this week’s Thought (singular)
can’t tell if the sleepy-time tea is working because i’m always sleepy
a very warm welcome to all new readers. i love new readers so much that whenever i get an email about a new reader, i manifest that they get an auto on time. thank you for joining us. may you not go through the harrowing motions of getting one later than you had expected to → resigning yourself to reaching your destination late → your driver breaking every traffic law in the world → actually reaching too early → waiting outside the gate for the person you’re supposed to meet for 20 minutes under the suspicious gaze of the security guard.
a very warm welcome to old readers as well. may good sense continue to prevail.
Before We Begin
the third edition of thodi together is still open for responses for another week!
home - what spaces, apart from where you live, feel like home to you? it could be a friend’s place that you’ve been to a bunch of times, or a road you’ve travelled so often you would know if a stone is out of place.
as always, let me know your answer in the comments, by email, over text, whichever social media site we might be connected on, a hand-written letter if you have my address, etcetera etcetera. i’ll put it all together, and the next thodi will be a lovely community edition on home.
find tt #1, on warmth, here -
and tt #2, on long distance friendships, here -
hi
i’ve been thinking about home, an erstwhile thodi-favourite topic (i wrote far too much about it when i had moved out for the first time two years ago).
this one is a bit different, in that it’s more of a contemplation about a physical space that holds you, about loving and leaving a home for a house that is yet to feel like a home.
fine, i lied. it’s similar, but i have more to say. it’s three older thodi’s under a trench coat. now that i’ve come clean, onward!
first, an ode to my old apartment, where i indulge in some nostalgia. bear with me. i keep thinking about how it saw me grow from 9 to 23-years-old, about how much of me is in it. and i’ve spoken about how spaces change as we change—that space has changed so much. i also talk about how a house only really begins to feel like a home once you spend so much time in it, and go through so much in it, that the walls feel comfortingly heavy, solid, and familiar, like they’re holding you. i’ve been thinking about how that space has borne witness to everything i’ve gone through and come out on the other side of (high school); about how when things were difficult, whenever i said ‘i want to go home’, i was thinking about the black-and-white striped sliding cupboard and blue curtains in my old bedroom, about the cats and trees and countless night walks in the apartment. and somewhat ruefully, i think about how i realised too late just how lovely that space was.
it’s all got me realising that i get very attached to physical spaces. it’s the feeling of comfort, of walls and doors remembering your presence and making you feel welcome around them. there are parts of the city that my best friend and i regularly haunt whenever we’re here at the same time—i can’t visit them alone without remembering the laughter and the sunshine of those visits, her person seeped into every square inch of the pavement, our joy in the menu card of every restaurant we’ve visited together. i think about how important it is for me to have a space that i can fill with my self, and how once i’ve done that, it’s precious and it’s rare and it’s mine. quite simply, it’s home.
it’s a tricky business, trying to make a place home at the ripe old age of 24, especially in a part of bangalore that feels so removed from what i refer to when i say bangalore. this is the oldest i’ve been, and the home i’ve known and loved so far stays in my memory like a ghost that i’m too fond of. this place is too unfamiliar to me. i am too unfamiliar to it. it’ll take us some time to get acquainted.
but that’s also the beauty of a home, i think. i wrote here when i was moving back to bangalore after living outside for a bit -
i spent the last six months thinking about home, pining for home, taking every opportunity to talk about home, that i didn’t realise that i was building a home here. it’s a bittersweet thought. i wish i had been present for the construction. i wish i had taken the opportunity to consciously leave traces of myself in the house and in the city – my mug in the kitchen, my charger in the living room, my tiny smiles at the strangers on the train that smiled back every morning. all these things happened (sweet), but i do not feel like i did them (bitter). the life i’ve set up here, with all the tears and sweat and dourness and all the excitement and delight and newness, seems like it’s passed me by. my hands aren’t stained with the cement, but the building is erect. i just never saw it in progress.
in hindsight, i’m glad that that home had been built without me trying. every time i’ve visited bombay since then, it feels like a return to somewhere—and isn’t that what a home is? a place you can return to?
if you stay long enough in a place, if you return to it enough times, if you have enough experiences and create enough memories there, it’s inevitable that it will become a home. putting things up on the walls and making an effort to remember the fan switch are just shortcuts to the feeling of homeliness, the feeling of familiarity and being held by a space that knows you. i didn’t realise too late that my old house was lovely. it just took time for me to realise that it had become home at all. i didn’t even have to try to make that happen. what a happy surprise.
i’m here for two months. somewhere in the middle, i’ll stop calling it my ‘new’ house and just call it my house. somewhere in the middle, i’ll get used to returning to it, to saying ‘i want to go home’ and ending up in a room with green cupboards and yellow curtains.
reminder that the prompt for tt #3 is about home, and that i’ll be closing responses in a week. i’ve obviously got a lot to say about it, but i’d love to hear about a space that feels like home to you. let me know!
if you liked this post, please hit the like button! it’ll help more readers discover thodi and join this lovely community. thank you!
A Picture!
English Recitation Competition
Come Let Us Be Friends, Sarah Lee Brown Fleming
Come, let us be friends, you and I, E’en though the world doth hate at this hour; Let’s bask in the sunlight of a love so high That war cannot dim it with all its armed power. Come, let us be friends, you and I, The world hath her surplus of hatred today; She needeth more love, see, she droops with a sigh, Where her axis doth slant in the sky far away. Come, let us be friends, you and I, And love each other so deep and so well, That the world may grow steady and forward fly, Lest she wander towards chaos and drop into hell.
Awe, James Crews (reminded me of one of my favourite thodi editions that i often find myself returning to)
It’s a shiver that climbs the trellis of the spine, each tingle a bright white morning glory breaking into blossom beneath the skin. It can happen anywhere, anytime, even finding this sleeve of ice worn by a branch all morning, now fallen on a bed of snow. You can choose to pause, pick it up, hold the cold thing in your hand or not. Few tell us that wonder and awe are decisions we make daily, hourly, minute by minute in the tiny offices of the heart—tilting the head to look up at every tree turned into a chandelier by light striking ice in just the right way.
Naïve, Tim Seibles (read the full poem here)
Remember? Remember wanting to play every minute, as if that was why we were born? Those hands that bring us shouting into this life must open like a fanfare of big band horns. Though this world is nothing like where we’d been, we come anyway, astonished as if to Mardi Gras in full swing. There must be a time when a child’s heart builds a chocolate sunflower while katydids burnish the day with their busy wings. This itching fury that holds me now—this knowing the early welcome that once lived inside me was somehow sent away: how I talk myself back into all the regular disguises but still walk these streets believing in the weather of the unruined heart.
The Good Side of the Internet
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this week’s Song
Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand
find all shared songs here.
thank you for reading, and see you soon <3