What makes a home?

It's funny the things that come to mean a home to you. I would have thought the people, the memories...well, it is those things, but it's also a whole lot of animate and inanimate objects, and that's what surprises me. We're in the throes of getting the house we live in refurbished. It's a rented house but we've never thought of it as such and thus never hesitated to spend out of our own pockets or put in time and effort to do things a certain way. When we moved in, we decided on a slightly strange living plan. On the first floor, we have a small drawing room ( enough to seat about 6-7 people) and 3 bedrooms + a kitchen. On the second floor, we walk out onto a marble-floored terrace and then there is one really large room, one medium sized room and one additional kitchen/ storage which is quite small. I decided that I wanted the largest room to be our bedroom and turned one of the first floor bedrooms into the dining room, one into a family room and one into our 'messing room' - the room with all the wardrobes so we needn't have heavy wardrobes taking up space in any other room. Upstairs was our bedroom, a storage room for odds and ends and the guestroom/ bookroom, until the kids came along and usurped it for their bedroom.

We'd lived in luxurious government bungalows growing up in Lutyens' Delhi, with the last one being set on a half acre plot in the heart of town, with 100 trees on the perimeter of the house. My bedroom window looked out into the boughs of a neem tree, we had a front lawn and a huge paved-over party space on the side with a bamboo bar and a kitchen garden at the back. yet those were the years that I was busy with my career, a hectic social life and dating A, so the garden existed in the periphery of my life. It was only once we moved into this house that I realised I needed that touch of greenery.

The terrace garden started, innocently enough, with some motley potted palms which I would water in the evening. Then over time, I began getting interested in gardening and read a whole assortment of books on what I could do with a container garden. I started studying about plants, not in a botanical way but simply about the names and species, which did better where, which flowered. I read about garden design. And slowly the motley collection began taking shape as a terrace garden. In the winter, I'd get a whole lot of seasonal flowers planted, ready for spring. I got fragrant plants and night-blooming ones, ones that were perennially blooming, creepers, foliage plants, cacti, bonsai...Once I picked up 100 different types of succulents, intrigued by this species - unfortunately my gardener did not understand the variety and killed off all but two.

The garden became a living, breathing part of the home...and it became a critical part of the spirit of our home. Visitors to the first floor often wondered at how we managed to live in such a cramped space - and then we'd proudly escort them up to our terrace garden. The nondescript brown iron door opens on to a veritable tropical paradise, with color and fragrance, light and movement - and suddenly the house is transformed into a place of surprises, secrets and delight. It is such a lush green space that one feels vaguely surprised to look down and not find grass beneath one's feet. We've made a habit of morning tea in this space whenever the weather is cooler, and I've sat out with my kids during the rain, watching it pour down upon my plants, watching the plants spring up joyously and raise their faces to the deluge. The kids have swum in their plastic wading pool there. Birds have nested there and left their nests behind as a gift for us. A and I have sat out at night, drinking in the scent of raat-ki-rani and madhumalti and jasmine and watched the moon rise over the house. We have loved this unique, private space which made us feel as if we were on an enchanted island far away from the world, because neither of our neighbours uses their second floor. No television, no neighbours, just us and our magical realm...

And now the terrace garden has to go. Apparently the marble floor leads to seepage upon the walls of the house, and since we don't own the house, we can't make structural changes which would allow us to keep the terrace garden intact. If the house belonged to me, I'd get a landscape architect to break down and recreate the terrace floor such that no seepage occurs ever again, and while he's at it, plant a lawn. But sadly, it doesn't. So we have to dismantle the garden. We are moving down to occupy the ground floor as well so we do have a small patch of lawn in front and back where the plants can go. But the place of magical delights, the secret garden of fantasy that we had built up here will be no more. I know there are worse troubles at sea...but my heart is breaking with each plant that I move out of its accustomed place and down into a conventional space.

It seems I can keep a small selection of lightweight, seasonal plants up there. But to me, that's like replacing a jungle with a strip of manicured lawn. The longing for a home of my own, that I own and can take decisions about is growing upon me, brought about by this. Because an emotional investment in a rented house is like having an affair with a married man - ultimately the commitment lies elsewhere. I find myself withdrawing from this house that suddenly seems to be constructed of four walls and a roof, nothing more, and not wanting to pour more of my heart into doing up the new spaces we are moving into. We're moving out of the enchanted kingdom and back to the real world...