Home-Where the Soul Resides

Everyone of us has a special place and that is HOME. I don’t know how you think, but recently I have begun to realize that when I was born, I too inherited the Earth. All of us are born free and it is only pettiness and greed and self-interest above-all-else that narrows down and limits our perspectives. But there is no gainsaying the fact that the Earth is our Home (by virtue of our being born human) and Mother Earth our refuge and our strength and, willy-nilly, our final resting place.

In my two-and-seventy years to date, I have felt totally at Home in just four places in this great big world of ours. The first, for almost twenty-three years since I was born, was Vestry School, in Trichy. My family had living quarters on campus and oftentimes I felt I was the king of my domain. After marriage, we lived in an ample portion of an old, romantic building, right in the heart of Chennai city, completed by a darkened, spiral staircase that led to the roof. Later, quite by accident, I found my eternal abode in the rambling bungalow I now own in Veteran Lines, Pallavaram; in between that discovery and before returning to what I would like to think of as my ancestral hideaway, I stumbled upon Heaven in the magical land of Oman in the Arabian Gulf region, where I sojourned for just four short years in Salalah, which I still consider to be God’s gift to the Gulf. It may seem foreboding, but I would like to rest here, in Veteran Lines, where I feel I truly belong, for I have heard that the Soul is no traveller and that the wise man stays at Home.

Veteran Lines, in the Cantonment area of Pallavaram, is a legendary human habitation. It was never exclusive, but the great the majority of buildings—bungalows and cottages alike—were owned and occupied by Anglo-Indians, like myself. Today there are just a handful of such families left here and the clock is still ticking. And yet the fascination remains. But, to be sure, a way of life is fast fading and soon the very name of this unique pocket of unsullied humanity may become a misnomer. The veterans, the original veterans, have passed on and the neo-Veterans, like myself, are blowing in the wind, waiting to be swept away in the chaff that modernity represents. Alas, Alas, Alas.

I have my Home in the fourth lane of Veteran Lines. The lane is still the pride of the Lines, for it is, by far, the broadest in the Colony and, perhaps, the best maintained, too. The entire lane is shaded by huge trees, one of which I planted more than three decades back. But walk right to the end of the lane and you will come face to face with an artificial garbage mound, beyond which is a place for clandestine nocturnal business. Why go that far? Right outside my home is another dump that hasn’t been cleaned for ages. And all this in a Cantonment, where there is supposed to be discipline, calm, security and orderliness. Alas, again.

There can be no doubt that human beings are the worst offenders when it comes to the destruction of the environment. We can witness the ravishment of our Earth everywhere we go. But that does not mean that we must give up hope. We must continue to fight the good fight and hope that someday soon the world will be a better place for us all.

Amen.