Feeling At Home...

... and moving around, and the year 2024 has been

The trick is…

One of the very first monologues from the movie The Intern has Robert De Niro (as Benjamin Whittaker) saying, “The trick is to keep moving.” Well, the soon-to-be-last-year made me move around quite a bit. Frequent travels between Mumbai and Chennai during the first half of the year. The relocation to Chennai later. The travel to Delhi, Bangalore, Coimbatore, and most recently to Mumbai. It is not entirely out of the ordinary for the privileged white-collared salary class of which I am a part. However, haven’t we all heard the adage, “It’s not the place, it’s the people”? So many places and people kept reminding me subtly and not so subtly why the idea behind the word ‘Ubuntu’ is a powerful construct.

Oh, the places I did go to!

A famous saying in my mother-tongue that explains the hospitality of the state I come from goes thus: “Irukuravanukku oru veedu. Illaadhavanukku Tamil Nadu”. It roughly translates to “He who has a house has one home. He who doesn’t has the entire Tamil Nadu.” I am sure equivalents to this verse exist in almost all the states in some shape or form. For, I felt like a living example of the ‘he-who-doesn’t’ persona whenever I visited another city.

In Delhi, the two friends I stayed with took painstaking efforts to make sure my stay was as enjoyable as it could get, even though I had gone for other work anyway. In Coimbatore, I was given shelter by the parents of two friends even though the friends themselves were both not in town during the period of my stay. In Bangalore, I stayed for an entire week at a place where I felt more comfortable with the folks there than with my own family. In Mumbai, I stayed at a couple of places with friends, and one of them let me occupy his place for over a week even when he was not in town.

Five years ago - or for that matter, even two years ago - this would not have been a big deal. Life was not as sophisticated, there was less disposable income, and questions about long-term career plans were not lurking around. Gatecrashing, sharing living spaces, and generally being more accommodative were personal norms. They seem like remnants of an era gone by. Now, perhaps due to the inching-closer-to-thirty phenomenon, I prefer staying alone to the extent possible. As a continuation, I doubt if I would ever have let anyone stay at my place for a week without me being around. Admitting it is not the proudest feeling, but it is what it is. Rather, it was what is was. 2024 changed me in more ways than one.

Little to huge acts of kinship kept resonating through the horizon throughout this year. The Gurgaon friend (who has since moved to Bangalore) who took brotherly efforts to keep my Sunday memorable with the Delhi heritage walk and the Andhra meals. The Delhi friend who rushed back from the usually hectic workplace just to not let me feel too lonely, and then almost made a whirlwind last-minute dash to the rather delicious Juggernaut restaurant (the effort was worth it!). The Bangalore friend who made alternative arrangements for my homestay and network connectivity when he and his family had to go out of town for a brief while. The Coimbatore friend who, despite his travel plans, and whose parents, despite their practically not knowing who the f*** I was ever at all, took great care of me (and made me sing, ‘Kanney Kalaimaaney’). Another friend from Coimbatore who is now abroad but to whose parents I strangely am a pseudo-son, despite not having done anything remotely useful to earn such an emotionally intense tag; these folks let me occupy their son’s place as well as fed me such nutritious food that I felt super-energetic and ultra-brisk. The Mumbai friend whose place has become ‘our place’ now with late-night dosas, all-nighter work days, unfiltered conversations, and everything in between. A second friend whose parents and grandparents saw me for a few hours at best but were graciously welcoming of my conversations with them. A third - the dude who let me use his rented apartment when he was not there - whose “All okay?” pings were reminiscent of dad’s daily SMS texts pre-smartphone era when I was still in the beginning phases of my undergrad.

Irrespective of what each of them feels, I found a home in all of these places. A home that was annoyingly loud but visibly cheerful. A home that was calm and cold but cozy and comfortable. A home that, despite its vast expanse, could not match the infinite expanse of love its occupants showered on me. A home that showed the vibrance of proud parents whose son has made it in life. A home that made me understand the power and joy of a happy family. A home that, in spite of being a ‘Bachelor’s den’, twinkled with aesthetics and elegance. A home that felt so close to heart in a short span of time. A home that felt so spiritual and meditative - and full of love and food as well - that a confused agnostic would transition to theism.

