The landing card asked for my address, and for a long moment, I was hovering the pen above the paper, I was no longer entitled to write down the address of the residence that was my home. At that moment I realized that over last two decades this zip code was no longer identifying with me and that we had moved on much before we had physically checked out.

Home, as I understood it, in my formative years and as my parents and grandparents had known for their entire lifetimes constituted a fulfilling and intimate geography of deeply meaningful associations with familiar people and places. The neighbors, the local bus stop, simple aesthetically pleasing homes, the laundry man on our lane whose coal burner would send spirals of smoke early morning all contributed to my identity.

Back then, you would have met a Mrs. Chatterjee, who lived across from us and taught English her presence as constant as the schoolbooks under her arm. Her father-in-law sitting in the balcony sipping cups of tea all day oblivious to the fact that in years the scene would drastically stand altered. Every evening, the neighbor’s piano notes would announce supper time whilst at six, the auspicious sound of the conch shells had already announced the arrival of evening. Back then my extended family lived in close proximity and we all had shared joys and sorrows and it just became one colossal identity.

Our social landscape was shaped as much by these quotidian presences as by the discerning neighbors we knew affectionately through their pet names. Our address carried its own quiet prestige, we often identified our residence by its proximity to a legendary freedom fighter’s house and also close to that of a renowned regional film director committed to soulful art.

The festive celebrations were communal and there was a fetish for small rituals like the home prepared sweets andsavouries, ritualistic dance and music offered as paryers. The communal fairs were sponsored by the homes on the streets and there was no pompous representation of faith by wealthy few. The music was ritualistic, the faith was intrinsic, the celebration was austere and ascetic. The goddess and gods were symbols of hope and rightousness and association was apolitical. This communal geography transcended mere physical location, it constituted the coordinates which was our home.
You could have migrated from any part of the country, but if you had lived in this city for eighty years and raised three generations here, you did not merely live at that address you became one.

As I stepped into adolescence, the street began to change, the distinct old began to give away to obnoxious new. The buildings grew vertically overpowering the space where my guardian angels sat watching over us. The quiet outlines of trees and small storey houses have been demolished. The large structures of glass, bling and marble continue to grow vertically in line with vaulting human greed and ambition. The ancient souls of the place moved away in distress, displaced by a restless, rebellious version of the city that no longer recognised them. Some of us have clung to our memories within the four familiar walls, even as the world outside underwent a harsh metamorphosis into something loud, intrusive, and strangely repellent. “In today’s luxury enclaves a zip code doubles as a declaration of arrival, the geographical coordinates have become the identity which is loud, over the top, decadent, and its every inch quantifiable in dollars per square meter. The zip code gives the individual the identity.

As I continue to arrive at a new destination and the immigration form requests an address, I know that it is a space that is interchangeable, a temporary marker that shifts with circumstance. The line I inscribe now carries little significance; the words are dead, and the address does not exist and I am possibly a misfit. Recently, returning to my mother’s embrace, I rediscovered a sense of orientation through my father’s recollections that my identity lives within me and it is not defined by numbers.

I am carefully composing the familiar elements in my home which will go on to form the identity for my posterity, and just like me, long after the walls have altered or disappeared their identity will transcend beyond mere coordinates.