Querencia, writes Shweta Bachchan

Querencia – an area in the arena taken by the bull for a defensive stand in a bullfight. A place from where one's strength is drawn, where one feels at home.

A couple of years ago, while on holiday in Spain, I went to see a bullfight. It remains one of the most fantastic experiences of my life. By which I mean, it was fantastically gruesome and violent, though not without an underlying primitive thrill and pageantry that had me ensnared from the get-go. Bullfighting is the father of all bloodsports. If you are squeamish and uncomfortable with blood, I'd strongly urge you to strike it off your bucket list. Once you are past the cruelty of it -- some never do -- it is captivating.

The rules of play are: a bull and matador face off in a ring, the bull is agitated by the matador with the purpose of, to say it quite plainly, spearing it to death! During this rather perilous and intense sparring, the bull may take refuge in a corner, there to gather its strength - this space is known as Querencia.

Like migrating birds or hibernating mammals, we all run for cover to what is familiar and safe from time to time, it may not even be physically present -- this ambiguous, "happy place" -- when things go south. White sand beaches for some, for others it's the hills or even a memory of time well spent with loved ones - Querencia.

For me, it is my parents' home in Mumbai, on the intersection of a noisy crossroad. This is where I grew up, broke my first tooth, attempted to climb my first tree, and several other firsts too cumbersome to enumerate right now.

It is the architecture of my heart, every cranny a familiar old foe (this is the corner I was punished to so often, it is still marked with my impatient scratches, in an invisible graffiti of childish petulance and self-pity) Downstairs is my grandfather's room, preserved as is, in his memory, his books, pens and ink blotter, like bookmarks in the pages of his life lie unused on his table. Our lawn, not as large and intimidating as my five-year-old eyes perceived it to be, the stage on which our lives unfolded, witness to birthday parties, weddings, funerals. The windows I stood at, nose pressed my breath fogging up the glass, as I peered outside at the throngs that would gather to see my father every Sunday, waving and grabbing at him, cold and gleaming. The curtains I'd peeked through whilst the same crowds sloganeered and burnt his effigy, protesting his involvement in the Bofors scandal (he was acquitted of all wrongdoing) still lie drawn to the big bad world outside. To pause here for a minute and breathe fills me with unimaginable strength and courage, I belong to this.

Here's a thought, this New Year make one resolution, to visit your querencia, at least once, and by visit I mean stay a while reacquaint yourself with it. Pause, inhale its dusty memories, unfurrow its familiar fingers, and hold its hand. Now draw your hooves against the ground, aim your horns and charge, indomitable - for this is the only way to conquer.