A place to call Home

There is a very bad double standard about me. I cannot imagine not living in a joint family, but after marriage, I always want new couples to set up their new home. I know this is wrong, but this is clearly what I think. I was brought up in my ancestral house, as the fourth generation living in here and I am immensely proud of that fact. I very much believe that a person is shaped by the house they live in as well. When it is an old house with nooks and crannies, staircases, a dark and dusty attic, rooms filled with old books of family members not alive any more, you slowly build up a connection with your past, and you get to know your family better through the innumerable black and white photos and the old books of literature, sports, and movies.

My old desk, now used as my home office

This house is as important as my living family. I can feel a sense of life in here, and I firmly believe that when you love something, it most definitely loves you back (not applicable for humans, but applies to everything else in life), so I can feel the house has its special way of welcoming me. There is a certain way a window is supposed to close, one step in the staircase is rounded instead of having a corner, one threshold of a door is sloping, so you step over it otherwise you slip and fall. Those things remind me that I am in my fort.

Then there is the thing about a joint family. Probably because I grew up with a dozen people in the house, I have always been so comfortable around people. I have never been alone in the house ever. Wherever we need to go, there would be people accompanying, just like that. When I went to pick up the application form for my Engineering Entrance test, four people and a driver went with me. I am so used to travel in crowded cars. I mean, that feels like normal. Even now, when somebody randomly says (somebody is either me, or my brother-in-law), "let's go to Marble Palace" or "let's go eat something nice", we gather at least half a dozen people who willingly go with us. Then as usual, something random happens, like losing the way, or coming back with the wrong cake, or some people left behind. Things like this have been happening throughout the ages. My grandmother used to say that our tenants (at that time, we had a family renting our ground floor) got married and nobody knew, while for us, if someone went to buy shoes, they got back home with a regiment of cops, and the whole neighborhood got to know of that.

Family photo on Christmas Day

Here's an old world charm snugly hanging in our house. I feel the presence of my grand parents, my great uncles, and my great-grand parents in here. The things they used, their furniture, their books, clocks and all here and with it is a feeling of comfort, happiness, and the confidence that I always have a place to come home to. This is where my strong roots are, and this is where the best place in the whole wide world is.