What Does Your Home Say?

Hearing the word home can bring up different thoughts in different people: Typically, the feeling of comfort and security and delicious homemade food, and family love :)
When I come to think about it, a home is a place where I am always welcome and always wanted and always missed. Home has all the strings which pull back a person tired from the daily ordeals one might have to face. But most of all, it is something I feel, like I can "feel home" with certain people at any place and time.

If you are wondering what prompted me to write this, it was being all emotional while coming to college this time about having lived the last day at the house where I grew up. (Assuming I won't visit before the semester ends, which has a probability of 0.99) We would have moved by then!
Now, the place where anyone spends a significant part of their childhood is obviously dear to them. Because it is only during this time that we can call it unsparingly ours.
This home has seen our first steps, our first fall, our first words, also our first bashing 😕,  our childhood games, fractures, 90s style lovely birthday parties organized by our awesome parents, the first bunch of friends that we made, sleepless nights of the mother when we got sick (it still happens in case of sickness or travelling at night in spite of being miles away), the heart beating uncontrollably on seeing papa's angry face on coming home late for the first time, having cousins over for summer vacations, sibling fights- slaps and punches and tickle wars and scars and scratches yada yada yada yada. 😁
After that, for most people is the phase of wandering, work, or study. Basically trying to relish the moments when we are able to find our way back.
It so happened that while relishing the final moments at the place, a potpourri of emotions welled me up!
I had seen the view around change from 1998 to 2017 and wanted to fix the entire place in my mind like a picture- just as it was.
Mountains on all 4 sides, one side snow clad most of the time,
This place, that wall, this door, that tree, seen two forest fires veryyyy close to the house.

• The wall - where I used to compare my height all throughout my school years. I didn't grow much after 9th standard.
• The staircase- from where I threw my toddler brother and he got his chin cut.
• The aangan- where I was having breakfast in the winter  dhoop when a monkey came and snatched my parantha from my hand and left me in shock.
• The wall- where I banged my brother's head so hard that he is dented for life.
• The room- where we siblings made tents and spent time like adventurers 😉
• The bed- which was nearly burned by sleeping with the heater on.
• The mango tree- which was the center of many of our games in childhood. It's quite an old tree, it still bears fruit :)
• The kitchen- which has witnessed many of me and my brother's experiments.
• The particular spot- where I had seen my one-day old brother for the first time. (First reaction- Is it ours? Chhota kaka? 😳😭😭😭)
• The window- sitting at which we used to wait for our mother to get back from work.
• The edge- holding which my brother stood up for the first time.

Like these, looking at each and every corner, each of them had its own story to tell.
I could never outgrow this place.Wherever I live in the future, I am sure of what picture will come into my head while talking of home 😶
So this was the story of a tearful farewell to a place occupying 18 years worth of my heart's space- which is now safely closed and locked. In the end realizing that the home speaks a lot, maybe equivalent to an encyclopedia, if one can read it properly.
I'll miss the place, I'll miss the faces.
You can't erase, you can't replace it!

I'll try to edit it later to add pictures to compare. The internet is acting up at the moment!

What is your idea of home? (You can drop by in the comments to add :) )

So shall we end this without a song? 

Absolutely not! As Hannah Montana says: 

When the lights go down, it's the ending of the show.
And you're feeling like you got nowhere to go.
Don't you know?
You can change your hair and you can change your clothes.
You can change your mind, that's just the way it goes.
You can say goodbye and you can say hello.
But you'll always find your way back home! 💖