Home Is Where You Hang Your Heart

I just had a weird moment, leaving the internet café.

Today is a normal day in the life of an IPSL student in Kolkata. We are up at 6:45am to volunteer until noon, eat lunch with our Mum Mum, bathe in a bucket, head to lecture down the road at our professor’s house until 6, bum around the coffee shop to discuss the theories just absorbed in class, quick stop to the internet café to end up back to our house for dinner.

I tried to use the internet as quickly as possible to get back in time for dinner. As soon as I was finished, I took 11 rupees (USD$0.20) out of my money belt and paid the café owner, zipped up my sweater and headed out to the street. The internet café is about a 45 second walk to my front gate. Without even thinking, my feet took me left out of the café, then left on the street, walking past a street vendor that is selling snacks by candlelight. I cross the street, getting honked at by a taxi driver in an old yellow Volkswagen beetle (customary for Kolkata.) I walk near a temple that celebrates Hanuman, the monkey god, and I hear chanting in the distance as I turn the corner onto my street. Searching for my key in my bag, I avoid the homeless man that sleeps near my gate (I think I’ll name him Charles).

Suddenly, I am overcome with a complete sense of familiarity. We have been here for two weeks and everything is recognizable. I know how to push my gate open. I know where the cups are. My pillow smells like my hair. So quickly did this place become a home to me, and not simply a far eastern city in a strange land as it was less than a month ago. And I am so glad for it, it’s a wonderful place to feel like you are in place.


And I know, Mommy, that you probably aren’t a fan of hearing me say things like that – that there is a home other than your home. This is a woman who glares at me from behind the steering wheel after I exclaim “Hi, Home!” when we drive by Manhattan (because this was the place that I could not only be me, but expand me.) But Mummy, you know those chessey wooden signs that you hang all over the house – “Home Is Where You Hang Your Heart” – they have some truth to them. So while I find these glorious, distant places to be my home and a part of me; just remember that I was formed in your womb and I was embraced in your arms – that is where I will forever hang my heart.

And for those of you who haven’t been graced with a Patricia Ferrandino hug, I can tell you, it’s a good place to be.