Letter to my Old House

Dear House at Red Cross Road,

Dibrugarh. When one thinks Assam, one is instantly reminded of paddy and puddles and green coloured tin-roofed 'Assam-type' houses. We lived in one too. In the first house that we were. It must have been various conditions for which we made a move to you -- without a green tin roof, and without a room of my own. Your grand green driveway leading to the house, and the expanse of limitless green visible from the terrace and my ground floor living room window, more than made up for the sound of rain on the tin roof wish.

At a time and place where one room running into an unnecessary another was a norm, we shifted to a 'modern' flat, you. We shared the apartments, and terrace. And though I did not have the room to myself, I had a bathroom instead, and that was your most generous gift to me possible. I do not remember much from my childhood, but my growing years, with and in you, I do -- the little spaces I carved out for myself, right from the place under the stairs where I kept my cycle, and a lot of other valuables not meant for parental display.

The kitchen was pretty too, with those huge concrete racks, which were so useless that mother used to keep vegetables lined on one, and on nights that I walked there in search of a midnight snack, I painted on pumpkins and gourds and eggs, while struggling to keep my mouth unglued from the excess of milk powder I spooned in. You were very accommodative, yes, that is what you were. Though shared, you were non-interuppting.

You were a fun place. Little defined spaces could immediately give way to endless undefined ones. In you I grew up with the many Sheldons and Mills & Boons curled up under my blanket with a torch, yes, just the way we read in books people do. In you I discovered the joy of making home when mother left for Paris and Venice, and I was in charge, and in you I suddenly became an adult with adulterated neighbours.

I still remember your warmth, a citified tenderness in a codified town. My inklings with the blank wall began in you. As I sit out now, overlooking one green tin roof marrying another, and another, I sit back thinking of you. I have never taken time to thank you. You were more than what often a room of one's own isn't. You were crucial to my initial impressions and you are a memory I am glad and thankful has not abandoned me.

There was nothing romantic about you, in fact everything beamed with a proud sense of purpose, and that in effect was so fulfilling. A house is made a home by the people who live in it. I think you changed it dramatically. You built a home in me. Fondly. 

Uninhibitedly inhabiting it, 

K.