Making and becoming

I grew up in New Delhi, India — a city where summers blaze relentlessly, where the streets never sleep and where every corner hums with stories waiting to be told. The scent of sizzling street food clings to the air, rickshaws weave through traffic in a chaotic dance and the pulse of the city is constant. Even as a child, if I had to describe my life in one word, it would’ve been eventful. There was always something happening — a festival transforming the skyline with bursts of color; an impromptu cricket game on the streets; a monsoon that turned the roads into rivers. In this fast-moving world, I learned to adapt, to stand firm in the face of unpredictability and to dream of what lay beyond the narrow alleyways of my childhood. 

For the longest time, I believed that home wasn’t a place — it was family. No matter where I went, as long as my family was with me, I would be home. But when I moved away for university, and then my family moved too, I began to realize that home was more than just the people I loved. Home had also been Delhi: the streets I walked every day; the sounds that made up my world; the way the city seemed to breathe alongside me and fuel me. 

Leaving wasn’t just about adjusting to a new place; it was about letting go of something I had always taken for granted. The air felt different, the roads stretched impossibly wide, and for the first time, silence felt overwhelming. No street vendors calling out, no neighbors chatting on their balconies, no festival drums echoing in the background. At first, it felt like I had been uprooted, like a plant pulled from the soil where it had grown strong. But over time, I began to see it differently — not as uprooting, but as transplanting. I wasn’t just being taken from one place to another; I was being given the opportunity to grow somewhere new.

Change is inevitable, but growth is a choice and spring is proof of this. It isn’t just a season of renewal, it is a season of action. Plants don’t wait for the perfect moment; they push through the soil, determined to bloom. Flowers stretch towards the sunlight. What was once buried beneath the barren cold makes its way to the surface, and in doing so, it becomes something new. 

In many ways, I have felt the same shift within myself. I could have resisted change, clung to the past and let nostalgia hold me back. Instead, I chose to step forward, to shape my own narrative, to make something meaningful of the unfamiliar and very different chaos. I carried my roots with me, but I also allowed myself to plant new ones — to embrace different cultures, to meet people whose perspectives challenged my own and to redefine what "home" meant.

Even now, as I prepare to graduate, I find myself asking: Where is home now? It’s not only the city I left behind — or the city I will probably leave behind now — nor is it just the people who make me feel safe. It’s the pieces I carry with me. (The smell of spices in a kitchen far from Delhi, the warmth of friendships formed in a new land, the small rituals that make an unfamiliar place feel like mine.) Home is not something you simply have — it’s something you create, wherever you go, as you leave your footprints in the world.

Where I started and where I am now are connected by moments of uncertainty, by choices made in the face of discomfort, by a willingness to adapt and act. It has taught me that transformation isn’t something that just happens to you: It is something you take part in, celebrate and no matter what you do, you don’t take it for granted. You make choices and take actions, and you become new and evolved versions of yourself. And in that process, you grow into something greater than you ever imagined.

Resham Talwar is a senior from New Delhi, India majoring in Biomedical Engineering.