Sanchari Guha Niyogi
Home is not a place you arrive at. It is a word you grow into, slowly, awkwardly, like a borrowed language that sits heavy on the tongue. There are houses that welcome you with open doors, with the fragrance of cooked rice, with voices that ask if you’ve eaten, but still, your footsteps hesitate at the threshold. Because home is not made of gestures alone. It is made of memory. And memory does not migrate easily. It is like calling your mother-in-law “ma.”
The syllable is small, almost effortless. Just two letters, one breath. And yet it catches somewhere between the throat and the heart. Not because she is unkind, not because she hasn’t tried to love you in her own way, but because somewhere, in another house, in another kitchen, there exists a voice that taught you what “ma” means. A voice that knew the exact pitch of your silence, the exact weight of your tears. How do you give that word away so easily? So, you stand there, holding it back, reshaping it into something safer- “aunty,” “ma’am,” anything that does not betray the history you carry. And in that moment, you realize: belonging is not about acceptance. It is about translation. About teaching your heart that love can have more than one name.
But the heart is stubborn. It remembers the creak of an old door, the rhythm of familiar footsteps, the way light used to fall in a room that no longer belongs to you. It remembers without permission. And so, every new place feels like an imitation, beautiful, perhaps even warmer, but still… not quite yours. To call a place home is to perform a quiet betrayal of the places that raised you.
And yet, over time, something shifts. You begin to leave your cup in the sink without asking. You start recognizing the silence between conversations. You laugh a little louder, sit a little longer. One day, without noticing, you say “ma”, and this time, it does not feel like theft. It feels like expansion. Because maybe home is not something you replace. Maybe it is something you carry, and slowly, painfully, learn to multiply. And that is why it is so difficult. Because every new home asks you to open your heart again, and every old home reminds you what it cost the first time.