The Home Need

By Sahana Vamsee

When you close your eyes, you see dreams of pleasure, of ice cream or a talk with your role model. Or you may see nightmares of dark drowning waters or dusty caves that creak under your footsteps. But even if we are put in that situation we have something that more than 2 million people don't have. Humans are, Evolutionarily speaking, hairless apes. But what separates us from animals is not our skill or intelligence. It's our identity. There is no other “animal” that goes by a nation. National identity makes us, us. And even in a dark cave, you can still choose to identify yourself as a citizen of a place, a home.

Let’s see two stories.

Bam! You hear a noise. Sweating, you dread what sound you hear. This has happened before, many times. It's not good news. It was routine at home. Bullets rain, as they have been for months. But you have a problem. You don’t have (drum roll...) toothpaste. It's been a week since that minty cool taste touched your mouth and anytime longer isn't healthy. So you go for a quest of your life. Pass the treacherous streets of tar and broken metal, into a battle you don't know why you got stuck in, and reach the end destination to a shop opposite the street. As you walk, with a metal plate in front of you, a searing pain takes over as a bullet strikes your arm and you feel yourself being dragged away from the road, half unconscious and boggled at the event that took place.

Ahh! You take deep breaths. This is not a dream. It's a memory. ‘

You're now studying in IISC Bangalore, researching your second PHD. why? Because if you dont sweat and study you will have to be taken to your war stricken country, where you bleed and die.

This is not a made up scenario. There are so many academics who are currently studying in other countries. Without staying there for education, they have to go back to their country, where being forced to join the army, they die. They can’t work here or become citizens. That becomes illegal. We study to get a good job, a good family and a good life. But they do so they have a chance at breathing. This is a condition for many people from the Syrian Arab Republic for a long time. Let's see the other story.

Money. Money. Cash. Debt. All these words jumble in your head. There's no good answer. You asked a simple question to your mom. Why can’t you have cooked food? But the answer was complex. You had seen the news from your balcony on an old woman’s television. Rich people were moving out of the country to the USA, France, Australia. But you knew one thing. You were stuck. As you have been for 4 months, struggling for money. That word was undervalued in the mind of a child but it dictated everything, now that word changed your life, your humanitarian needs.

This is a situation we all know a bit too well from the news. Sri Lanka. Debt. Lack of basic amenities for Sri lankans and refugee crisis.

Both these stories have one thing in common - both cases you lose a part of yourself. Your national identity. It's a human need to feel home and be home at a place but this state leaves you orphaned. We should be thanking the heavenly grace that gave us the position to read this without being able to relate to it. Home is an easy word. Four letters, one syllable. But the consequences it has on the homosapien species is something not a lot of us think about. So the next time you have a nightmare, be happy yours is better than the sleep spoilers that millions of humans get at night and day.

By Sahana Vamsee