Home

In light of all that has occurred over the last 6 months, I've been grappling with what home is? Where I felt at home? Where would it be now? Where would I feel the same as I had in the house that I had grown up in and lived in for 10 years. Would it be where my parents lived now? would it be the house they left behind, where half of my things are? would it be my hostel (but do hostels ever feel like home?!)

On the topic of home and the feeling of it, the words of Andrew Largeman from the film 'Garden State' would come back to me.

"You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place."

And to some extent I understand this well and agree with. Here he talks of the house he grew up in not feeling at home there, but we left the house I grew up in, it truly doesn't exist in my world any more. I don't understand this need I have to define what home is  but I have it.

The more I think and try to define what home means to me, where it is, the more the silly age old line would pop into my head "home is where the heart is." It just stuck in my head, when I put this line together with everything that has transpired in the last 6 months, there isn't a better explanation. I realise how cheesy this all sounds and I try and cut out the cheesy when I write to you (try!) But I guess that's the reason I haven't written in so long, because my life of late is only that, cheesy and wonderful.
With this realisation that home is truly where your heart is, where you feel so incredibly loved, I could see my life in flashback. When I started college and my parents moved, I was pretty sad (I love my familiar space and familiar people, that's why they call me a cat) But the amount I've been loved and looked after is amazing.

Home is having lunch with G and going every weekend to family, eating dinner together and just spending time together. Home is stealing your brother's t-shirts and playing video games together.
Home is having the entire family together for the first Diwali you thought you'd be alone.
Home is going to a friend's home and leaving tiny presents because you know you won't meet for christmas. It is, watching tv and eating crappy food till 12 with friends and getting scolded by others for being too loud. Home is the time spent alone in my room dancing around.

And for each of these instances it's as though my mind just goes "you're doing okay kid." 

Plant People

Did I ever tell you I love flowers. I've told my sister many times that one of the things I really want to experience is getting flowers from someone, anyone for no reason what so ever. I just want to be given flowers on a random regular day just because.
Have I also told you that I buy myself flowers on days I feel sad or out of sorts? Its a combined effort of my mind and my ipod that gets me to a shop and makes me buy some flowers and spend time putting them in water and making my room so much brighter.

Ever since I was little I remember hearing my mom and my nana (maternal grandpa) talk about different flowers and trees. They way they spoke showed so much knowledge and love for them. Even my sister came to be included in this. It seemed that it was genetic this inherent knowing of plants. In my mind it became their thing, they were my plant people. I wanted to be them so much. I wanted to be good with plants and know them too. Then a couple of years ago I was buying some stationary and was having a generally crappy mesh-into-others kind of days so in the spur of the moment I bought some purple coloured tiny flowers for myself to cheer me up! And then that became my thing. To buy myself some flowers and cheer myself up.

But one of the main reasons I love them in my house or room so much is that it always reminds of my plant people. Whenever I buy some flowers I always think how nana grows these in his garden or how mum would love putting them in one of her lovely vases (which I miss so much!)

Now that Delhi is gearing up for Diwali, I can't help but remember mum, Aman and me going early morning to go buy flowers to do up the house with. This being our first diwali apart, I feel gutted (okay, yes I did use that word because I've always wanted to).
But never mind, I get to go home soon and then I'm going to help mum grow some orchids! And now having read all of this again I guess all that is left for me to do is declare myself as one of the them.... I am now a plant person.