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So this is not exactly bookish but it is a sample of my writing. I wrote it for the Uni paper and I figured I’d share it here because you know, I’m sure all of you want to read my writing (haha, I’m totally saying that tongue in cheek style, guys.) The theme was “the space around you where you rest your head.”

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Home.

It’s a four letter word.

We moved to Canada in 2001. And yes, this is one of those stories, a heartfelt recounting of a farewell. Only…not really.

My bedroom window used to look out on sugarcane fields, rustling green in the hot sun and in the horizon you could see the blue glimmer of the sea (or the mountains, really it depended on which window you looked out of). There was a grove of banana trees, plump matrons they, assiduously guarding their fruit. And just out of sight was the chicken coop, smelly and dank. It contained a rooster that I was sure took malicious pleasure in interrupting my slumber every morning. Oh, the dreams I had about roast rooster.

Now, if you look out of my bedroom window, you will see the ill-kept backyard belonging to my neighbor. He used to have a lucrative crop of mint growing in it and my summer nights would be spiced by the enervating scent.  This horizon doesn’t offer much, just roofs of various houses. A uniform brown with one a different colour, determinedly asserting its individuality.

It is ironic, is it not? Fiji and Canada are, in terms of land mass, a glass of water and one droplet and yet. It is Fiji that holds the memory of space while Canada retains a sense of cohesiveness, a connection if you will, to people and things that hints at a lack of distance.

In Fiji (which is where I was born), my bedroom was very basic. A bed, a study table, a wardrobe that was falling apart and empty bookshelves, bare with hope of being filled someday. I was given to fancy so lipstick kisses decorated my door and I put up posters of long forgotten Bollywood heroes on my walls. I didn’t have many clothes, just one basket full. Now that I think about it, I didn’t have much of anything.

It wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t know there was anything more to have than what I already possessed.

My room here is a study in excess. My bookshelves are overflowing and my closet? Let’s not even go there. If I were to justify it, I would assert that I’m trying to make up for what I did not have in my childhood. But it would be a lie. The truth is, I’m just greedy.

The walls of this room are hidden by photographs of flowers, people and places I want to see and wish to go to. There is a poster of Orlando Bloom (though I much prefer him as a blonde Legolas) and Serevi, a rugby player and my childhood hero. And of course, there is my computer. A sinister collection of machines in the corner.

It takes a while before a space transitions from a place you exist in to a place you belong to. My window (I only have one now) might not look out to green fields and the blue sea shimmering in the distance. And I certainly can’t hear any rooster in the morning. But at night, when my head hits the pillow and my consciousness slowly ebbs away, I have that feeling unfurl in my chest.

You know that feeling.

The one that says you are home?

Home.

As I said, it’s a four letter word. Simple. And yet, so complicated.

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