I would not suggest that I am a particularly distinctive person when I talk about ‘home’. Many have, before and after me. But it has plagued me for all the years I have known myself. I was born an outsider, in Saudi Arabia. Home, for me, was a temporary idea of a rented house that could be changed; a shelter without any intrinsic value. The first memory I have of India is a faded one, you know how older memories play in your head — half recycled from stories you’ve been told. I was told this was my home; I welcomed it. The other boys wore my skin and spoke my tongue.
Home is where one starts from…
——————————East Coker (Poem by T. S. Eliot)
Years later, the annual vacations to India ceased, as I left Saudi for the last time in 8th grade; and Delhi awaited. Those were my teenage years, when a boy exercises his privilege of the great outdoors. Having lived in three others, Delhi was the first city I understood. Like a videogame, my character would go to newer places and the map would unlock further and further. Some places were frequented, more than others. Some stories were perfected, more than others. Some people were admired, more than others. But it was always Delhi, in the centre of it all — the witness to my becoming.
iske bayen taraf bhi dil hai
iske dayen taraf bhi dil dil hai
ye sheher nahi mehfil hai
It has a heart on its left,
it has a heart on its right,
not just a city, it’s a gathering.
——————————Dilli 6 (Lyrics by Prasoon Joshi)
As I further my agenda of romanticising Delhi as a mehfil (gathering), the ills of the city are not lost on me. But in my little story, the city is my lover and I, its. You see, this city saw me become a man. It saw me love, and —definitely— lose. It gently hugged the dead that I buried in her arms. It witnessed me fight for a cause and get beaten and bloodied on its roads. It taught me the gifts of friendship. It always gave me more than it took.
You remember Shakespeare and the seven stages, right?
I was an infant when I saw Delhi. I was a schoolboy in its streets, with bruised knees and big eyes. I was a lover right here — oh how I was a lover! I was a soldier at the frontlines of a revolution that left scars. Then I tried justice, as I wrote and studied all I could in the old buildings. Does it not deserve then, that I stay my final stages in its lap?
They could not remember when they had left their homes or how long they had been tossed about in the midst of those thundering waters.
“Will we ever go back?”
“Where?”
“Home.”
“Home?”
They were bewildered and anxious once again. Home. The very thought of home threatened to shatter their sanity just as a storm threatens to uproot trees.
—————————— Kashti (Story by Intizar Husain)
Beloved, I promise you a tryst.
I will leave you with a poem; my last poem in Delhi (that I haven’t shown anyone).
the room
i walk around the room as the walls stare at me with undenying horror. wires, plugged out. clothes, emptied. bedsheet, off. my posters don't know what becomes of them. they've been good companions in this life, in this world but i am changing worlds. will there be space for them? will there be space for any—one/thing—?