When the very house tilts in the torrential rains

Tell me, where can I go to find a home of my own?
A home where someone who loves me will live…this one, mine too,
someone who, returning from outside, will call my name
and turn the whole house upside down with joy!

Someone who feels deeply when my heart is heavy,
someone who grows weary quickly when I'm not around—
will anyone give me such a home?
A home truly my own,
a person truly my own…will I find them somewhere?

I too need such a home,
where the people match my heart,
where day and night, every moment passes
in the shade of love and tenderness,
a home full of laughter and joy,
where no one remains a stranger,
where there's no accounting of profit and loss, no dividing up…
Does such a home exist anywhere, tell me?
Or do we glimpse such homes only in dreams?

Is a home merely this—
where all kinds of people live out of sheer obligation,
bound to each other yet living in detachment?
Or often, though they look at each other's faces,
they somehow live hiding from one another?

What kind of home is this, where there are no bonds of affection?
Where there's no pull of the heart?
Where, even living together—in the same house, under the same roof,
no one's pain troubles anyone else,
or one person's anguish only feeds another's satisfaction?

What harm comes if such a home doesn't exist?
Even if it breaks in a storm's blow, or black clouds gather in its corners?
What does it matter if such a home falls and rises again?
A home where joy and sorrow aren't shared with one another—
what obligation is there to call such a place home?

At day's end, people build homes hoping to wash away the day's weariness and find peace.
Where every person is equal, no one big, no one small,
where relationships aren't merely relationships but flowers strung on one thread,
and if somehow one end of the thread breaks, do the flowers remain whole?

Every day, bit by bit, with blood-bought money we build our homes,
binding our hearts with hope—now I'll have a place of my own,
now I too will have something I can claim as mine when I see it!
Yet when day ends, so many dreams seem to vanish, dissolving away,
forgetting the home's sorrow, we come outside and let our sweat flow,
we grow tired forgetting comfort itself!

It's like trying to forget the home while living in it,
all day long, always, hoping to remove our own sanctuary of peace!
Yet how much blood and sweat it took for this home to come,
what price was paid to get such a home, such shelter!
At day's end we all return home,
we must return home—
some return by compulsion,
some by mere habit,
some return seeking tender refuge,
some return duty-bound to see their loved ones,
and some return simply…because there's nowhere else to go!

You tell me, does that home ever become a home,
where live a few odd people
and some makeshift neighbors?
At day's end some return home…even unwillingly,
pushing through the debris of brick and stone, still…they make a home!

The question burns:
Do people make homes?
Or do homes make people?
Can a home ever become one's own?
Or do the people in a home make it their own?
The whole world seems covered in debris of brick and stone!
This seems not a world but merely a house-tomb,
where the need for houses matters more than the people in them!

Opening one home's door, another home's wall appears,
here people are instant trash,
people are beasts, homeless in search of homes,
people now, intoxicated by houses,
are the most unwanted garbage heap of this world!

Leaving behind these sunbeams of mine to clutch at clouds—
you've done well, very well!
Have I finally gotten permission to dive into deeper waters?
Has another light now gone out?
Alas, another mountain has crumbled in the monsoon downpour!

Sushanta Paul