Home: The Experience #TakeYourselfHome

What is the meaning of home?

Hint: It's not just a place.

In the final chapter of Rioga Premium Real Estate Advisory’s first branded storytelling IP, we transcend walls and addresses to explore home as a lived experience - one shaped by memory, emotion, and individuality. Through a curated collection of voices and personal reflections, this piece gathers nuanced interpretations of home, each exquisitely personal yet bound by a singular, timeless pursuit of belonging.

“Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.” That couldn’t be truer. Today, we could feel at home in pictures, in songs, in meals, in furniture, even in the smell of old soaps and shampoos (which I happen to vehemently collect). We could feel at home in a place we have never known before, or in the living and breathing people, we have always known.”
- Philosopher and writer Alain de Botton, from ‘The Architecture of Happiness’.

"Most of my life growing up, I was a shy single child with two working parents. I wasn’t much for playing outdoors with a huge swarm of kids, but home was my ultimate playground. I would pump life into motionless objects around me and create a world full of imagination and splendour. As time passed home became a safe space where I had the privilege to uninhibitedly create — poems, cartoons, a storm shelter for a family of six plush toys and a draft of my first slice of life novel at age of 11, which obviously never lived on any page except my notebook. Home was a lab where I could dissect my thoughts and listen to my own voice, louder and clearer than I would hear it anywhere else. For me too, it was a room of my own."
- Shikha Verma @Freethinkr, Medium

"Perhaps that summer I enjoyed at my grandmother’s (I used to call her Bibi Jan) home is most memorable; it was a cute little cottage that had the quality of being alive. Tucked away at the far end of a dusty lane, it was guarded by a blooming flower garden, which she loved so much, where sunflowers stood tall and vibrant. The air in the house had been always filled with the fragrance of lavender and with the smell of ripening tomatoes in her garden. Even though I no longer have my grandmother’s cottage, I still cherish the fond memories we made there, and that keeps me going. All the things that she taught me—love, kindness, the value of stories, and the importance of togetherness—are engraved in my heart and still define my perception of home. It is a beautiful continuation of our memories, love, hopes, friendships, and life events that give us a better perspective of belonging. In other words, home is a process and not a space, as has been described over and over again."
- Dr. Ishrat Bano, More Than Walls

"Home is a leaky pipe you try to pretend isn’t real because it will ruin your month. Home is that kitchen you hate but can’t afford to change. Home is putting the cat out before an inspection. Home is black mould on the walls. Home is a steady investment for someone richer than you. Home is for eleven months until you move on again. Home is the corner that feels safest. Home is yours until they take it. Home is the scraps they give you afterwards. Home is a tent after an earthquake. Home is the ten thousand tons of concrete they drop on top of you. Home is falling into the sea. Home is a bright blue jewel in the blackness, getting so hot you can’t live there anymore. Home is when two children face each other and raise their hands in front of them, fingers touching to make a roof. Home is their friends piling in and sheltering underneath. Home is when your arms get tired, and I take your place."
- Mark Twain, Unscripted

“Home is a heartset.
It lives in emotion, not logic. It lives in energy, not geography. Home is when everything around you rises up to meet you exactly where you are, in a whole, familiar, ethereal embrace. Home feels like there is nowhere else in the world you’d rather be, and that is the single best feeling in the world, especially for a constant traveller. In my experience, I’ve learned to recognise these moments by an overwhelming sense of gratitude, which usually gives me pause. They are inspired by pure gratitude and peace. The surprising part about home is that, as much as it exists in the familiar, it can also exist in places, people, and activities that are new to us. Which means, home doesn’t have to be something we leave behind."
- Travelling Jackie, A World Traveller

When Marilynne Robinson says
‍“Home is the human condition,”
he’s quietly undoing the idea that home is something you achieve or secure.

Once again,

What does home mean to you?

Hint: It's not just a place.

‍

About Rioga Premium Real Estate Advisory:

An award-winning Real Estate Advisory firm from Mumbai, Rioga Premium dominates the city’s real estate turf as the Times Top Closure Real Estate Advisory for 2024-25. We have a digitally driven, client-first approach to all our services, including, Residential Retail Advisory, Strategic Advisory to Developers, and NRI Services. With a presence across 42 locations in Mumbai alone, presenting a bouquet of 160+ projects from more than 40 Grade-A developers, we are committed to delivering excellence with trust and integrity, making us the most preferred realty partner.