Tuesday, October 21, 2008

House and Home - a composition

I often pen down when I am emotionally charged. Good or bad I really don’t know. My guide says my thoughts and words travel at the same speed and I should slow my thinking. Well yes I often blame my friends for thinking slow, but yeah I am too fast. Can I call myself impulsive? Well I act a lot on my instincts…. But I feel even these impulses are controlled by a backdrop I created. What amazes me these days is that I am comfortable with contradictions. I don’t mean to say I am ambivalent when it comes to expressing opinions but maybe I am comfortable contradicting myself because I have shed of the conventional thoughts and clinging to something that has been taught to me.

I love the “ R” words, I love responsibility, I love respect, I love to respond, I love to react. But I hate one “R” - restriction I name it.

I want to be a free bird owing no boundaries.Once I had an interesting conversation with a friend. I told him I don’t believe in a concept called “owning a house” having a “home” definitely yes. He asked me what the difference was ? We often see people spending their lives in accumulating wealth to build a house perhaps later they are fortunate to live there and sometimes not. And this process of building and accumulating costs your life which you never enjoy. I have seen it in my own family. My dad never lived at home as he was always abroad and my mom can hardly climb those stairs upstairs today finally now when she is settled at home. But, they both worked a lifetime to build this “HOUSE”. I don’t think I would ever build one. But is this life experience responsible to make me reach this hypothesis ? I guess not, coz my sister and brother don’t agree with me and have more sense on interior decoration and know what they want in their house and I seriously I don’t know. No now not going to my psychology bakwaas and telling u each individual is unique so Teena is unique ….

I think to us a house is a possession which we want to say is ours, something no one will take from us. I spend 15 years of my life in rented houses.Not for a second did I feel I did not belong there or someone else lived there before me. I am still a wanderer and lived in different hostels and still would for some years and even now I am just a visitor back home. To me home is where I am, I decorate my room as if I lived there from time immemorial. I would not hold back my little desires saying “would do this, put this up when I own a house”. House and Home are so close a word to many yet so different in meaning. House is the structure and home is what you make of it.Its true you can only own a house, buy it , possess it because its tangible but a home you have to build and nurture. So many own houses not homes and umpteen references from Inside Outside magazines can’t make a home.

If people realize the distinction of words life is so simple or else you waste your energy pursuing things you feel could bring you happiness when all you were looking for was symbolic representations to qualify your quest. And then other’s possessions would not make you envious, after all your home reflects you and not you’re neighbor but even in expressing our heart’s desire we have ended up stealing ideas and mimicking others. Perhaps one still doesn’t know where one’s heart’s desires rest that you need the other to tell you who you are .

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