For the longest time, I did not question the answer to where is home? It was always Chennai. Why? Because that's always the place where my parents lived. My parents have moved three times in Chennai, within the same neighbourhood, and it always felt like they were taking little parts of home away every time we shifted. Having grown up in the city and spent 23 years over there, I used to constantly complain about it - it was too small, too unexciting. I itched to move elsewhere and see other parts of the world. Over time, I've gone back to live with my parents after my master, when I was looking for a job and in-between jobs. I would fly home to them regularly and always told myself that home would be wherever my parents were. I enjoyed being with my parents and friends but would soon get bored of Chennai and constantly wait to leave.
Home is arriving at Chennai Central and admiring the building but hating the cacophony in and around it.
A couple of months ago, my parents moved to Bangalore while I was in Korea. It's a short term thing so I didn't think much about it. They took the train to visit me in Chennai when I came back for a couple of days and then left. Soon, they wanted me to go to Bangalore to spend some time with them.
It was there that I realised that I just could not be comfortable in Bangalore. It was all too strange. My parents were there but I was constantly itching to go back home.
It seems that Chennai is my home, whether my parents are in it or not.
It's the place where I was born, where I took my first steps, where I went to school, learnt to make friends and transitioned from child to girl to woman. It's where I learnt to like the books and music I like. Its bars are where I first danced nights away. Its people are the ones who give me the best laughs or the most supporting shoulders to cry on. Its streets are the ones that I can navigate blindfolded. Its seas have watched me build sand castles, given me its shells, provided me with motivation to exercise and sung me to sleep. It's the place that I can now comfortably call home.
Chennai is the home that I didn't get to choose. It is the home that I will go back to when I have nowhere else to go to. I may not like many things about the city. I may complain about it incessantly. But it is my home. And no one else dare say a word against it.
This is a series of articles that explores what is the meaning of home through the experiences of the different cities I've lived in. In a world where travel and moving to different cities for various reasons is the norm, most people have two or more places that they would call home. Read the first part Where is Home? feat. Seoul here. Let me know what about the city you're from makes it a home for you. I'd love to hear.
