My Greatest Journey

One of the few quotes that I remember is this one from The Namesake - "The greatest journeys are those that bring you home." At first, I found it very typical of a pravasi bangali, especially given the author's ethnicity. It was after the class 10th boards that I watched the movie, having read the novel a couple of years earlier. Now that I come to think of it, the quote reflects the deep significance that is attached to the act of returning home.

However, in life I have carried around a slight burden of rootlessness. My father's job in the navy prevented me from calling any one place 'home'. Where is my home? Is it where my parents reside, a place where I have not stayed for more than two months of my life in all? Or is it Delhi, where I have spent most of my life, but where I don't have any permanent residence? Even if it were Delhi, will it be Luytens' Delhi, where I spent almost all my childhood, but where I know I can never return? Or will I make a new home in the other parts of Delhi?

Yet, every time I cross the area around Chanakyapuri, an area I grew to love and admire, there is always a slight heartache that grips me. There is a feeling of a 'lost childhood', not in the sense of a childhood that I didn't enjoy, but which I can barely revisit. It is like a relic - it has been so strongly cast in stone that it now seems totally surreal. Every time I go towards Dhaula Kuan, I sit up excitedly to look at DSOI and S P Marg. Today as I go to the airport to board a flight back to Kolkata, I would be waiting for when the Airport Express Line crosses DSOI. The last time I stayed at DSOI for a couple of days, I went around the S P Marg area and revisited the temple I used to go to, the shops I used to buy from and the lively buildings that were once part of a 'home' - the only place I call 'home'.

Indeed, going to those areas is the greatest time of my life. It gives me a sense of relief - that even though I may have passed that extremely pleasant time, there are others growing up there who would enjoy what I enjoyed, who would play where I once used to play and who would probably face similar curiosities as I once did. My journey wasn't unique - in fact, a lot of Army kids probably have an even more rootless existence - and in those numbers I find comfort.

The good thing about this rootlessness is the objectivity it brings to me. Once you do not have a 'home' to be attached to, there are very few things you can be attached to. Friends, success, failures - nothing inspires attachment because the greatest attachments have been broken down before. It is truly my biggest weakness and my greatest strength. It is my raison-de-etre and that is how I will now look upon it.