And, it opened my eyes to the concept of a ‘place’. I sum it up thus to myself - “A place without an occupant merely exists. A place with an occupant shelters. But a place that can accommodate anyone breathes. And, the place that breathes becomes home.” It is hard to imagine 2024 without the uniquely beautiful places - places that not only breathed but also breathed life into an otherwise suffocating me, places that became home.

They the people!

When mom called me on the second morning of my stay at Coimbatore, our conversation went as follows:

“Whose place are you staying at?”

<I mention the friend’s name>

“Pass the phone to him. I will personally thank him and his family.”

“But he is not here. He went for a trip.”

<Mom goes blank for half-a-minute>

This going-blank-at-a-stretch is mom’s way of screaming “What. The. Fuck.!”

And frankly, until that WTF moment happened, I did not realize the significance of the circumstantial milieu. Our references to places and people are based upon the point of contact we are connected to. Perhaps realizing the depth of these relationships, English language calls these references ‘possessive’. “I am staying at X’s place and am using his room”, “These are X’s parents”. The ‘possessive’ requirement starts and stops with the individual that gets referenced. It takes a leap of faith for X’s parents - as opposed to X - to welcome my presence in “their son’s room”. This is probably why people say love and care cross linguistic barriers? For, nobody - not one of the 10+ people who had no prior reason to welcome me with cheer and joy - cared what the limits of possessive nouns and pronouns are in English! They treated me as if I had belonged there since time immemorial. And, they all surprised me invariably.

A homemaker whose story stands testimony to the power of undying curiosity and unfatigued perseverance. I mean, where do I even start? She had taught herself the early programming languages of the ‘90s, she had found herself suddenly getting attracted to the ‘nuances’ - if any - of astrology and hence without being judgmental or blindly superstitious decided to go all in to find it out for herself. She had taught coding, she had managed a factory-based SME business, she had worked and stopped working all at her own discretion, amidst a not-so-congenial semi-conservative circle.

A bus driver who had never crossed Grade 5 but who could speak on everything from Trade Unions to business concepts, from politics to geography, and of course could rattle off every moment of his visit to his son’s current abode abroad, with specific names of airports, counties, etc. In fact, his energy was so infectious that I found myself zoning out of work just to engage in repeated conversations with him.

Another homemaker who adds degrees to her name via distance learning as effortlessly as reacting with ‘thumbs up’ emojis to a message on a huge WhatsApp group. Her partner who devours books faster than I finish dosas. This couple collectively holds more bibliographic wisdom possibly than those contained in all the books in the District Central Library in my hometown. And, this library is considerably big, by the way, with multiple storeys.

Two of the most charismatic septua-/octogenarians I have had the fortune of meeting and conversing with till date. One of them could re-build miniature models of ships with such scaled-down precisions that engineering grad students studying Strength of Materials would hang their heads in shame.

None of them had an iota of posturing. Not a single one of them felt like the world is indebted to them. All of them felt that they were victorious in their own ways. The ladies, in particular, said, “Considering the circumstances, I have fought my way through to come this far. There is still a lot more to be done. But, I know my accomplishments count for something, and I am happy and satisfied.” The person who read books did not just read them to completion but found good excerpts and explained them to others. The uneducated-in-the-traditional-sense-but-supremely-intelligent person showed me why experience - of having lived longer than I have, if not anything else - matters, and why human life is but an intergenerational work in progress. In these people, I witnessed calm, courage, dedication, and commitment, but also the silent explosion of rage, restlessness, aspirations, and resilience.

Trippin’

On a hypothetical Likert scale measuring weirdness around willingness to travel with ratings that range from “Psychotic level of aversion to travel for no particular reason apart from laziness”, “Belief that travel is a worthy pursuit, not reserved for the clueless”, and “What is the point of travel, anyway?” to “Perception that travel affects momentum around routine and set hobbies in a negative way” and “Hesitation to travel because of the strangeness that newer environments bring”, I would not be able to select a particular option in the spectrum since all of them seem applicable.

