All the bright places

Home was never a definitive word for me, and I feel it never truly can be in this fast moving world. Whenever I begin to consider some-place, some-one, some-thing as home, the world reminds me that it is meant to be taken away, just like every-thing else someday.

Places are known by abbreviations now if they are dear to me. Detached from any sense of permanence, almost as if familiarity itself carries an expiry date. I have begun to believe that every place shares the same fate eventually.

As I grow older, I think about every place that was, and still is, dear to me. My village with its green fields, dams, and mountains. Bengal, my second home, where I found bonds so mature even at the tender age of ten that I could not bear the thought of leaving them behind.

Then Kashmir, which stole my heart in merely ten days. Ladakh, with its endless trails and huge naked mountains standing in all their hidden glory. Quiet, distant, beautiful. Are they my home too?

Or maybe Delhi. Oh, what do I even say about it? I hated it once. It separated me from every-thing I called home back in Bengal. Yet somewhere along the way, this place quietly became dear to me. Walks around the neighbourhood, school corridors, FOA, North Campus, SR glowing in fairy lights, KNMA, IHC, Kartavya Path , every place holds a tenderness within me now. And still, I hesitate to call it home.

Maybe home was never meant to be a fixed place. Maybe it is simply a concept we create to survive certain phases of life.

Or maybe home is where fragments of the heart remain scattered.

To all the bright places ; seen and yet to be.