“Where is Home?”

“Where is Home?”
By Pratiksha Ghimire

We were chatting when someone asked, “Where is your home?”
I hesitated for four seconds. The place I had always called my home is now referred to as my maiti (parental home). Then, stumbling over my words, I said, “It used to be there… now it’s here.”
They simply replied, “Oh,” and the conversation moved on with others. But I was still stuck in that four-second confusion.

Where is my home?
What does my heart recognize as home?

Is it the place where I spent my childhood, where I lived for years, where I learned, played, and shaped the direction of my life?
Or is it the house I live in now—the one I was sent to by customs and traditions—where I am expected to build my future?

I am still confused. Where is my home?

I wonder—if I had built my home with my own sense of dignity, if I had defined it with my own will—then perhaps I would say clearly, without hesitation:
“My home is here.”

I would say—
It is not my father’s,
It is not my husband’s,
It is my home.