The way home

An evening walk after a difficult week turns into quiet thoughts about growing older, finding peace in ordinary moments, and asking a simple question: What is home?

With the day fading and the horizon turning dark, I was walking in the space between light and the darkness to come. I slipped on my AirPods, let my playlist start playing, and logged in a few additional steps. It was a pleasant evening. There was a gentle breeze blowing.

The week had been tough, and I stepped out for a bit to get some air. As I walked down the road, I noticed how cool the breeze felt. Everything felt strangely peaceful. I must be getting soft, I thought. Bless my heart.

I guess this is what maturity means—when you realize there are things beyond your control and not to fret over them.

I looked at the stretched-out dogs lying on the side of the road, the workers returning home after a day's work, chatty and animated.

I have always been a people watcher—not in an obsessive way, but interested in their stories, the battles they fought, and their dreams and fears.

I wanted to live in that moment forever, for if this was paradise, I didn't want to leave it. Everything felt liminal, transitory, and fleeting. I actually stopped mid-walk and cut my hand through the air, for I imagined the air around me to be pregnant with some magnetic force, and I was being drawn to it. I half expected the air to crackle with electricity, like the forked tongue of lightning.

The soft glow of the setting sun lit up everything in my path, turning it iridescent for a while, only to disappear into inky black shadows soon after.

I caught my silver ring, with its little globules, glistening in the sun—a gift from my sister. I have always liked silver over gold. Silver, I guess, lends itself more to my persona: unpretentious and hardworking. It felt intuitive to explain it like that. Gold is more for the flamboyant, the loud, and the assertive.

Again, it's just the way I feel, and there is no scientific explanation for it.

The birds chirped all around. I saw a group of them heading back home. I wondered where their home was.

As I made my way back, the evening having grown considerably darker, the streetlights cast long shadows across the road. I wondered what home is to different people. Is it a physical place or a person they feel safe with?

I wondered what it was for my dogs—was it me or the house they have lived in for the past few years?

For my son, was it home, or us, his parents, or his racetrack, where he feels he is the truest version of himself?

I guess home is where you can be yourself without any pressure to belong, to conform to expectations; where keeping up appearances matters less than simply being.

Home is also a memory—a place you retreat to when you miss a loved one. Home is also a book, one you disappear into, that gently holds you in its pages for as long as you want.

Ask the worker what home is, and he will probably say it is the family he left behind in his village.

Home, like mother, is such a beautiful word. You miss it more when you are no longer able to find your way back home.

Molecularly Yours,

Sanjana

Curiously Irrepressible  

First dreamer. Accidental chemist @ Green Molecule - Clean Confidently