On the Wednesday of the week this happened, I went through another loss – the house that housed the room. With a feeling that fittingly mirrored what I realised late about Achan – deep in me there was an understanding that just his being around, even as a frail old man barely able to get up, meant that someone unconditionally had my back.
Speaking of whom, despite passing on to me the excellent habits of daily accounts, and being prudent about expenses, his financial acumen was a product of the times and circumstances he grew up in. That meant he rented out the house to people I’d never have agreed to. That’s also probably why he didn’t ask me! 😒
Even when letting go, there are transactions which leave us happy, and there are ones that we wish we didn’t have to. This one belonged to the latter set. That too is perhaps fitting.
We probably started off with the house on the wrong foot anyway. From what I remember, its purchase was also a forced choice because we needed to be near the railway station. That would make it easier to travel for Amma’s cancer treatment. And I had my own problems, not the least of which was entering the teens.
But I think the house and I are like two people who know that in different circumstances, they’d be great friends all their lives, rather than just a fleeting thing. We have had great memories together – the room has relics of a different era – cassettes, a ton of books, trophies, posters. The window mesh has a little hole – from when I smuggled in fiction during exam times.
The dining room had the washing machine that treated it like a dance floor during the wash. The fridge housed Euro cheese before there was a market for it in India. The utility area had those plastic plates I won as prizes years ago – kept there because it was non-veg only. It also had the grinder which one house help had tried to stop with bare hands because she didn’t know there was a switch for it!
The little corridor had a books stored high up, and I used to climb on a storage bin to get them. The older generation of radios too were there. Inside the store room were things from an even earlier era – my hockey stick, Amma’s veena, Ammoomma’s old vessels. 🥹
The outer walls have a zillion marks of cricket shots. The verandah has played host to thousands of wonderful conversations. When I look at the roof, I always remember the time I sulked enough to get Achan to keep turning the antenna to get free signals from our neighbour’s cable connection. Poor him. How I have taken him for granted. 🥺
So yes, we do have stories to tell. But it is, as I once quoted from Garden State in the post about it –
You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone
You’ll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it’s just gone. And you can never get it back. It’s like you get homesick for a place that doesn’t exist. I mean it’s like this rite of passage, you know.
I miss the idea of it. Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.
It was also a haven for a lot of people, because of my parents. Whenever I meet people who knew them, the memories are invariably of their kindness. I have even had strangers come to me at family functions and treat me affectionately because of that.
But yes, I have spent almost exactly a decade there – and in that decade, we went from a full family to me staying there alone when I came back later, for less than a year. And the last time I saw it when we took Achan for his last rites, it was so ill-kept I knew I never wanted to see it again.
D is sometimes surprised when I hem and haw about going back to some eatery we both loved. Beneath it lies an intuition that the second time will take away the perfection of the first experience. I prefer that unblemished memory.
That is possibly one reason why I didn’t go back for that last look. I thought quite a bit before I booked the cab for the airport.
But there is another one too. Houses are not living organisms, but sometimes you can hear their screams for help. I could, but I wouldn’t. And therein lies that feeling of guilt. Like when you had to refuse help to a friend because you had other priorities.
I have an armour of coldness, but that is exactly what it is – an armour.
“When we protect ourselves so we won’t feel pain, that protection becomes like armor, like armor that imprisons the softness of of the heart.” ~ Pema Chödrön
Sometimes the grief escapes the armour. And thus, just like with Achan, a part of me wishes I had gone there to maybe just walk through the rooms, simply stood still for a few seconds, shut my eyes, said thank you for the good times, and for a final time, closed the door and said goodbye to the place I once called home.
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