Context: We had been travelling for days. On our way back from the S-bahn station to our building…

Me: (pushing the stroller with Ru seated in it) Ru, tell me, where is home? Do you know the way? Show me.

Ru: (without any gestures and curiously seated in his stroller) Mumma, this is home.

Me: (still pushing the stroller) Where? Show me!

Ru: (still the same) This is home.

Me: (stopped pushing the stroller and asked again, this time a little more impatiently. I walked around the stroller to look at him and bent down slightly trying to catch any of his small gestures) Ru, show me again! I don’t know where is home.

Ru: (tapping his chest and almost pointing to himself) This is home. I home.

Me: (as usual, amazed and laughing my heart out, and pointing to the entry door of our apartment) Ru, look, we have reached home!

That night, after all the unpacking (the most exhausting part of any travel- the pile of clothes and those multiple pouches with all the toiletries, etc.!), I kept thinking about Ru’s answer. Maybe he was simply confused about the way back home. The little tricks he can play to find an answer somehow! Or perhaps (most likely!) he mixed up the German “Wer” (who) with the English “Where” which honestly is not surprising, considering he is learning multiple languages at once. So maybe, instead of hearing “Where is home?”, he thought I was asking “Whose home is it?”. Or maybe he did understand my English “where”, but just did not want to return home or the journey to end because, well, he does love his travels. Or maybe, just maybe, he really meant his answer to be “himself.” That he was home. Who knows what was going on in his mind! But his answer stayed with me.

All the meanings of home I have explored through my academic research flooded back to me. In academia, through an analysis of literatures, cultures and media, I often try to trace the contours of what makes a space/place a home. I pull apart metaphors from literature and analyse the emotional weight of one’s identity, migratory experiences, return and belonging. And yet, there it was! Ru’s gesture, one of the clearest and shortest definitions of home. Clearly, home is not a point on a map. You are the cartographical point of home. It is not as simple as “where the heart is,” as the common saying goes. It is simpler than that. It is you.

Just a few days before, I had been in a conversation with friends, discussing whether there is any such thing as a true, original you/self…you know like some stable core of who you are. And I suggested no, because we are all contextual or situational beings. Which also helps me define home more accurately now because home is also not a fixed geographical/physical entity or a fixed cognitive identity, but a space within where we can soften into honesty, even as we keep changing depending on our changing contexts. Not the unchanging self, but the undeniable self. The one that constantly shifts and yet shows up when we are unguarded. The one that a child points to, without irony, without theory, without doubt. Ru tapped his chest, pointing to himself, and said, here. And as usual, like all his innocent and often unintentional answers, it all seemed to make more sense.

I am curious about his answer the next time I ask him where home is…perhaps he will point to a building and, in that moment, I do not know whether to rejoice or feel a bit sad. Maybe it is enough that he knows where to return if he feels lost. That he can feel at home the most with himself. What else would any parent ever want for their single child! Wherever you go Ru, you will always be home…:)