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.

As my mum described it "we're all being all being tossed up in the air at the same time and we have to wait and see where we land"
All of us are changing at the same time. All friends and all family, we've all reached this point in our intertwined lives where we're being forced to become a little bit independent from the other.

I've reached that point in my life, where the decisions made by me will not mean a way of life for my sister or my parents, or the other way around.

We will forever love each other but our lives become our own. I'm learning now of being my own self.
For years we move on this earth, learning and living. There are people who change us, things that make us. There are days spent in laughter and some spent alone on your bed.
There are walks taken under trees. There are hugs and there is music.

We become someone, being in the company and love of all these things and people. And we can choose to spend our days with them but that is an independent choice, made by you alone. Made by your being and your mind alone.

And if you trust in your heart they will move you towards that life. Move you to a life where your being is complete, where your emotions fill you up and you have no regrets, not even by the pain cause by separation.

Filling you in

Hello  all!

Well since the last time we spoke I have officially become a grown up and sometimes I actually feel like one! (rarely though)
Come next week I would have been going to college for a month which is pretty cool. I'm also living in this hostel type place, which I did not like at first but now I kind of like.

You know I really wanted to study history and so far history is not being that nice to me. It's a bit boring and I'm really waiting for the good stuff to start. But you know I'd still rather be doing a bit of boring history than no history.

So basically I just wanted to fill you guys in before I get back to regular posting and seeing as I have done that....bye bye

The Letter That Never Came

I have posted this song before and today I thought I would tell you the story behind it.



I was 10 years old when the film came out. That last scene, where the Baudelaire children receive the long lost letter from their parents, just stayed with me. The words of that letter are some of my favourite ones but it was the music that stayed in my heart. Now since the film came out in 2004 I wasn't so savvy in downloading that song or hearing it online but I would sing it to myself whenever I was alone from the fear that I might forget it.

For years that tune would play so clearly in my head but between these 8 years, time did get the better of my memory so it slowly started to fade. When it started to leave my memory a new song took its place, a very similar tune, but that bond I felt to the older song was so strong that I still needed it, still needed my song.

And even though in the recent years I know my way around the internet I didn't hear the song, until very recently. I was just sitting at my desk checking my email etc and then suddenly out of some distant place in my mind I remembered the song. The tune in my head was all cracked and broken, nothing like what it used to sound. So I quickly opened youtube, plugged my headphones and played it.

I just sat there in awe, it sounded so very beautiful. I felt like I was meeting my younger self, meeting a heart that I had known so well, a heart that is still inside me and was just waiting. I sat there at my desk crying such happy tears which I didn't think I was capable of.
If there was one song in the whole world that I would want to be this would be it. This is my song. It is one of the most important events in my life.

Here are the words that go along with this song, the letter that never came:


'Dearest children - since we've been abroad we have missed you all so much.
Certain events have compelled us to extend our travels. One day, when you're older, you will learn all about the people we have befriended and the dangers we have faced. At times the world can seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe us when we say that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough. And what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may, in fact, be the first steps of a journey. We hope to have you back in our arms soon, darlings, but in case this letter arrives before our return, know that we love you. It fills us with pride to know that no matter what happens in this life, that you three will take care of each other, with kindness and bravery and selflessness, as you always have. And remember one thing, my darlings, and never forget it: that no matter where we are, know that as long as you have each other, you have your family. And you are home.' 







p.s- both the songs mentioned here are composed by the same person, Thomas Newman