Long before a door is opened, a home begins to introduce itself, not by its paint or its walls, nor by the flowers that neatly line the entrance, but by something far more ordinary: a handful of shoes left quietly outside.
Some are dusty from roads baked hard under the summer sun, while others carry the soft mud that clings to them after a walk through the vegetable market during the rains; there are school shoes hurriedly kicked off by children eager to get inside, worn rubber slippers that have long forgotten their original colour, polished shoes returning from church, sandals borrowed for a quick visit next door, and, among them all, an unfamiliar pair that quietly tells you that a guest has arrived.
No two pairs are the same, and yet together they tell a story.
Growing up, I never paid much attention to the shoes outside our door because they were simply part of the house, as ordinary as the kettle waiting in the kitchen or the chairs gathered around the table; they appeared in the morning, disappeared by evening, and somehow always found their way back again, and it was only much later that I realised the doorway had been keeping a quiet record of our lives.
Some days there were only our own shoes, but on other days there were so many pairs that finding a place to leave your own became an exercise in careful negotiation, with children’s sandals wandering away from their partners, someone’s muddy slippers leaning against the wall, a neighbour’s shoes standing beside those of a cousin visiting from another town, an elderly relative who always seemed to arrive without announcing themselves, or friends who had stopped by for what was meant to be a short conversation but somehow stayed until dusk.
The doorway never seemed to mind.
In fact, the fuller it became, the more alive the house seemed.
Perhaps that is one of the strange things about a home: the more people enter it, the less perfectly kept it becomes, and yet somehow the more complete it feels. Conversations spill into the evening, one more chair is pulled up without much thought, the kettle goes back on because someone else has arrived, and outside, another pair of shoes patiently waits its turn.
There is something deeply reassuring about that sight.
Those shoes tell us that someone felt comfortable enough to come, perhaps not because they had received a formal invitation, but simply because they knew the door would open. They knew someone would make room, there would be time for a conversation, perhaps a cup of tea, and they would not have to wonder whether their arrival was an inconvenience.
There is also something quietly trusting about leaving one’s shoes outside another person’s door.
You take them off without much thought, leave them among the others, and walk inside assuming that when it is time to go, they will still be there waiting for you. It is such a small thing that we hardly notice it, yet perhaps much of belonging is built on such small assumptions—that the door will open, that there will be a place to sit, that you can stay a little longer, and that you will not have to explain too much about why you came.
The older I grow, the less interested I become in houses that look untouched, because life is rarely untouched; roads leave dust in the dry months and mud in the rains, children rarely remember where they left their sandals, friends never arrive according to schedule, and people who come into our homes bring with them their stories, their tiredness, their laughter, their troubles and, sometimes, simply the need to sit somewhere for a while.
A home that welcomes people will inevitably welcome a little disorder as well.
I sometimes wonder whether the measure of a home is found less in the furniture we own or the care with which we keep it, and more in the people who feel they can come without ceremony, in those who know they will not be turned away for arriving unannounced, and in the friends and relatives who have left their shoes by our door often enough that they no longer need to ask where to put them.
Those are the homes I remember.
Not because they were the most beautiful, or because everything was always in its proper place, but because they made people feel as though they already belonged.
And perhaps that is what I would want for my own home too.
If, one day, someone were to remember it, I hope it is not because the entrance was always spotless or because the shoes were arranged in perfect rows; I hope they remember having to move a few pairs aside before finding a place to leave their own.
For that would mean there was always room for one more person inside.
Sam Khumanthem writes about home, identity, and the quiet complexities of life in Manipur. His work reflects a deep connection to place, shaped by both love and uncertainty.
