Saturday, April 21, 2018

Hiraeth

I am a serial Netflix binger. This is an honest confession. Given light days, I find myself glued to Netflix till the dark - my dog the only distraction. On realization, I did a quick analysis only to realize more that  Netflix is a portal to many lives and chapters for me. Quite akin to the feeling I had as a child being lost in books. I do suffer from a content hang-over - while earlier it was Rebecca of Daphne Du Maurier or Heathcliffe of Wuthering Heights or Irene Adler of the Sherlock fame - these days the characters and content are transient : probably can even term them as Fast Moving Content Spiral. On deep-diving more, I laddered to my intrinsic need to escape from my own reality and "provenance". I like neither. Both seem to be prescribed than subscribed to and more like an albatross around my neck.

Recently I even realized that my life is full of people who are just there - in suspension or in co-existence. Emotions are transacted along with perishable promises. I see the people - more like ghouls - in my path as stardust : flaky yet solid. I feel like Aza (Turtles all the way down - John Green) - there but not there. Conversations, people,lives and bonds now seem ephemeral. I can't help but wonder if my previously mentioned idea of FMCS is the causality behind the current template of life.

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In 2 days recently, I finished watching a heartwarming series of Chesapeake Shores. The story revolves around  Abby - a versatile woman ferreting multiple hats of a successful career woman juggling the pace of NY corporate life, a single mother, recent divorcee, sister to 4 siblings, daughter to a busy father and an absentee mother and a beloved grand-daughter to a wise grandmom. She comes home at the behest of her youngest sibling who has opened up an inn of her own. As she settles her girls in,she bumps into her own high school sweetheart Trace - and together they both realize the full meaning of "home."

Abby realizes 'home' outweighs the rapid pace of her corporate ladder - while she can live her ambition, she has a choice to live it at her own pace. Trace, retraces his footprints back into a high flying music career - now complete in heart and soul with Abby by his side.

However, the series revolves around stories, contexts, emotions and inner thoughts of all characters involved. The layer of family bonding, sibling love, ambition and words of wisdom from the elders are all implicit to tell a tale of the positive family always there for you. I realize the candy floss-ity of it, still am gullible enough to be swept along in its tide.

As I finished the 20 episodes spanning the 2 seasons, I thought of my home. I pictured the people I knew - here where I stay / where I come from - and realized that neither attested to being my home. Instead I am now suffering from an acute attack of hiraeth - "a longing for a home you cannot return to or one that was never yours. Not necessarily a house"

My home town folks never had any connect with me. Both parents were busy chasing materialistic dreams or living up to social ambitions - with no time to converse on topics that would have cemented us together. Instead now there are loud laments everywhere. I belong to a part of a generation that has no / negligible friends. The veil of friendship had been lifted up long back to realize the agenda driven relationship sustenance. I feel no shame or live in denial to highlight the lack - now there is no need even.

Where I stay, now too seems, polluted by people. None of them mine / a home. Nowhere is this feeling of abandonment of spirit or mind explicit - where you know that you can be still and in peace - without the brouhaha. No questions asked, no answers looked forward to - only a fluidity of space, time and relationships to float all boats.

I wonder, how many people have truly found homes? Homes they are lovingly beckoned to - in light / dark? 

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