what is home ?

I am 41.

I lived in a small town called Sangli since I was born and up to when I finished college and moved out for a job at the age of 21. I then lived in Pune for 4 more years for my first job. Then I lived in Chennai for 1 year for my MBA. Then I came back to Pune for 4 months for a short stint and moved to Mumbai where I lived for the next 4 years for my new job. Then, in the last 10 years, I have lived in Stockholm, Zurich and now I am in Copenhagen for the last 4 years.

So I often ask a question to myself – where is my home and what is home ?

Is home the place you were born in? The place you now work in ? The place where your next generation grows up in ?

Can a place be home if you did not grow up in or live for first half of your life and and have no deep old nostalgic memories about ? Can a place be your home if you have not old friends still living there ?

I often feel like the place you call home should invoke two strong feelings. One is of nostalgia, of having been then there before and experienced something that now you can recall and feel warm and special about. Second is that of certainty, like you know deep in your bones that this is the place you will die in.

I was born in Sangli and lived there for the next 21 years. I know it better than I know any other city on this planet. But the Sangli I grew up in not the Sangli it is today. Like Ship of Theses, it has become a new city over the years. The house that I grew in doesn’t exist anymore.
I too am a new person now. I have a family of my own. Will I ever move back and start a new life in Sangli ? I doubt. So it is till my home ? I don’t know.

I fell in love in Pune when I first landed there in my 20s. I thought it was the most beautiful place and I have some of my most happiest memories in that city. But I haven’t lived there in last 15 years. If I move there today, I will start a new life and essentially have had no deep connection to it from the perspective of the the first half of my life.

The same goes for Mumbai. Or any other city I talked about.

I am going to leave this post here because I am still trying to figure this out.

PS: I saw that this post is in the drafts for a few months, so I am going to publish it now. I will work on a this post some time later.