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Seven-three thousand people live here, more than in any other village or town by far. They call it home. It must be doing something right! I believe that the overriding importance in a place that one calls home is what it means to you at a deep personal level, what irreplaceable intimacy you have with it, and more importantly, what it offers you that you would otherwise not find, or even necessarily seek, outside that place.

To me, that is both the attraction and limiting factor of any place that one calls home. Unsurprisingly, my home is that place.

My home is a village. It is not contiguous to the city, but is close to it. It has a proud historical pedigree; over the ages, a few of its sons (regrettably, no daughters yet) have held high political offices although strangely they have never attained the two highest positions in the country. Amazingly, two of its sons (no daughters yet, again) now control influential weekly newspapers, which has made this village’s pair the reluctant pantheon of the nation’s print media. It is a melting pot of tribes, races and nationalities, all united by their embrace of its totem. It does not offer much and expects nothing from others and it can be difficult and at times seem impossible to aspire to greatness while in it. On the periphery of the city, and with the scale, life and flavour of a large village, if you spend sufficient time in it and observe, you will see the best and worst of people every day and perversely feel alive because of, or despite, that.

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