Rattling comfortably down an Indian highway, over bumpy patches of patched up mortar, in an SUV purpose built for the conditions, I sat at the wheel and I wondered - but really, what is home?
With the FM, now barely catching reception, the music intertwined with screechy static whines, playing in the background, the occupants; dad, and mom in the back, and the brother sitting shotgun, all concentrating intently in silence through the wide windscreen on the road ahead, as I subconsciously navigated through the puzzle that is the Indian traffic, whilst Cognac, our cocker spaniel, sat in between the parents finding solace in the cool air venting out of the rear AC grill, in the sweltering January sun of the semi arid desert that is the westerly state of Rajasthan.
Now, this was one of our uncountable trips, over the years, as we covered almost the entirety of the landmass that is India and its friendly neighbours, in vehicles ranging from a Honda CD-100 motor cycle that housed us four in the early years, to a humble Maruti 800 that drove us and Honey, our first Spaniel, from Bangalore to Shillong, almost 3000 kilometres, over a mammoth journey of over 9 days, and the Maruti Omni that navigated the steep slopes of Nepal on its way to Shillong from New Delhi, to an extensively well travelled Tata Safari that clocked more than a 100,000 kilometres over its tenure that covered almost the entire contour of the country barring the extreme north, the snug Hyundai coupe that covered the Emerald Isle, and now the latest Mahindra Scorpio. This particular adventure was the third multi day, cross state trip in a month, in the times of a worldwide pandemic, when people were generally abstaining from travel.
Society associates a home with a house of brick and mortar, wood or stone, a permanent dwelling, where you stay put, at least for a good while, a place thats the culmination point, the end goal of a journey, the mundane after your travels, where you go about the chores of a settled life; It is a place where the tea tastes familiar, the mattress on your bed knows and hugs your curves, the thermostat is a friend, the doorbell rings the door open to the friendly and the known, and where you can navigate the floor and dodge the walls and the furniture in the dark, under the torch of familiarity.
That’s fair enough, I concluded, but what about when traveling?
When moving for days at end, when there was no home, in transit from one posting to another, an airbase to another leagues away, with not an inkling of what to expect at the destination, living in airforce messes along the way or any hotel that will allow a pet, lugging along all baggage that didn’t find place in the truck that moved the rest of our belongings. And of those holidays and trips, ad-hoc and planned, but mostly the former, exploring cities, towns, and villages, settling at night in inspection bungalows, hotels, defence messes, home-stays, any place that fit the budget and afforded a clean bathroom and a bed to rest the road-ridden body at the end of a long day of driving and exploration. This was a setting in which we all thrived, we felt in our element when traveling; the wanderlust was palpable. And the car carried everything we could ever need for sustenance, a portable convection cooking hob for warming up road side bought dinner of bread and eggs, kebabs and curries, cutlery, blankets in the winter, food and water for the dog, and for its humans, a decent amount of clothes for the journey, a set of playing cards for entertainment, and of course, the all of us, and hence now the SUV, to bear all of this load. The dynamic remained the same in the car, as it was at home - there was small talk, serious discussion, laughter, annoyance, silences, comfort, discomfort, illness and health, all of the emotions and nuances, in the interiors of the vehicle, and in the unknowns of the stop for the night, where the tea tasted a little different, for better or for worse, the food was an adventure, the comfort of the bed was as guaranteed as scoring a heads on the flip of an unbiased coin and the main stimulus here was life, as it passed us by, rather than the TV screen. It was all familiar, only the materialistic entities differed from the familiar back at the house, wherever it would’ve been at that point in time, but the home was still here, in its entirety, ever present, hurtling together down the road with us, a companion, an ether that engulfed us all. I lost my chain of thought, as a jump over a covert culvert on the flyover, that sneaked past the defences of the shockers, reminded us of the comfort of our own beds after these last few days on the road, and I wondered ironically -
But again, what and where really is home?
Comments