THE ALLURE OF HOME

My commitment to blogging is tentative as yet. I would love to write regularly, but I get pretty untethered and mildly unhinged when I start writing. Staying within accepted boundaries of what I should write makes it feel like a task, and reducing the tasks in my life is one of my life's highest goals.

The other day, I came across this note I had written two years ago. I wanted to preserve it, and having no better place to keep it, I decided to publish it here- assuming not many people would be reading it anyway (and those who make it till here deserve to read my semi-private thoughts.)

So as of today, I have decided to not have this strictly as an 'art' blog. I would like to pen down thoughts about anything essential, because really, where is the line between life and art?

July 2022.
As I wait out a long layover at an airport, on the way home from what was a pretty exciting trip, the underlying feeling is that of joy and relief. What does it mean to look forward to home, even from what is supposed to be a fun event? Is it a lack of ability to enjoy a new place, or is it success at having carved out a life of love? Is love for home a meek clinging to comfort, or a sensible choice for whatever makes you most happy?

Europe has always held a position of awe in modern man's mind. Of supreme beauty and charm and all that. And rightfully so; their architectural aesthetics are extraordinary. We walked in 40°c weather (wrong time to go to that part of the world) on quiet cobbled streets and ate a nice Mediterranean diet. All that casual beauty littered around the corners; not an ugly house in sight. My gallery full of photos, one prettier than the next. But there is a certain... 'sterility' that appears to an Indian mind after a while there, like India appears 'all too much' to a western mind.

Now here we are on the long way back home. I just got a weather update for heavy rains in Goa in the coming week, and my heart leapt with joy. I am going to buy 1 kg bhindi to make bhindi fry, extra spicy in vengeful compensation. I will meet my canvases and tell them of some strange insights, if they last that long. I am excited.

August 2024

The idea of 'Home' has somehow always been central to my life. Even as a child, I desired to have a beautiful and far more importantly, calm home of my own. A safe place from which to dream, and to live. Safety, then, seems to be where the allure of Home lies.

When I wrote the note above, I lived in a place I hated. I now have the house of my dreams, something I honestly never expected fully to materialise, and which I thought would be the end of this old desire of mine. While I have found immense joy here, I have discovered much to my surprise and dismay, that this thirst for Home still remains unquenched, especially in moments of turmoil.

It appears then, to be a metaphysical issue. There is a yearning for a safe harbour, a calling out for that one permanent, eternal home. And it doesn't appear to be anywhere on this earth.

 As I write this, I realise that this safety is a constant undercurrent in my work. But I do not mean safety in the trite sense- in the way that Benjamin Franklin meant when he said "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety". This was the image of safety in my mind always; something for cowards. 

But as I now contemplate the basis of this desire for home, I realise that safety will always be an innate desire of any being who feels themselves to be separate from, and at the whims of an unpredictable world. So long as we continue to think of ourselves as separate entities, helpless and utterly clueless about life, we WILL want that safe harbour. It is the infant's crying out for its mother. It cannot be any other way. The only way then seems to be, not to look for that harbour in this very unpredictable world, but to finally listen to everyone that has been trying to wake you up by telling you that you are not this separate identity. That you are always home.

I also thought beauty and meaning were the things that mattered to me most in my work. Writing this has made me wonder if safety and beauty and meaning aren't all the same thing after all? What we want most of all is eternal happiness, unshakeable peace, joy, safety (no fear), freedom, truth. It is all just one goal, if you think about it. That one place where it all converges. And where there is all this, there is beauty too, naturally.

I speak of beauty not in the trite sense again, not as something superficial, but as something inherently 'right'. Like a frequency that correctly matches the recipient and causes an unmistakable reaction.

Is our love for beauty then, actually a symptom of our core desire for this perfect place? Beauty acting as a hint for everything else that is good and right? I don't know.

I feel happy when I look at beauty- in architecture, in art, in nature, in people. I want to create art that adds meaning to life, but which is above all beautiful. I now realise beauty takes precedence over meaning for me- because beauty is valuable and meaningful in itself. Beauty seems to act like a salve to our wounds. It makes life seem okay in the moment; all 'ugliness' banished, actual and metaphorical, at least for that instant.

Recently, I was deeply upset and crying in my terrace. Between sobs, my eyes fell on the teak tree in front of me- the first of the raindrops were plopping on its large leaves and making a beautiful pattern of light and dark green. For a split-second, I stepped back from my petty issues and observe the leaves, and in the process also ended up observing myself crying in the terrace. The sorrow seemed to gradually pass, once I was just looking at it and not holding on to it so tightly. 

 *****

This is what I meant by me going untethered when I start writing. In the words of the great Michael Scott, "Sometimes I'll start a sentence, and I don't even know where it's going. I just hope I find it along the way." I think I'll embrace this erratic writing for a while and see where it goes.