Vignettes of a Home
Feminist & Explorer in London, UK, Akanksha Malhautra
Written by Akanksha Malhautra
Akanksha was born in India and has lived in homes in cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Riyadh and Paris. She now lives in London pursuing a career in the non-profit sector, most recently as Director, Programmes at Girl Effect, contributing to improving gender equity and health outcomes for girls and women in India and Africa. Whilst on a self-directed-life-pause for an as yet undetermined time, Akanksha returns ‘home’ to India to visit family and friends and listen to the voices in her heart.
This isn’t a story with a beginning, middle and end.
It can’t be, the search is alive.
An ideal home
The heart sings.
Shoulders relax.
The mask drops and messy is welcomed.
You feel cocooned in the middle of something beautiful. Settled in…past the point of discovery or discomfort or surprise of a beginning. Beginnings can be very exciting of course, and novel and fun. Explorations of what something is or means or feels.
But the middle feels familiar ("intimate, very friendly, on a family footing," from Old French famelier) and safe and comfortable. Like being taken care of, even by a good book or film or piece of music. No need yet to worry about an end, the illusion of permanence. That beautiful warm sandwich of our cuddly kitten Snoop between us. That’s home. Nowhere to go or be in that in-between and a universal contract to be fully present. A long exhalation.
Calling someone home
An act of vulnerability and love.
A call to connection.
To be seen more fully so we can breathe easier.
Different homes
The one I live in with my partner and our cats and try to fashion to our tastes.
The one I hadn’t been able to visit in two years, where I am reunited and reminded and indulged.
The one I’m trying to find in me now so we can travel together wherever I go.
Leaving home to find home
I know (even if I don’t act as if I quite believe it) that that home, the home-iest of homes, is the one that matters most. The beautiful warm minimal and rich inner space that’s simultaneously always within and just out of reach. I’ve visited, usually fleeting and wonderful visits, so I know it’s there. If I could just find my way to it more often.
A feeling like the best kind of savasana. Where all you are and all you need is love. And from that place, I am the best kind of me. It’s hard not to fall in love with her.
This time of conscious unmooring and moving is also a prayer for that home.
My parents’ home
The one we moved into when I was 18, by which time I had moved into a dorm room for my undergrad to begin a life less tethered to home. We have no more access to any older homes, neither ours nor the grandparents’, to more viscerally connect me to my childhood. No museum of old memories or memorabilia that dates back to a much younger me. It feels like a romantic notion, this old or first home, and something I may occasionally but casually pine for…expecting cloudy memories to clarify there alchemically and come flooding back.
My parents’ home now has a room with an ambiguous claim to it by my sister and I, transformed by my mother’s gradual clearing and disposing of sentimental rubbish, and shaping of the aesthetic and narrative.
But it’s still my room, sort of – the only other one outside my current home. That’s worth a lot. Photographs of us with our partners picked up on the way later in life, the vision board I made before I moved countries, a collage of pictures of our dog Fifi that my sister made when she had to be put to sleep, and the red wall I’d insisted on when my parents were building this house, which received several coats of paint over the years.
‘Home’ is a moving target
Or maybe there are two homes.
The one or ones we came from, and the one we are seeking.
The first helps make sense of us, though we may (or should?) outgrow it.
For the fortunate among us, the second is bright with possibility, untethered to any past.
Changing and evolving as we are.
Moving from the city for a frequent chorus of exotic birdsong and ease.
Slowly finding resonance within and without.
Everyone seems to be moving homes right now
I can be sure of three sets of moves anyway.
All in the same week, which feels poignant during my current nomadic situation.
A movement of such moves one might say.
Gathering momentum.
In search of somewhere that moves you.
My friend’s three-year-old is in tears every morning right now because he misses his friends.
But the views are spectacular.
Another friend found a house on a hill.
So the views are spectacular.
My sister and her partner found a pet-friendly home to rent.
And the views are spectacular.
Home envy
Ultimately, a craving for the nourishment and joy that beautiful things and surroundings might offer the heart and soul.
Still searching
Driving a rented beat-up but totally-does-the-job car, over some much-needed time alone, the Bahamas serendipitously singing ‘I got all the time in the world’ with a joyous drawl. Infectious joy that affects the tone of my thoughts. I feel more spacious.
The temporary home I’ve just driven from, where my parents and sister and brother-in law all are, feels more endearing. As we support my sister with her move into a new home, I think about the coming together of us into a home at this time. Meta.
I casually think about the so-far elusive ‘what do I want?’ A voice sheepishly but sincerely says ‘to live wholeheartedly’.