I remember running up the 67 steps as if it were yesterday. Panting up the stairs with a toast in my hand, trying to make it on time for assembly after breakfast. I remember sitting by the Losers statue, sheepishly hiding from my teacher whose class I was bunking. I remember lying down in front lawns, soaking up every bit of Ooty sun I could get, and I remember the constant smell of eucalyptus always floating around in the air. All these details, all these instances, as if they happened yesterday. How much of something do you reminisce about until you cannot anymore? This thought reminded me of a video I came across the other day that had an intriguing word in it. Hiraeth. Wikipedia states that Hiraeth is a Welsh concept of longing for home. It implies the meaning of missing a time, an era, or a person, including homesickness for a place. There was only one place that could ever make me feel like that, only one place to evoke such an emotion in me, and just one place that could come closest to being my hiraeth. And that was Lovedale.Â
My childhood bubble for eight years. The Lawrence School, Lovedale. Some would call it school, but that seems too minuscule a term to describe it. A boarding school was never a first option. My sister turned out to be the guinea pig and witnessed the experience of it first, after which I joined in fourth grade. What is life going to look like now that I only go back home twice a year? Was the main question I found myself asking- “You’re going to end up calling this home just when you realise that you have to leave it became my answer towards the end. The teacher I once used to be mad at for screaming at me in class is the one I send happy new year messages to now. The lack of gadgets I used to crib about, I now crave. But more than anything. Everything I tried so hard to get away from is exactly what I find myself missing. To find a home in a place that does not traditionally begin as your home is an odd feeling. What do you mean, I found comfort in the kothu parotta I couldn’t tolerate initially? Or the long walk from prep school to the games field that I’d do anything to take again?Â
Eight years of living with my friends, catching Ooty sunsets, and it is only now that I realise that I look for Lovedale in every place I go. I get excited every time it rains because it reminds me of the smell of Nilgiris. I get excited every time someone mentions dosas, and all I can think of is the Sunday morning dosas my friends and I would wait the entire week for. But most of all I look for any moment to mention anything about my little childhood bubble and above all I get to tell them about my home.