Travel has been a sore thumb for a few years now, but this year changed it to an extent. Necessity trumped preferences in 2024, and for the better!

The journeys from/to Chennai, Bangalore, and Coimbatore in Shatabdi Express and Vande Bharat were so refreshing to say the least. Holding the Editorial page of Times of India, looking out the window to see the greenery pass by, smiling gently, and gravitating between temporary doses of slumber and wakefulness, I relished the privileged Boomer persona that was expressing itself out of nowhere. These superfast trains and their seating arrangements also brought back pleasant memories of traveling from Vienna to Augsburg and vice-versa back in 2022 - a crucial period when professional ambitions, academic rigor, and relationship goals all collided, sometimes tenderly but quite often vigorously as well. Buses are useful, and I will never ever undermine the importance of road transportation. I have been a huge beneficiary of all the MTC buses in Chennai, and the SETC, PRTC, and TNSTC buses that run on the ECR route between Chennai and Cuddalore. And, I have taken a special liking for ECR buses; the coastal highways, the motel recess, the almost staple set of Ilaiyaraaja songs the drivers play on loop. Five hours of eternal bliss that other means of transport can hardly offer. But trains are specimens of a special kind, without a doubt. These moving capsules that transport people, goods, and imaginations with sheer pace are marvels unto themselves. Personally, I have confronted a crucial difference: Buses are usually instruments of nostalgia. They bring back the crumbs of time that once was, in association with the place of arrival. On the contrary, trains go one notch above and beyond; in addition to serving as flashback-kindlers, they also provide opportunities to imagine what-if hypotheticals and other imaginative situations, without them becoming an emotional sob story of the long-lost connection with a place or its people. It is no coincidence that the King’s Cross train station - and not a tram stop or a bus station - becomes the iconic setting in the Harry Potter universe, a placeholder for all things fantasy.

Trains - at least these superfast, luxury ones - are also the cradles for the sleep-deprived, the creative potion for the artists, the best percussion backing any musician can get (especially in case requirements for a 4/4 soundtrack exist). I do not know about others, but they made me feel as if I was onboard a time machine that was taking me light years behind or ahead. It is a crime that train travel has become everything from a hassle to an impossibility for several people for reasons ranging from congestion to unaffordability. And, I could not help but thank my birth lottery, for affordability has never been an issue.

The year that was…

In Gurgaon and Mumbai, but also in Bangalore and Coimbatore, people get surprised about why I would not book some affordable AirBnB or a hotel for these temporary stays. The more obvious reason is financial in nature. However, I had easier reasons to avoid or postpone these travel plans. Nobody was going to strangle me had I given justifications - real or manufactured - for not being able to travel.

Over and above all of that, there is a latent desire to find a home - one that exudes joy and peace, one whose occupants are optimistic and upbeat about life, one that blends the emotion of a family with the camaraderie of a friendly coterie, one where spaces translate to life; in short, a place that breathes - other than the ones that I have already found or inhabited. The food that accompanies, the conversations that go on, the laughter that ensues, and the occasional silence that encompasses are all offshoots in the journey of a never-stopping home-seeker. And, 2024 was a year that made me find more than a few homes.

Home and hospitality are also visible markers of goodwill, and for the jerk and sloppy-tempered eccentric I have been, it felt super-sentimental that I have been fortunate to earn the goodwill of these many people. I don’t weep in joy, and the emotion has never occurred to me as one that is meaningful until very recently. The travel expenses were in rupees, but they were reimbursed in a currency whose value far transcends the rupees I expended - the currency of goodwill, the currency of kindness, and the currency of humanness.

I will remember 2024 for a lot of aspects, the most important of them being my engagement. Everything else pales in comparison. However, keeping that aside for a while, 2024 also will be remembered for the rollercoaster it was. In every frustrating period at work, I was bestowed with solidarity and support from friends, colleagues, and teammates. In every place I went to, I found people that were nothing less than welcoming. In every journey I undertook, the more pleasant memories and thoughts overshadowed the not-so-good ones. But more importantly, 2024 taught me that humankind thrives because of acts of care being paid forward or back.