MillenniumPost
Opinion

Finding the feeling of 'home'

The festive season makes one yearn for ‘home’ — a city, a country or just people, where you belong

I have just finished watching seven seasons of 'Mad Men'. I know I'm late to the party but that's me. I love watching films and series at my own time. When the iconic Shahrukh Khan-Kajol starrer 'Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge' released in the year 1995, I remember watching it only two years later. The long cinema queues, swooning fans, and imitation of the actors' fashion style, put me off. When I did watch the film, I quite enjoyed it but I did it at my own pace. Same reason why I have just started watching 'Breaking Bad' and finished off 'Mad Men'. Anyway, I loved the latter primarily because of the valuable lessons of advertising and brand-building that one can cull from it. Building reputations, image, perception, goodwill…intrigues me, and formed the genesis of my humble media startups.

Today's creative content is exhilarating. It's not just advertisements, these campaigns (mostly digital) have compelling stories, valuable lessons, and many are tear-jerkers. What a wonderful way to tell stories while also speak about your brand! One such recent campaign pegged around Durga Puja beckoned the daughters of Bengal to come home. Its emotional tagline, "Ma aschen, tumi kothay?" (Goddess Durga is coming home, where are you?) tugged at heartstrings.

'Home', by definition, means a place where one lives permanently especially with family. While this definition points to a concrete structure (more 'house' than 'home'), the larger meaning is basically a place where one belongs. It could be a locality, city or country; home can most definitely also mean 'people'. Some people are lucky or limited in their experience (there are always different ways of viewing things). Lucky because they may have lived, worked, and eventually died in the same place/home. One could say that they are limited in their experience because while enjoying the familiarity of home, they may have lost out on the opportunity to travel, live in alien places, and make a home away from home, with people who are 'friends like family'.

The joy of finding a bit of yourself in places that you don't belong is unexplainable. I haven't lived in too many places but it's happened to me. This sudden happenstance occurs when you least expected it. The serene paths of the Jahanpanah City Forest in Delhi that made me want to belong. The coffee-seller 'anna' in Chennai whose daily smile while he handed over paper cups of coffee with a slice of plain cake, made my breakfast and my day. A nook, a dish of food, or people that felt like 'home'.

Then there are some who pine for a place to call 'home'. People displaced by war and strife, forced to leave their lands, and unable to ever find their way back, speak of a deep-seated sorrow that's impossible to outgrow. While many of us weave wonderful memories as migrants in foreign lands, most of us still call our place of childhood 'home'. In conversations, people often ask, "So, where are you originally from?" Some of my Kashmiri Pandit friends rue the fateful days when they were forced to leave the Valley, many have never returned. They say they can never truly have a 'home' since the one that they knew they can never return to. Two wrongs don't make a right — what happened in the late '80s was wrong, the silence enforced on the Valley and its people now, is unacceptable as well.

The run-up to Durga Puja always makes me think of 'home'. This year, it's been quite interesting for me. First, I was in one of my favourite cities, Mumbai, a city I have always felt at home in but never lived for long periods of time. And then there's my 'karm bhumi' as I like to call it, Delhi. But it's only when I came back to the city of my childhood, Kolkata, do I truly feel like I'm 'home'. The sweet smell of 'shiuli' flowers, the invigorating beat of the 'dhaak', the azure skies, and the beautiful Goddess adorning every street in Kolkata, my mother and my family, signal 'home' for me. 'Home is where the heart is' and I hope that this festive season, we are all fortunate to find that feeling.

(The writer is an author and media entrepreneur. The views expressed are strictly personal)

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