July marks a decade of me living alone. Ten years since I left the Nagpur ā first Mumbai, then eight years in Bangalore, now everywhere and nowhere ā everything all at once.
I came with two bags, and undercooked plans. Ten years of doing everything on my own. Ten years, three apartments, and now, another shift looming. The tape knows me better than most people. Iām still packing and unpacking. Still leaving. And still searching.
I hope you get to experience the joy of setting up your house in your early or mid-twenties like the thrill of choosing curtains without compromise, of deciding where the fairy lights go, just because.
I made every wall a moodboard, every dinner a solo date with myself. Thereās a strange, soft power in building a space thatās entirely yours. Mess, music, memories and all. The 270924 incense sticks in my corner would nod.


I wouldnāt lie. My current address has seen more turmoil and turbulence than all of the flights combined. Itās as if the walls learned how to sigh. The kind of space where even the light feels like itās grieving. A place that knows heartbreak by name and stores old tears in the grout between tiles. It tried to hold me as much as it could.
I remember writing in one of the stories in Orenda, named CafunĆ©: āFor I am the one without strings, four walls but not limbs. For I am a home who wants to be a human, just to cafunĆØ her to sleep.ā
And now, I think maybe Iāve been both ā the weary souvenir girl who needs the cafunĆ©, and while the space is aching to be human.
Iāve lived in and out of suitcases more than Iāve lived inside drawers. Traveled endlessly: for work, for weddings, for some reason to not be still. Airports feel closer. (Joke is on me because I am based in Bangalore). But seriously, I know a few familiar faces, flight numbers and schedules, gates that give you the best view.
My pronouns now are window/seat. And for the longest time my bioās had - āWindow seat is my favourite abode.ā I guess the universe took it too seriously.
And my Wi-Fi is named Khwaabghar. Poetic, yes. I often jest that home is where the Wi-Fi connects automatically. Sometimes thatās my own. Sometimes itās a friendās flat where the chai is too sweet, the blanket smells like their dog, and yet, I sleep better than I have in weeks!
What is home, then? (as existential as the meaning of life)
Is it the scent of mogra in my motherās hair or my fatherās instructions? Is it smell of idli-sambhar or the taste of Indori jeeravan on pohe? The echo of old classics drifting through the courtyard? Or the childhood game of ghar-ghar, where two cushions were a castle and a dupatta could make you anyone, anywhere?
These days, home feels like a trick question. A riddle I wake up to and canāt forget by dusk.
Even Country roads, take me home... doesnāt know the pin location. Take me where, John Denver? To my first leaking hostel ceiling? To the version of me who believed home could be permanent? To someoneās arms that felt like a sanguine Sunday?
I donāt know.
But I do know this: Iāve survived and thrived a decade living alone. Iāve stitched together some kind of life with bubble wrap, heart, and laughter. Iāve made a home by living out loud; out of nothing more than courage and conviction. Nobody told us ghar ghar was a rehearsal for life, where friends disguised as family members. Yaar-parivaar much.
If I had to put it bluntly - we chase meaning like we chase closure, but (maybe) theyāre the same thing: elusive, imagined, unfinished.
Well, I guess I am getting better at calling exits by gentler names.
Hereās to living in sentences - yours, mine, ours! :)
Writeously yours,
Shalaka Kulkarni
a beautiful rendition of 10 years
"Home is where the Wi-Fi connects automatically"
Until recently, most front doors used to have a nameplate hung next to it, a quiet sign of who lived inside.
Today, the Wi-Fi name is the new nameplate. Itās no longer fixed to a wall, itās broadcast and ambient.
You donāt need to be standing at the door to know the house. The name floats out into the world, announcing presence. The password is the new key, not just to the internet, but to connection and belonging.
The nameplate has gone virtual. Strangely, it feels more alive to me. š