House to Home and Back

I never liked my current place of residence. It is a ground floor kind-of-independent house. To give it that kind-of-independent feel, there are a lot of doors. And my mother likes a lock on all of them. This is one of the major reasons I never like this place. It made me feel very cut off from the world.

Don’t get me wrong here. I am not an outgoing person but I do love the noise. The constant reminder of not being alone. The constant acknowledgement that the change is just one step away.

But here, inside my house, its very quiet. I seldom hear cars or any other traffic. There are trees all around, no matter which window I look out of. There are different kinds of insects and bugs that I have laid eyes on for the first time.

In its own unique way, the house is beautiful. We were just not made for each other.

I remember moving in here some ten years ago. I had then lived in a similar other house in the same colony. Structurally it was the same. There were just slight differences. Bit by bit, I remember Dad and I waited to unload the things while mom and the house help were loading them into a rickshaw, while shifting. In the bigger picture, my dad does gets the things done but he often misses out the finer details. So in any thing we do, I keep an extra vigilant eye for the finer details, trying to get them right. And that is what I did that day. I tried putting things where they would ultimately land up at. I tried to envision my room with everything in it – my posters, my books, my bed, my study table…

Slowly the house came into picture. It became the place I called home for the last couple of years… A decade…

Now we are moving out again. As I type this, my books are all packed, I only have seven ‘counted’ pair of clothes in the almirah, my book shelves and study table is gone, the posters have been taken down, the bed has an odd amalgamation of objects that I havent decided the fate of, the floor has so many things that walking has been a game… And many more things! Yet, it felt just the same.

Then something happened that felt different. One of the house-help (there are just two) couldnt find a place to shift to due to the pandemic situation and decided to pack things and go home to her native place. Now its feeling a little empty. Its not that I had to interact with them daily. I was usually always in front of my system or doing something. I would leave the house early in the morning for job and come back too tired to get involved. But still.. The home starts becoming a house again, when people leave.

It is suddenly different now. It is quieter than I remember. It is certainly appearing bigger than I remember. The blank walls with dirt marks showing where my posters had once been, seem aloof and cold and somewhat strange. I never liked blank walls and thus, my posters adorned them. Maybe they dont like me back.

Well… Things have really changed. When I came in this house, I was a school girl. Now I have been working full time for almost six years.

But there is something that will never change. My room used to stay locked while I was in college. Whenever I used to come back, there used to be a strange smell of the room not been occupied for days. I used to love that smell. It seemed welcoming. I also enjoy the thought that I would wake up in my room and have lunch across 2 state borders, in my college or have lunch in my college and have dinner in my room, 2 states away.

This would also be the room where I got dressed for different occasions countless times.. This room has seen so many friends come-over. This room has been the hideout for family members during parties that got stretched. This room was always the kids room no matter if the kids were some 20 years younger to me. I lost my grandfather while I was here. I remember getting the call that my aunt was no more, while in this house.

I still dont like this house. But no one can take away the decade that I have spent here. In a couple of days when I vacate this place, I would definitely look back and not remember much of the things – because then it wont look like what I remember it to be. But whenever I will tell people about few of the great times of my life – this house will always be in the background picture.