Threading the Intricacies of Home in Basudhara Roy's 'Stitching a Home'

<p><span>The concept of 'home' has been described from diverse perspectives in Indian English writings compared to other academic domains. The portrayal of 'home' has been illustrated in various disciplines in the proportions of 'places, spaces, feelings, practices, and/or an active state of the state of being in the world'. Besides from the postmodern viewpoint, sociology defines the concept of 'home' as 'complex', 'multi-dimensional', and 'multi-layered', and not necessarily constructed for any specific purposes. L. Fox describes 'five important dimensions' for 'home' as a financial investment, physical structure, territory, identity, and social and cultural unit, but on the other hand, Hohmann defines 'home' as a location for constituting privacy, identity and space. Basudhara Roy, in her collection '<em>Stitching a Home'</em>, attempts to scrutinise the construction process of a home behaviorally. Beyond the postmodern approach, the poet sees 'home' as one based on elements of binary opposition along with complexities, and through the parallel use of paradox and metaphors, the poems evoke the 'dualities of home'; both 'subjective and objective', 'permanent and lost', 'concrete and abstract', 'signified and aporia', ‘companionship and isolation’ and ‘homelessness and belonging’. The sociological study of autobiographical elements used in the poems may reflect the concept of 'home adjustment', but in comparison to the prevalent theories, it would be appropriate to look at the notion of 'home' in Basudhara Roy's poems as of an 'essentially contested concept' (ECC) view propounded by Walter Gallie. However, Roy's poems do not establish any constant or concrete ideology towards the concept of 'home', but to construct an identity, the poems carefully elucidate the distinctions between the relationships in the home and the home's relationship with the world and how the 'objects' in-home play significant roles in the creation of 'home'. This paper attempts to locate the approaches of constructing multi-layered relationships, emotions, feelings, and behaviours as portrayed in selected poems of Basudhara Roy's 'Stitching a Home'. What does it mean to be at home in today’s world where spaces and cultures are in a profound conflux - desired and forced? Through this study, the authors aim to locate the concept of home(s), in context to individuals’ perspective as well as collective.</span></p>