There are three stalks of sunflowers sitting in a tall vase in the space in my home that I have designated as the Sitting Room. 

The Sitting Room is my favourite part of the house – it houses the record player and speakers (my most prized possessions), three shelves filled with books (my lifetime’s worth of legacy in the form of literature I have consumed over the years) and a giant papasan chair that is a hot favourite among all who visit our home. 

The sunflowers are tall, standing with their heads held high, they are a bright sunshine yellow, and involuntarily, when I look at them, my lips curve. 

As I sit stretched out on my papasan chair, I stare at the flowers, listening to Arooj Aftab on the vinyl, her dulcet tones and the lilting sound of the accompanying music lulling me to sleep. 

The sun is shining brightly outside, the heat near unbearable, but in this house, in my Sitting Room, it is cool and quiet.

My heart beat slows almost imperceptibly. 

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I have a complicated relationship with the idea of home.

For a long time, I struggled with being tethered to any one place, especially this place, where I have now found myself. 

It is hard to feel at home when you are constantly viewed as an outsider – just recently, someone asked me where I was from, really from, and I felt my breathing deepen from stress, as I replied calmly that I am from here, born and bred. But you don’t look like everyone else, they said. You sound different too. 

Must be cancer, I quipped, and immediately the conversation ended. 

Sometimes I wield my disease like a weapon to protect myself from questions I deeply tire of answering. 

It is funny, though, that while I have a complicated relationship with the idea of home, I have a lot of hope around it. 

I am eternally hopeful about what arriving home will feel like. 

Maybe, because it has already happened to me in so many vignettes – when I first met my bosom group of friends in university who reminded me that friends are the family we get to choose; or when I first met my husband and heaved a sigh of relief that here, here, I could finally rest; or when I enter a bookstore and take in a deep breath to smell the mustiness of old books and feel my heart stutter with joy; or when I am sitting in a cold little tea house in Nepal staring at mountain silhouettes in the distance and am reminded of my utter insignificance. 

Home – less of a place, more of a feeling. Mhmm.

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My home is a reflection of the beauty I seek. 

On the walls are artwork from Indian artists whose work has resonated with my husband and me. On the side table, a little porcelain vase in deep sea green in the shape of a heart made by a local potter. Throws, picked up from travels, each with a little story, a big adventure. Our wooden dining table – my husband’s pride and joy – caked with wax from the days of tapered candles burning into the night. A green rug I picked off the internet for no other reason than I saw the colour and it made me think of infinite possibilities. 

It is easy to equate beauty to the acquisition of things – I do it often, unapologetically.

But if you wait a moment, look harder at the thing you desire, and watch the way your heart responds, you learn that beauty too, is a feeling. 

And isn’t it a wondrous life, when your home is an altar to the beauty you seek to embody? 

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My first home is my body.

I forget this often, having gone to a girls school where inadvertently, we are taught to judge ourselves, want more, be better, question question question our physical attributes.

My body has been less of a temple, more of a battleground, especially in the last few months.

I have seen it grow and expand, shouted in horror at how I have looked, wept over the loss of my hair, eyebrows, eyelashes. I have seen my nails turn blue and die, my skin become dark, dry, peeling, fresh bruises on my skin each time I accidentally knock into something. I have railed and rebelled against this transformation, often on my knees.

I do not ask why often because there are no answers, but in my darkest days, the why hasn’t been for why this has happened to me, but why I must look this way, as if the sadness and suffering and the pain isn’t enough. 

It has been more than a month since I completed my chemotherapy treatment. It feels strange to say it, because it feels like the distant past, but not really.

My cells are regenerating quickly, I now have the softest fuzz on my head which prompts squeals of delight from my family and friends. Your hair is growing, they say. I sigh, smile.

Secretly, I am delighted by their joy, of them celebrating this win, my body’s win. Because the regrowth of my hair represents the potential of all to come – of the different hairstyles I can now experiment, after having had a curly bob for the last decade of my life; of how it signals what is happening elsewhere in my body, where the grief and trauma are being processed; how I am regaining muscle and strength on the left side of my back and chest. 

I am reminded that for all that I cuss and swear at myself, that I am also my biggest cheerleader, because I am here, because I am constantly, fully inhabiting my body in my present. I am not running away from my reality, however painful it can be; from the body which houses my soul, my soul which is timeless and connected to the vast expanse of this existence. 

My first home is my body and it has taken my 32 years to say this, but boy, am I proud to own this home. 

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I have opened all the windows in my home. 

There is a light breeze and the day curtains are fluttering in the wind. The light shifts, and for a second, the sunflowers seem to be ablaze. 

My body hums in response, you are home it says. You are home.

…

Over the years, Arathi Devandran has written for e-zines and publications on a range of issues, serving as a youth columnist, general observer of the human condition, and dissector of the specific experiences of being a South Asian woman in a patriarchal and parochial world. More recently, she has become interested in exploring themes of inter-generational familial relations and navigating the complexities of self-growth through personal essays and autofiction. Arathi is currently working on her full-length manuscript. Her work can be found here. 

Disclaimer: All opinions and views here are my own.