A short story

There are certain things that cannot be erased from one’s memory even if the actual thing ceases to exist. Memory is a strange thing. It defies time. Time prides itself on rubbing things off one’s consciousness, making the past translucent but Memory pushes time backwards, forcing us to the see and acknowledge the past. This umbilical cord that links us to our past, seeps through our consciousness and brings a nostalgic smile to our faces, probably because that is where most of us live.

I have always wondered, as most of us do at some point in our lives, about the motivational force behind human actions. Why do we do what we do? I stumbled upon the answer, one day when I went to a library and took a book which compiled the contemplations of Jiddu Krishnamurty. Krishnamurty says, we, at the very core of our beings, are empty. And the realization of this emptiness is extremely dangerous to our existential health. And therefore, in order to escape this emptiness, we attach ourselves to the world outside of us, whether it is people, work, house-work, writing, children, marriage, etc. He says we cannot be empty; we cannot not ‘be’ something. We have to fill ourselves with some substance. Emptiness doesn’t make sense. And making sense is very important to us. I realized this when I was fresh out of college and was being rejected by several companies and several prospective husbands. I was forced to return to the nothingness of my existence.

I was at the zenith of my depression when I got a call from a company telling me that I have got a job. Suddenly life made sense. The hollowness started disappearing and I felt as if I was getting filled with something. I wondered what this ‘something’ was which made me feel ‘important’ to myself. After a few days, I realized that that ‘something’ was ‘reason’- a reason for my existence; a purpose to live for; a goal to accomplish. I heaved a sigh of relief and looked back at my past. My past was smiling and I smiled back and thanked it for making me realize the importance of ‘meaning’ in my life.

One thing I have come to realize in these few years of my life is that, however far we move in time, we keep exchanging looks with our past. We refuse to let go of it. It is like a parent who has made things possible for us. It has enabled us to move forward into the future.

But I always wonder why we make these trips to the past. What is there that we can’t afford to forget and keep going back to it, making sure it is still there? And as I write this, I realize it is probably because there is a story. There is a story that deserves to be told and deserves to be listened to. And probably that is why we write; etching the past on the present, lest we defeat ourselves by simply forgetting all about it. Writing is like leaving our traces behind us. An appeal to see life the way we saw it. And in this conflict of memory and time, a story is born; a story which we would like to tell our children and children of our children.

The story, I keep going back to, is the story of the house I lived in for the first twenty years of my life. It was a huge bungalow, standing proudly among other proud houses, at the shores of one of the busiest streets in the town. In front of it stood a humble post- office; a quaint old building that looked more like a house. I liked going there to buy stamps for my grandfather. There were three windows with an iron net on it and a small window inside from where one could pay the cash and take the postal stamps. I would always wonder what was on the other side of the iron net. On the right there was a small wooden plank, on which sat a blue- colored bottle of adhesive with a black cap. The contents of the blue bottle would always be diluted, so that the bottle never saw the face of a dustbin. And I am sure if I made an actual trip to the post-office someday, I would still find it there. I do not know why, but I never wrote letters to anybody and now with the internet I really wish I had. But I still cherish the memory of going to the post-office, buying stamps or a post-card for my grand-parents and posting it. It would give me immense pleasure as a child to put the letter into the red post box and then waiting for the big red van that would come at the end of the day to collect all the letters in the post-box. I would often wait for it on the terrace and when the big red van would come and take away all the letters, it would give me an extreme sense of achievement and a smile on my face.

The house, lined with Ashoka trees had a small gate with my grandfather’s initials on it, both in English and in Marathi. On front of it there was a small garden. The house had more doors than people in it. The main door was made of iron with a letter-box in it. The door was slightly bent in some parts and was re-painted now and anon. There was a veranda with a framed poster of two tigers and a sofa-set, and which gave you the view of the drawing room. The drawing room had four doors. One that took you to the kitchen, the other to the veranda and two other that would take you to the garden. Then the small dev-ghar and a swing on which my great-grandmother would sit and read the Bhagwat Gita. I and my cousin would play with her scanty hair; she would tie a bun and we would untie it. She was cutest thing on earth. She was bent and always wore a nine-yard sari. She had absolutely no teeth and wore spectacles. My parents’ and my uncle-aunt’s room was upstairs and there was a huge terrace. A room was built on it later on, which was occupied by me and my sisters. The terrace was still huge even after the room was built. There was another quaint little room on the ground floor. It was the store-room. We used to store wheat, and rice in the tall aluminum boxes. It was later modified and the store-room was shifted to one part of the room and a curtain was put to separate it from the rest. The remaining part was the study room of my cousin. She used to study so hard and did so well in exams that I was inspired to study there for my board exams. I used to love that room. There was another room just next to that which was my brother’s room. That room was almost outside the house, near the garage. It was a funny little room. My brother’s friends would often come there and would play the bongo and guitar and old English songs.

