creating a perfect shield for my window, and then the cupboard I had specifically designed fourteen years ago, drawing on the walls with a pencil to decide the height of each shelf, drawer and separator. This room saw me through all the ups and downs of my twenties. From figuring out what career to make for myself after my gap year, to a very social period where it became the water cooler for everyone to gather, through heartbreaks, difficult decisions, and eventually deciding on bigger and better things for myself. Every time I visit, I feel like I’m visiting a time capsule. The permanent fixtures are the same, but it’s more of a storeroom now. I don’t mind. It’s good that the space is being used that way. But it no longer feels like mine. Maybe that’s why I struggle sleeping in it.
I opened my phone and sent B a voice note. “What’s home? I’ve been thinking about it. Can multiple places be home?” I love exchanging long voice notes with B. It’s uncanny how different and yet how similar our experiences often are. Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve found ourselves having deep conversations about whatever happens to be occupying our minds, and lately, this question had been occupying mine.
By coincidence, she was in her childhood home in Delhi. She painted such a vivid picture of it that I could almost see it myself. Her mother tending to the garden, caring for the house with thoughtfulness and love. As she talked, I could see the seasons turning in that house, the same rooms across different years holding slightly different versions of the people inside them. I knew exactly what she meant. My house is one city away rather than one country, but the feeling is the same. Every time I go back, something has shifted. The rooms look a little different, the familiar spaces have taken on new roles but the walls sit exactly where they have always been.
As I shared what my room meant to me, I realised that these walls carry memories and emotions. When we return, we can almost feel them. They hold versions of our past selves, reminding us of who we were at different points in our lives. Neither of us are nostalgic in the sense that we wish things would return to how they once were. We were simply noticing and appreciating both the good times and the difficult ones. We understood why we had left and how important it was for us to build lives elsewhere. Yet we also recognised how important it is to return from time to time, to look at these places again with softer eyes and a little more empathy.
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By the end of the conversation, we arrived at a similar conclusion. As tenants, we both know our lives will continue to change and move. Even the homes we have built for ourselves today, thoughtfully and intentionally, filling them with things that bring us warmth and comfort , are unlikely to be permanent. In my case, that means plants, books and little curios collected over the years. And yet, despite all of that, the place where we feel safest being entirely ourselves is with our partners.
Over the next few days, I found myself settling into a familiar rhythm. Long evening walks beneath the green canopy of old trees, long meals with friends and family showing up unannounced. One evening, V and I took our mothers and her daughter out for dinner. Another, I met R’s baby for the first time and spent hours watching her cradle this tiny new person who had already become the centre of their world. Life here in Pune moves at a gentler pace. Each night, I returned home and slept deeply.
It’s Sunday. Papa’s first book is being launched under a beautiful green canopy, and I find myself quietly inspired as I watch it all unfold. There is something incredibly heartwarming about seeing an entire community come together to celebrate two people who have poured so much of themselves into a book. Families, children, grandparents, bird enthusiasts, nature lovers, people of all ages had shown up on a hot Sunday morning to celebrate a book about birds and trees. The entire event felt community-built, supported and celebrated.
What I loved most was seeing our own family show up. Everyone had generously given up their Sunday to be there, to celebrate Papa, to listen, to buy books, to cheer him on. After the event, we all headed back home, escaping the afternoon heat and spreading ourselves across the living room. The conversations drifted effortlessly from one topic to another. At some point we joked about how the family WhatsApp group had somehow become obituary central.
The whole week I had been asking myself what home means. And then on Sunday I watched an entire family spend six hours doing almost nothing together- talking, eating, napping, wandering between rooms, catching up on each other’s lives….somehow that felt like part of the answer.
A few months earlier, in December, I had returned to Bangalore after Christmas in Pune. It had been one of those trips where, by the end, I was completely exhausted. Physically tired, emotionally tired, nursing a cold, a migraine, and very ready to be back in my own space. The flight had been delayed. It was late by the time I finally stepped out of the airport. And yet, the moment the cool Bangalore air hit my face, I let out a sigh of relief. I had completely forgotten about that moment until my cousin reminded me of it this week. I was telling her how calm and at peace I felt in Pune this time around when she laughed and said, “Di, that’s exactly what you said about Bangalore when you landed in December.”And she was right. I had been wondering whether Pune felt like home again. Somewhere along the way, I had forgotten that just a few months ago I had felt the same way arriving in Bangalore.
That evening, at 8 pm, I leave my Pune home, with the person I call home, heading back to Bangalore, where at 1.30 am we open the door to our apartment, do a quick check on all the plants, yay! they are all alive! We leave the suitcases in the living room, grab a bottle of fresh water, wash our faces, change our clothes and jump into bed. Ugh, the mattress is perfectly comfortable, the pillow fits perfectly under our necks, the bedsheet is cool, the breeze coming through the window is just right, and the soft cotton duvet feels wonderful. P puts off the light and holds me tight. I’m home. I am so home.
I think I’ll revisit this question again soon. These are just my initial thoughts, shaped by one week, one trip, and a handful of conversations. Home feels too big a thing to neatly define.
It can be a place, a memory, a person, a feeling. Sometimes all at once.
Somehow both a constant and a changing thing.
