I realised today how I have come to reserve my entire life to my bag pack that I carry everyday, everywhere, most of the times. My bag has the ingredients that make my world. It contains my laptop, its related accessories, a little stationery pouch, some note books to write, basic amenities like my medicines, cards, keys, etc. One section of my bag is merely reserved for lunch boxes that my mother prepares for my day. On some days, that section remains empty. The other things I need are stuffed in my pockets - my vollet, kerchief, and mobile. What else do I need over the day? Practically nothing. I can perhaps live by this set of things.
As I come back from work, I recluse into my room. Still in my own virtual world of people and material accessed through my mobile or laptop, I don't feel the need to make any contact to the physical reality of my home. i exhaust myself of this virtual Life and eventually go to sleep. Nothing more. Nothing less. This has been my everyday over the last four years.
The place where I stay - my parent's place - is hardly a true reflection of me - in any way. I store my parapharnelia there - the objects that I have created over my lifetime, and the objects that I have meaningfully collected over the thirty two years of my life. Those remain closed in boxes, baggages or cabinets. They come out when I am digging into memories of my own. My surrounding physical space - my room - is not me. I cannot claim ownership over anything that's built in this house. I don't live by my rules here. These rules are those of my parents. What time to get up, to eat, to behave - literally everything. I am a constructed body in my house. A body that conveniences my parents' existence. I do not write this with any ill feeling. I write this towards the understanding of what we come to be. How we come to become what we do. I write this to suggest that human condition which we perhaps try to escape while still being within it.
And here my wise, bold friends would suggest me to snap out in order to find a space of my own...a space that can become the physical expression of my psychological inner being. And to that, it takes so much mental effort, for I will need to fight the cultural codes that make up the social structure here. I have tried it in the past. It's easy to think of living alone by yourself, however, it lands you then into a strange circle of loneliness...slowly making you into an island. To make one's own microcosm against the expectational environment of those closest to you must require some amount of courage and clarity. I am not sure if I have it yet.
But we all live in these weird in-between environments of the negotiated self. Some of us realize and stay back to observe. Some of us act to experiment, exercise and experience that (desired) change. I meant to also suggest how the mind thinks within certain frameworks in such places like an others' home. A house that you have grown up in but is no longer yours. A house which makes you feel an other even if it accommodated your growing body. A space that changes its meaning with your own inner self realization. A place which tells a story that shall no longer represent that way in which you would want yourself to be identified. A house that no longer reflects the values that you have come to live your own life by. What kind of expressions do these homes become then - discordant, disconnected, strange environments that have mashed up their expressions into diverse ideologies that remain insular to each other. What heterotopias are these?
I am able to write this post from home because I am completely alone today - and I do not have the pressure to behave in any particular way, or abide by a time schedule (even at home). And this is not to say that there's a fixed time schedule to my life. But we all know that domestic life is that of a routine which is set by hundreds of other parameters. In the social context we live in here, it will be the morning chores that have to be attuned to the maids, the sweepers, the news paper wallahs, the hundred incidental things that keep your house going! These are needlessly further entangled into rules that every household sets for itself. And your life ends up getting inscribed in these impositions leaving you with no time to get deeper into your thought pools.
How does home happen? When does it happen? A home will also not happen being alone. And a home with people will always be these negotiations. How does one reconcile? How does one be?
