I am going home

 “I am going home”

Mahendra “Speedy” Gonsalkorale

How many times have you heard this said, but have you really wondered what these four simple words mean? It is easy enough to directly translate, isn’t it? Well, as you may have guessed there is a twist in the tail. It is with reference to that simple word “home” and I would like you to pause for a moment and….. think..

Home could be the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.

It could be a place of residence, accommodation, a roof over your head, quarters, lodgings, rooms, address, location, residence, abode, dwelling etc.

It could refer to the country you live in now or The country you were born and lived a significant part of your life.

It could be an institution for people needing professional care or supervision, such as residential home, nursing home, old people's home, retirement home, convalescent home, rest home, children's home etc.

It could be a place of shelter, refuge, a retreat, an asylum or hostel.

The feeling of belonging to a home is strong in the animal kingdom. An animal who returns by instinct to its home territory after leaving it has a homing instinct, e.g.,“a dozen geese homing to their summer nesting grounds"

Yet another use of the word home  is the central importance attached to the term home physically as illustrated by moving or aiming towards the most important place in the target or destination- aiming home. There is a similarity here, as home is of central importance.

For most of us, Home means an enjoyable, happy and safe place where you live, laugh and learn. It's somewhere where you are loved, respected, and cared for. When you look at it from the outside, your home might just look like an ordinary physical structure – but home is more, much more than a mere physical structure.

We take for granted what a home is. Like many things we have, we most appreciate it when we are not at home. Even when you are in a strange place, if you feel comfortable, you say you felt quite at “home”.

We forget the millions who have no home. Just think of the terrible situation in Afghanistan. Just think of helpless innocent children who are homeless. Just think of some psychologically and mentally disturbed people who live on the streets – the homeless.

We look back on our Faculty days and for many home could have been a hostel or rented room. When you are away from the Hostel like at a party, going home means going back to the hostel which is now your home. But if you have a parental home, that is what you refer to when you say I am going home. When I was an HO at GHC, I lived in Regent House and my room there quickly became my home and my mother was puzzled by my desire to go back there rather than sleep overnight at Nawala. Regent house, and in particular my room, was then my home!

When I went on holiday from England to visit my parents’ house at Nawala where I used to live, I was going back home. But when the holiday ended and I left for England, I was also getting back home!

A home is important for mental and social stability. A home must be a place of safety where you can lower your guard and relieve yourself from anxiety, stress and fear. You are even luckier if you have a loved one/s with you to share the home.

If you live abroad, is your home that country or the country where you were born and bred; where you were transformed from a tiny fertilised ovum to a functioning human being through an intermediate state of utter helplessness totally dependent on your loving parents? And now, here you are with memories, both pleasant and unpleasant, fears, anxieties, survival skills, education, knowledge, beliefs, opinions friends, associates etc. What seems to matter is the here and now.

Home is something some never had, not in its true sense. To us, the Medical Faculty all of us attended was indeed a kind of home. Our home need not be the same one over time; it can change from year to year or even in the same day. But all my homes, from childhood through school days, medical student days to all the physical places I occupied after becoming a doctor in different countries, are of importance to me.

Home is special. That is why, wherever you were out during the day or the week or the month or the year, the sense of relief, joy, the happiness you experience when you reach the front door, turn the key, open the door and let yourself in, is so joyous, so comforting, so “womb-like”, because your current home IS your home.

Man still preserves some characteristics derived from his history as a vulnerable being fighting to survive in an unpredictable and dangerous environment. The one place he feels safe is his home. It is possibly also the only place in his world he can make changes that are personal. It is therefore not surprising that he feels safe and happy in this “world within a world”. Anybody who suffered from the unpleasant experience of being burgled will understand the feeling of revulsion experienced at the mere thought that your personal space, your home, has been violated.

I wonder whether my thoughts on home have any connection with the pleasure gained by reminiscing on our "home", the medical faculty at a crucial stage of our lives. I wonder…I just wonder…Do you?