The Diwalis and Holis were the most delightful time in the house. During Diwali, all the kids, total six of us would be woken up by our mothers who would already be up by 3 and cooking. My grandmother would play a very sweet marathi song on the tape recorder, while the mothers would apply oil and besan to the kids. After that we would take bath and burst fire-crackers. I, like a scared mouse would run away each time my cousin would burst a fire-cracker. After our enthusiasm would fade away, we would retire to the TV room and watch movies eating ‘chakali’. In the afternoon I would think about my vacation home-work but I would kick that thought aside telling myself that there were 9 more days to worry about it.

Holis would be absolute fun with the neighbors coming in and on every holi, we would have a fixed menu of idli and dosa. It used to be wonderful. The applying of oil in hair, one day prior to holi; my father coming home from the factory with his face motley with colors; going out with him to buy colors; always thinking of wearing white clothes on holi and would never be permitted to do so; making the mischievous plans to put color on my brother when he was asleep; to make water balloons in the bathroom with my cousins; to forget all about the final exams due in April and going to school with pride, green ears and pink faces.

The commencement of the summer vacation would be the anticipation of it on the penultimate day of the exams. The last day of the exam would never turn out to be as good as it was imagined. On the last day of school and also on the first day of school, I would always promise myself that this time my copies (C.W. and H.W.) would be complete but I would always fail to keep my promise. Every year, there would be one subject where I had to borrow someone’s notebook and copy notes. The smell of raw mangoes, the realization that there was no school tomorrow, going for walks early in the morning with my grandfather and cousin, taking bath with cold water would announce the augment of summer vacation. There was a huge cooler in my grandfather’s room. Tiger, my dog, would love to sit under it to ward off the cruel summer waves. During the vacations, I and my cousin would follow a ritual. On every alternate day, I and my cousin would ask for 50 paisa to our mothers to buy a chocolate called rajmalai. We would go to the park, play and when we would be tired we would open rajmalai and happily relish it. The evenings would be spent waiting for the Kulfiwala and the nights were spent on the terrace and going to sleep looking at the beautiful moon and stars. Those were the moments completely surrendered to the present moment. There was no nostalgia of the past and no anticipation of the future: only the happy, elusive present moment.

A week before the school would start; I and my mother would go the school to pay fees and to get a list of books to be bought. That was the part I enjoyed most of going to school: buying new books, the brown paper, the labels; it was as if I was given one more chance to straighten things up, to make a fresh start in life. But towards the end of the term, I would again be struggling with mathematics and history, wishing never having to go to school.

As I grew up, Tiger grew older and sicker. The Ashoka trees grew taller, the small garden turned into two lawns, a pond on the left with fish and tortoise and a lotus flower. The lawn near the pond had two swings. The one-storied house turned into a two-storied one, got repainted into light green color and its name which was simply engraved on the wall, now was written in a huge font with steel plates on the tallest and most visible part of the terrace. The small gate now turned into two gates: one small for people to come and go, and a big one for the second-hand fiat to come and be parked into the garage. The kitchen turned into a huge kitchen and dining room with marble flooring; the small ‘devghar’ was now a beautifully marbled temple. My grandparents and parents and uncle-aunt had newer wardrobes, and newly painted bedrooms. Another thing that was growing silently was the debt. The debts finally grew so big that the house was unable to bear the weight of it and started crumbling slowly. It cracked and gave the family the deepest wound when two members of the family passed away in a car accident. Having seen the death of its children, the house shattered, but was still firm with dignity. There was still some strength left in it which enabled it to stand for an year until it became inevitable for the family to desert it. The house lost its charm and led a meaningless existence until after a few years, it was bulldozed into nothingness; it became a vast flat ground.

I looked at the empty piece of land and realized this is what death must look like- ‘nothing’. This is our fate; to disappear completely from the face of the world. I realized that all things come to an end, just like this story that will now come to its humble end. But T.S. Eliot says, “To make an end is to make a beginning”. By writing this story, I have attempted to bring back the ghost-like memory of my house which had been haunting me ever since its death to the present and by reading it, dear reader, you will have made it alive. Dear reader, you are the “beginning” of this “end”.