Home

I bought a shirt from H&M the other day and I was shocked at how it smelt like my grandma’s laundry detergent. It smelt like home.

It brought me back to standing in my grandparents living room back in India with the laundry machine rumbling beside the kitchen sink, blocking off the hallway to the bedroom, the intermingling sounds of motorcycles and tweeting birds floating in through the open windows. Leaning over their terrace, sweating buckets as the sun would hit my face as I watched the crows eating yesterdays rice, and the beautiful orange flowers sprouting. It made me think of home.

Home is so many places, feelings, and people. Home is eating puliyotharai and urulaikizhangu at a random rest area in America while driving 14 hours to Pittsburgh and blasting the OK Kanmani soundtrack. Home is being wrapped in a blanket beside my roommates, while eating hot queso and watching Community. Home is the memory of sitting in the English hall with my friends talking about absolutely nothing.

But I wonder if home ever changes. I wonder how it would feel going back to our apartment across Bramalea City Center. Would that be home? Would I remember the place where my little sister first came home, where I cried after I scraped my knees running down Queen Street, where my grandpa would comfort me as I refused to go to school because “no, math is too hard”.

More than the moment, event, or the place itself, I think home is just a specific feeling of comfort, joy, and happiness.

Maybe that’s why seeing the places I associate with home don’t have the same effect as smelling a familiar scent or hearing a song from a distant memory. Maybe it has something to do with how smells and sound stays constant in our head whereas our external environments are always changing. Or maybe it’s related to our ways of learning.

In any case, this piece is a reminisce of the homes I have had, the people that have made it, and the future that is ahead.

But anyways, thank you H&M for reminding me of home and shoutout to my sister for not thinking I was crazy when I ran up to her yelling to smell my shirt. On an unrelated note, I now have four Mickey Mouse themed shirts, how many till I can call it a collection instead of just adult who wears too many graphic tees?