Bhawana Pokhrel, PhD
Ye tera ghar, ye mera ghar
kisiko dekhana ho gar
toh pehele aake maang le
meri nazar teri nazar…
Ye ghar bahut haseen hey…
The above song written by Javed Akhtar which casts Farooq Saikh and Deepti Naval in Jagjit Singh and Chitra Singh’s melodious voice from the movie Sath Sath (1982) reads: ‘Others may not see this house as beautiful as we do since they do not have the same values/ideals about a house as we do. They can only cherish the charm of our house if they could see it through our eyes.’ It speaks volumes about what a home is.
A home is a comfortable space for individuals as per their emotional, mental and cultural values and beliefs. In the movie cited above, a rented single room with minimum commodities devoid of luxurious items was a cozy home to them, addressing the lead characters’ (actor and actress’s) choice since both of them were against hoarding things their parents valued doing as a landlord and an accomplished person respectively. However, as the words in the lyric say, a home may be different things for different people; it’s a matter of one’s conception and perception. What is home for one may not be home for the other. Therefore, to cherish the charm of a home, we need to borrow the eyes as well as outlook of its builder.
After my PhD defense, many people who want to pursue their studies in the field of migration and diaspora issues have been showering me questions related to the term ‘home’. Time was my limit to answer them individually. Not only the pursuers of their higher studies in English but also in Nepali have made their queries afloat:‘Ghar bhaneko ké ho?’ [What is home?] Literati Nilam Karki Niharika had posted the question on her Facebook wall on 25 March 2020. The post was followed by lot of ideas as answers. However, home I believe is more than all those answers. I dedicate this article to all those noticed and unnoticed but curious people striving to come to grips with the concept.
Conferred on it, denotatively, connotatively or metaphorically are overarching meanings, some of which I discuss in this article with a female overtone, for it’s triggered by a response to the question from a contemporary leading feminist from the country. Also, it’s time that we have this kind of discourse from Nepal or Asia that embeds our experiences to add to discussions in the wider world contexts. The term ‘home’ is a different thing for different people who discuss it and it differs spatio-temporally as well as culturally.
At times in oral discourses, even at academic conferences and seminars, I have heard people talking about the terms home and house indiscriminately which is basically a faulty practice. To my knowledge, in Nepali we have the most commonly used term ‘ghar.‘ Also, at times we hear ‘basasthan‘ as its (Nepali) equivalent. The latter refers to a place to dwell in. However, the former is at present on its move for meaning/s making. In English, we have two corresponding terms i.e. house and home which vastly differ in their meanings though literally they seem the same. As per the conception, a house needs to contain, retain or fulfill certain characteristics to transform into a home.
To go back to the inception of the term, the word ‘home’ has its origin in Proto-Germanic word haimaz that stands for a dwelling, house, estate or a village. Similarly in Old Norse, heimer referred to individual ‘residence’ or the common ‘world’ as some of the commentators have commented on the wall. Besides, it also has some psychological, abstract implications which are also integral aspects of both the material definitions i.e. ‘dwelling place’ to the broader representation as ‘the world’ which implies a cosmopolitan coverage.
‘Home’ is basically a cultural concept. A scholar Shelly Mallet covers a wide range of definitions that incorporate alterations about the notion of home, starting with the traditional idea of home as a residence (which may be close to basasthan) to the institutional living in a family (pariwar as some of the commentators have mentioned). Mallet gives a definition of home, not as a ‘place,’ but as a ‘space’: ‘Home is a place but it is also a space inhabited by family, people, things and belongings – a familiar, if not comfortable space where particular activities and relationships are lived’ (63). Mallet makes an explicit distinction between home as a place and a space. She argues that home is a place as a location; in its inanimate form. But as a space, home is an amalgamation of ‘lived things, experiences and activities.’ Here she tries to draw a line between ‘physical’ and ‘experiential’ representations of home. As a mere physical entity it emphasizes on its materiality i.e. ‘house.’ So far as ‘home,’ is concerned, it brings in and puts an emphasis on human emotions. The latter definition of ‘home’ implies perceiving home in and through things, activities and feelings which is possible only through empathy i.e. the feeling of ‘oneness’ among its members or dwellers.
