Tag: Home

  • Home, virtually

    The idea of home has made its presence felt many times on this blog – personal perspectives, as well as its evolution based on the institutional realignment line of thought. In fact, this is one of those topics  which I continue to have many thought wrestling matches on. While home begins as a physical place, as one steps out of it and moves out into the larger world, one realises that it becomes as much a place that is created in the mind.

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    To quote Pico Iyer, “For more and more of us, home has really less to do with a piece of soil than, you could say, with a piece of soul.” The ‘piece of soul’ changes with circumstances and choices – from childhood, landmarks, experiences and so on to a different set of people and places, and a different sense of purpose, for instance. All of this continue to change over time, until probably, at a certain point, you realise the set of places, people and props you’d want around in your final years. But let’s not get morbid ahead of time! 🙂

    To quote Pico again, “Home is not just the place where you happen to be born. It’s the place where you become yourself.” And sometimes it can be both. It also explains why I did not recognise a future home when I saw one – 11 years back, on a screen not very different from this one. That’s what this post is about – to acknowledge the day it all began – 11 years ago. It is also a hat tip to Rediff, where I began my blogging journey (when I spoke at BlogAdda recently, most people didn’t know Rediff used to have blogs) and a nod of thanks to my 25 year old self who had no idea what he was getting into and wrote some horrible verse to start it all off.

    A place that, in a click, helps me travel back in time and shows me people, perspectives and pages, some of whom/which I have outgrown, but have influenced what I am today. Experiences that have shaped the course of my life. A journal of the past which continues to help me shape my narrative – thoughts, to words, to actions, and beyond. A place where I continue to become myself.

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    A piece of my soul that is my consciousness and on many occasions, even my conscience. A homepage that I consider home. 🙂

    until next time, thanks for reading!

  • Notion states

    My last post on the subject of home was in the context of the multicultural world we are creating, how in our pursuit of convenience and familiarity we might end up creating a homogeneous world, and whether the idea of home would change with time, as we begin to choose places that connect to our soul over the soil we were born in. (soul vs soil courtesy Pico Iyer)

    One of my main punching bags in the institutional realignment line of thinking is the concept of the nation state, more specifically its relevance in a massively connected world. A simplistic view is that economics, trade and many other things might be better off without them, given how much of an enabler technology is turning out to be, and geo politics will anyway be a lesser phenomenon if there aren’t any nation states. Arguable, yes.

    However, I had very little idea on the replacement concept. Geography (land) would exist and would have to be organised in some way. What way? In a wonderful display of appropriateness, Wired gave a possible answer – in the form of a post titled “Software Is Reorganizing the World“. I loved the concept of ‘geodesic distance’, and the mapping of not nation states but states of mind. (soul) The idea of (what is now) cloud communities taking physical shape is fantastic! While it might sound far fetched, it really isn’t – the post gives historical precedence and emerging patterns to back up the idea. As does Tony Hsieh’s The Downtown Project in the present day to transform the decaying and blighted part of the old Vegas Strip into the most community-focused large city in the world.

    Around the same time, I came across this Facebook (official) note titled “Coordinated Migration“, (thanks MJ) which shows how Facebook is using ‘hometown’ and ‘current city’ descriptions to track migratory patterns across the world. Probably, in a few years, this would be a mapping everyone would take a keen interest in, to find kindred souls, and to be what they are destined to be.

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    until next time, a state of bliss

  • A long way away from home

    ‘The Global Soul’ is not my favourite Pico Iyer book (though he is a favourite anyway) mostly because I couldn’t connect to three out of its six chapters. I picked up the book because, in addition to it being a Pico book, it was about a subject that has fascinated me for a while now – the concept of ‘home’. This, in a multicultural world whose corporate citizens are rapidly making sure that ‘Everywhere is made up of everywhere else..’ I remember writing about this almost three years ago, in the context of another travel book and my visit to what I still consider home – Cochin. It was evoked by the presence of the same brands that I might see in a mall in Bangalore, the disappearance of familiar landmarks, and the residents referring to new landmarks that I really didn’t know of. It is perhaps unfair to expect that even as I changed, the idea of home would remain a constant. Maybe I will get used to that in a while too.

    I had wondered whether, in our pursuit of convenience and familiarity, we might end up creating a homogeneous world. Now I wonder if we might be one of the last generations to live in a truly heterogeneous world, as, in addition to the corporate imperialism, culture also becomes the most exported and imported product, courtesy technological advances – real and virtual. Home is, as the t-shirt goes, where the wifi connects automatically, and I’d be able to recreate it anywhere, with all the props made available to me.

    Every year, around this time, there is usually a home visit, and I would be chronicling it, this year there isn’t. Our regular visit targets are missing in action, and going there doesn’t make sense. I wonder if this is how it begins, and a couple of decades later, when I’m traveling, a bout of homesickness would hit me, and I would realise that it wasn’t Cochin I was thinking of. I’ll probably feel sad then, and guilty. But for now, I am closing my eyes, and recreating Cochin in my mind, with no props. I am able to, I can sense the wistfulness as I walk through the streets (without Google) and they haven’t changed. It’s heartening to know that while I have left Cochin, it hasn’t left me.

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    until next time, homegrown can be grown?

  • An idea called home – 2

    Anjum Hasan’s “Difficult Pleasures” is borderline surreal, the jacket told me. She would be in my top 3 favourite authors list, and I am completely awed by her writing (check the last para here) but I wonder if even that can explain the surreal thought I had as I read the first few pages. Can a book be called a home? What is a home after all? Isn’t it just an idea that is sometimes real and tangible and exists physically?

    And that was the surreal thought – every time I read this author’s books, it’s like going home, as though I could reach inside, get into the story and talk to the characters and they wouldn’t consider me out of place at all. I could belong. Yes, it’s surreal, and I haven’t been smoking, but I just couldn’t get the thought out of my head.

    until next time, home away from home

  • Realty Check 3

    The location was right, and strangely, so was the price. In fact, almost everything was right and she told the current owner so. To make it perfect, she decided to ask him anyway. After all, they had done it before with soups at restaurants. “Excuse me, can you make it a three bedroom from two?”

    until next time, Part 1, Part 2