What is home really? What's survival? Who survives? Survival is also about believing in them: definitely about believing in them.
What is home really? What's survival? Who survives?
I think about survival all the time; not to say I am a survivor, but to say our struggles are so intimate and yet, so worldly. The question is — how is my home my survival and what happens when my home is taken from me?
Part of the reason why I could survive 27 years of life so far is because I could come back home after a wretched, heart-wrenching, and defeating day. I could find a corner, a sofa, a bed, my kitchen, my bath to feel safe with, to lie down, to hold the long IKEA pillow, to cook to calm me down, to clean to deflect, to comfort. But take that away from me, and I won’t survive. I could not imagine that.
But the need to come home is not just for grief and to recollect yourself, but also to come home from victory, find a home for joy, to celebrate, to dance while no one is watching and judging and find it cringe, to be naked, to be yourself, and to confront your own discomfort of working on yourself, your values, behaviour, your routine, your life.
Survival and home are one inseparable imagination, an idea for me.
When I think of life, which is essentially survival, I think of home. That’s a dream for me. I never had a home, a permanent address, a city I could call home. I am always a foreigner, not abroad, but in my own country too. I am never a local, someone in “their eyes” who belonged to that apartment in Erfurt, in Vienna, in Kurla, in Colaba, in Mumbai, in Surat, in the boarding school in Assam, in Ranchi.
I never felt comfortable with the question, “Where are you from?”
It seemed threatening, questioning my existence because I do not know where I am from.
Shall I tell you what those locals thought where I am from, or shall I tell you what I think where I am from? Can I tell you I am from my tiny, sweet studio apartment in Vienna, in Erfurt, in Mumbai, or seeing my friend for a long drawn-out day? Where is my home and who decides that?
There was never a home and I always craved for it, dreamt of it, and the dream postponed, and postponed. So I learned to be a local in my own ways, I learned to build a home in temporary apartments, in foreign cities. That was one step toward survival.
But you could not survive if a living, breathing, lively thing didn’t believe in you. Not for a moment. Home is also about finding a thing, at times a non-living thing. For me, I have been lucky, privileged in very many ways to have those optimistic, kinder people, my cats — Lucy, Panda, Cookie in my life. They always believed in me. They made me feel that I could do it. They watered me, listened to me, cared for me, checked-in on me, persevered with me even in my worst forms, emotional health, and behaviour.
Survival is also about believing in them: definitely about believing in them. Sometimes, having someone else's belief in you than your own. It nurtures you. But how do you do it? How do you believe in people? You call them, you let them choose, you give them their space, and while they do what they need to do to survive, to cope; you stay with them, you wait for them, you let them know that you are there, whatever it takes.
It is not easy to believe. It is hard work, an enormous emotional labour, perhaps often a physical labour too. It could drain, exhaust, but it is a way to find kindness, to breathe life into something, someone, to literally offer a lease of life. So, please do believe and find someone who has a green thumb and can believe in you.
And while you do it person to person, also find a way to do it for a community. Palestinians are the ones who need us, to believe in them, right now and until they need us to do it. Consider believing in them, in yourself too.