a home away from home

hostel is not a word that sounds like anything worth loving. it sounds like rules and corridors and mundane routines that smell like the same dinner every thursday. it sounds strict. unfunny. temporary. and it is temporary. that’s the thing nobody tells you to grieve.

but somewhere between the first week and now, the room stopped being a room. i put things where i wanted them. i left the light on for hours, which is never okay back home. i made the walls mine the way you make anything yours — slowly, without deciding to, just by being yourself inside it long enough that the space starts to remember you.

four walls and a door that i close behind me and become the version of myself that doesn’t have to perform for anyone. no one’s watching. no one’s expecting. i sit the way i sit. i think the way i think. i talk to myself if i want to. that’s what home is. not comfort. permission.

and then there are the boys. we always end up at one friend’s house. nobody plans it. nobody calls ahead. someone shows up, then someone else, and within the hour the room is full and someone is arguing about something that doesn’t matter at all and someone else is laughing too loud and someone is pulling my leg because that’s just what they do.

they listen to me. that’s the part i didn’t expect. not in the way people listen out of politeness. they actually hear it, and then they tell me i’m wrong, and then they teach me something without meaning to, and then they make fun of me for learning it. that is love. i know that now. it doesn’t look like love from the outside. it looks like a bunch of boys being loud in a room with bad lighting. but it’s the safest i’ve felt in a long time.

the fights are part of it too. not the kind that break things. the kind that prove things. you don’t fight with people you don’t care about. you just leave. the fact that we stay, and argue, and come back the next day as if nothing happened — that’s not forgetting. that’s choosing.

there’s a canteen in college. i’ve been there enough times that the bhaiya knows what i want before i’ve said it. that’s a small thing. but small things are the ones that make a place feel like it’s yours. there’s a road i walk when i can’t sit still, or when i can sleep but don’t want to yet. no destination. just movement. the same trees, the same turn, the same quiet. it’s mine the way only a habit can be yours. nobody gave it to me. i just kept showing up.

i’ve been away from home for years now. and i’ve stopped using the word “home” like it means one place. it means the room i’ve made mine. it means the canteen and the walk and the house where the boys are too loud and too honest and too willing to tell me what i need to hear. it means the place where i can be myself without explaining what that means.

this home is not permanent. i know that. one day the room will go to someone else and the canteen bhaiya will learn a new face and the road will be walked by someone who doesn’t know it was mine. but this is the home where i grew the most. not the one i was given. the one i built out of nothing but presence and repetition and people who didn’t let me be anyone other than myself.

and when i go back to the first home, the one with my family and my old room and the door i used to close when i was someone else, i hope i’m not unrecognisable. i hope the person who walks back through that door is still the person who left. just grown. not gone.

because a home away from home doesn’t replace the one you came from. it just teaches you who you are without it.

K.S.