This year was my eighth Eid away from home.
Eight years, and home is still where I travelled thousands of miles away from.
At what point does a place become home?
Around two decades ago, after I had worked and lived in Delhi for a few years, I had returned from home after an Eid break. On the way out from the railway station, as I looked at the white columns of Connaught Place, I said to myself – it feels like home.
A few years ago, when I was living in Singapore, I attended a funeral prayer – Namaz-e-Janazah – and felt it was a step towards making the place home. We didn’t live there long enough to make it one, moving to London after a couple of years.
We were blessed with the birth of our younger child while there. Could such an event elevate the status of any place to that of home? It has deepened my ties to the place, but again, we never lived long enough to know. Now that our younger one is old enough to understand, on the rare occasion she will express a wish to visit Singapore. I wonder how a place she may not live in while growing up – we don’t have any plans to move back right now – but was born in, will situate itself in her identity of home when she grows up.
Buying a house should be one of those things. Had we stayed back in Singapore, we may have bought one by now. London is notorious in this regard. We have stayed here longer than Singapore, and it feels more like home, but it is criminally difficult to become a home owner in this city.
The sense of association to a piece of land through ownership, however small, has remained a running theme through the history of humans for thinking of it as home. London gives you a lot, ends up taking back a lot more in return and yet you wouldn’t want to think of moving to another place. Failed housing policies and capitalist landlords are the biggest contributors to the toxicity of our relationship with cities.
Like Delhi was, London is home now. Whether it, or any other city, will ever really be home, I’ll probably never know.