‘A house is made of bricks and a home is made of hearts,’ proclaims an English proverb. House is a thing that is made up of material— the bricks, that also can be bought; it connotes a lack of feelings, family members and social relations in the term house. Though family and social relations are not directly mentioned, the proverb implicitly stresses the difference between house and home by adding aspects of emotions and relations toward the latter.
Scholars like Saunders and Williams define home as ‘simultaneously and indivisibly a spatial and a social unit of interaction.’ For them, home is the physical setting where ‘basic forms of social relations and social institutions are constituted and reproduced’ (82). According to them home involves not only the physical settings but also social settings. These definitions give us clarity on the basic distinction between home and house; home is a spatial and social unit where family and social relations and institutions are produced, reproduced and negotiated, whereas house is only a physical item and a location or setting. All in all, the term house is a material entity whereas home is a spatial, personal and psychological unit along with social interactions.
Likewise, for Gloria Jean Watkins, an American author, professor, feminist, and social activist (known by her pen name bell hooks), home is a ‘sexist’s battleground’ (34). The phrase reveals hook’s view of home as a site that one must resist to be at and leave in order to grow or progress. This definition of home impels us to think about a journey further and beyond. As hook’s notion of home suggests crossing-over of these sexual boundaries is a ‘necessary antidote to the paralysis of oppression and depression’ (34). It demonstrates how hooks a feminist theorist, views home as a site of oppression and depression that fetters females to attain independence.
In this sense, in a system which demands her to go to a groom’s house at marriage and confers a position of a ‘buharee‘ that sounds similar to ‘kamaree‘ which tends to station her at the position like that of a servant, a woman with this awareness can seldom feel at home. Psychologically, for a woman home is a space that would promise her acceptance, equality, self respect, and freedom.
In patriarchy, home is the foremost thing women are most liable to be discussed in relation to. They are usually recognized and linked with matters related to home. However, it’s an imperative to know that home for a woman is not only the material structure but many other subtle and abstract things which we need to be informed of for making her feel at home. It’s a paradox that a woman may never feel at home on this entire earth; may be for the same reason, she is obsessed with the image of one. The reasons are myriads; most of which are connected to her dignity. Its dearth or abundance is what determines how much home a woman can be with, around you, or at your place.
Casting off all those prolepsis and possibilities, if we concentrate on the state of our being, home can be an existence on basic living element in our body as the aducatrice Saguna Shah once on her Facebook status had expressed; most probably after undergoing an operation. It can be an existential point of view to home. To be homed in a body means to exist; probably it’s a perception of being alive or a realization of having a life in one’s self as a human being.
With regards to human beings devoid of their gender categorization, home shares proximity to their identity and dignity. Human beings provided with proper space, acknowledgement and self respect can be at home anywhere and everywhere in the world. On the contrary, if acceptance, recognition and respect diminishes or if it is denied, they cannot feel at home even at their own houses. Given this, home in matrimony is a common space that the spouses create with their likes, desires, choices, norms, values and viewpoints that they uphold as a blended being. One will be able to only appreciate the allure of it provided that they see it through the maker’s eyes. In a patriarchal set up of a society like ours where a bride is expected to go to a groom’s house at marriage, it’s the responsibility of the man to discover whether the bride finds and feels home in his house. Whether she is emotionally, psychologically and physically accepted and well accommodated on the equal footing to the other members of the household deems crucial to her being homed.
Hence, home is a multidimensional, multidirectional phenomenon, an ongoing discourse with varying implications that would continue as long as the world exists. It ranges from the material structure as an abode to abstraction like created spaces and lived experiences to yearning for identity and dignity. It has a different meaning in relation to nation and migration discourses which I will (un)cover in the upcoming articles.
Works Cited
hooks, bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. South End Press, 1984.
Mallet, Shelley. “Understanding Home: A Critical Review of the Literature.” The Sociological Review, vol. 52, no. 1, 2004, pp. 62-89. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2004.
Saunders Peter and Williams Peter. “The Constitution of the Home: Towards a Research Agenda.” Housing Studies, vol. 3, no. 2, 1988, pp. 1-93.
[Dr. Pokhrel is Assistant Professor of English at Prithvinarayan Campus, Pokhara under Tribhuvan University.]