Beyond familiar

 It was my first official visit to an interior village. As we ventured deeper off the beaten path, an unfamiliar fear began to grow in my heart—the fear of not knowing the way back.

I’ve traveled to distant places before, places where an entire ocean separated me from home. Yet, I wasn’t afraid then, because I always knew how to return.

 I’ve clung to a sense of stability. I kept sleeping on a floor mattress long after buying a new bed. I’ve kept the furniture in my room arranged in the same alignment for years. And sometimes, I’ve ghosted people just a day after having a great conversation. That last habit might paint me as a bad person, and I won’t defend myself. But I’ve come to realize that my obsession with maintaining, or even forcing, normalcy often drives me to act in peculiar ways. It's as if I fear the disruption that change brings—the fear of stepping into the unknown, where things aren’t fixed, and where the familiar rhythms of life may shift. This desire to resist change has made me hold on to things longer than I should, as if keeping everything static will somehow protect me from the uncertainties of what lies ahead.

Sociologist Emile Durkheim explains anomie—or normlessness—as the state of transition between an old normal and a new one. Some of us dread this shift, fearing the chaos that comes with it. Whether it’s dealing with work-related WhatsApp messages, talking to strangers, attending the weddings of peers, or staring at medical reports of aging parents while nursing our own aches and pains, these transitions feel overwhelming. And yet, life demands that we move forward. Even traveling to an interior village, thousands of miles from home, becomes part of this journey to the unknown.

I’ve always envied the people who slept soundly in the houses of small towns as my train passed by their stations late at night. The idea of being perpetually in transit has always unsettled me.

Honestly, I don’t have much faith in the oft-repeated saying that "the journey is beautiful." Nor do I believe journeys truly end. All I have are the theoretical frameworks of thinkers like Durkheim and Talcott Parsons, who argue that the world operates in a state of dynamic equilibrium- every disruption ultimately settles into a new normal.

So, every time I travel to an interior village, i know I'll not be returning to the place i called 'home'. However, I'm sure I'll reach a place where I live now.