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19 September 2026
A house can be beautiful and still feel empty.
And sometimes a very ordinary place can feel like home.
I have often wondered why.
It is probably not the furniture. Not the paint on the walls or the size of the rooms.
It is the people.
A familiar voice from another room. Someone asking whether you have had your tea. A person who knows when you are quiet for a reason and when you are simply tired.
Even small routines become precious without our noticing.
The chair someone always chooses. The newspaper placed in the same place every day. The sound of a particular door opening in the morning.
We rarely think about these things while they are happening.
Then circumstances change.
Someone moves away. A room becomes unused. A familiar routine disappears.
And suddenly, the house feels different.
Nothing has happened to the walls.
We have simply lost some of the life that filled them.
Perhaps that is what home really is.
Not a building, but the collection of people, habits, sounds and memories that make an ordinary place feel like ours.
And perhaps we only understand how much they mattered after they are no longer there.
Rajat Chandra Sarmah
Guwahati, Assam, India
Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah5
YouTube: conversewithasmile
Email: rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com
