Remembering the place called home

Refugee community youngsters on their dreams and aspirations in a new land and a cherished memory from 'home'

- Pooja Singh

What home means to you?" N counters when I ask if she remembers home. As she moves her waist-long plait to the front and fixes the white-pink floral headscarf, a smile spreads across her face. "Tell me," she insists. "What home feels like?" N is 10. She has more questions than answers. Will she ever again see her birthplace, Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, which she left with her family five years ago? Is her three-storey school there still standing? Will the Taliban kill her friends? Her memories of home are largely of school and friends, though she understands why they had to leave; her family, like many other refugees, may resettle in the US, Canada or Australia.

As of 2023, the UN Refugee Agency's (UNHCR's) registration and refugee status determination figures showed 290,048 recorded refugees and asylum seekers in India from countries such as Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Tibet and Myanmar. Delhi's bustling Bhogal market presents a microcosm of this milieu, with a large number of refugee families making this neighbourhood their home for the time being.

"Home" is a subjective term. What might represent comfort and permanence to many of us, might seem temporary and a mere waiting zone for others. You might have built a whole new life away from your birthplace but the feeling of home comes from memories of the moments spent there, before it was engulfed by a war or a crisis. For others, home, as a concept, doesn't really exist.

That's what I learnt in the past three weeks while working on a short project as part of Lounge's Children's Day special issue. Last month, I set out to find out what the idea of home is for young adults from refugee communities. While travelling across Delhi and meeting over 15 children and young adults who trace their roots to countries like Afghanistan, Sudan, Palestine, Myanmar and Yemen, I gathered different answers.