October 06, 2007

Domicile

He is standing in a familiar lane. There is a building ahead, and a door on the ground-floor landing. A faded plaque displays a well-known name.

Through sheer force of habit, he presses the thumbworn doorbell. Faithful still, it rings out from within. He pauses to absorb the echoes of a sound that has become for him the very definition of a belltone, an acoustic model of how a good chime should sound.

But there is nobody inside, he remembers. There hasn't been for years. He takes out a rusted key and, after a brief struggle with the padlock, enters a musty living room.

Shrouds. A number of shrouds, grotesque and misshapen, cram the modest space. It is a while before he realises that they do not cover corpses, but furniture. The ancestral heritage underneath is a proud, antique mahogany, distinctly colonial in design, perhaps a century old. The sheets have tried valiantly to protect it from the dust, but the dust, after years of laying siege, is winning the slow-motion battle, smothering the wood in painstakingly uniform confection.

These are the same sheets that served as indoor tents many years ago. They were good tents. They could be military shelters, or Red-Indian tepees. Or imaginary havens of protection from an irate uncle. Or secret hoards for the precious chocolate visitors sometimes brought from abroad.

He moves forward in the dim light, picking his way through the eerie shapes to the big glass door that leads to the garden.

The garden is no more. It was filled in with concrete a decade ago, to create a sort of extended porch, after everyone realized that a lawn was too difficult to maintain. But if you stare long enough, and it's the right sort of day, then the concrete melts away and you can see the grass underneath, a resonant, freshly-watered shade of green, just like it used to be.

He makes his way back in, stepping briefly into the kitchen. Some of the old utensils are still around, steel tumblers and plates, the sort that used to be given as gifts and had an illegible name engraved near the bottom. But the glasses are empty. No Rasna or Rooh-Afza or Gold-Spot or Thums-Up for him. For once.

The bookshelves in the study look forlorn and somewhat smaller without their payload. Most of the books have been carted away by eager cousins, others nestle in neem and mothballs in an old trunk in the loft. He finds the spot where a floor tile had chipped, making a little cracked pattern. He'd always say that the crack was shaped like a seahorse, although he cannot honestly find anything seahorse-like about it now.

The ceiling fan looks down from above, incongruous in its perfect stillness. He does not remember it ever being still, even in the middle of winter - it would always be humming its way round, rattling away to itself, never tiring, never breaking down. And it is so close - he can touch its blades without too much trouble. It used to be a distant, divine windblower, reachable only by tall grown-ups. The whole house, actually, is a lot smaller now. It used to be a giant labyrinth of secret pathways, of great halls and corridors, of hideouts known only to a select few.

But it is already late. He makes his way back to the front door. After a few minutes of fumbling with the padlock and a spot of obsessive-compulsive checking to make sure it is secure, he heads back.

He might wear the vagabond tag as a badge of honour, might pride himself on his adaptability, might claim to be well acquainted with, and rather fond of, dozens of countries. But, in truth, there is a place that means just that little bit more to him than other places do. The place that he grew up in. The place he calls home.

16 comments :

Anonymous said...

This was a beautiful post!

It reminded me of a recent experience, when I visited the house which my grandfather had got built. Due to his sudden death soon after, the family never moved to live there. Over the years, it was only used for brief visits, the last of which were also perhaps more than a quarter of a century ago. Prior to this visit, I had been there only once - for an afternoon, more than a decade ago. So I have no deep memories associated with the place. Yet, when I saw the house -- once built with so many dreams now a crumbling memory of what had been, layered with years of dust and silent echoes of long-ago voices of my family members, with cupboards holding on to scraps of Time left behind in abandoned notebooks, once-new furniture now withered away in storage, roots of trees creeping inside slowly claiming the house as their own.. -- something ached inside. It started to grow and pull me down, when suddenly, out of the blue, in a place where I had not been getting any network signal till then, my phone suddenly beeped. From hundreds of miles away, by some strange synchronicity, a friend reached out and shook me out of the growing gloom by a simple one word message: "oye".

~N.

Casablanca said...

Oh well, that is the problem when you've shifted houses every few years as a child. You never really have that *one* place you feel fondly about.

tangled said...

You should fall ill more often, you. I loved this. :)
I wish I had a place I belonged to - all I have is my imagination...

Anonymous said...

Hello.

Im sorry for the silences.

This is a lovely post. And I hope you're doing fine.


Sowmya.

DSK said...

Hey,

Came by after a long time, only to be pleasantly surprised. Now that I'm missing home so much more, your post brought in the sniffles.

the One said...

N: Thanks.

Speaking of "oye" .. one used to think it was Hindi, but it's very common out phoren too (although Western folks show a preference for writing "oy" or "oi"). Research indicates Yiddish origins. Most intriguing.

Casa: Yes, and this shifting-wifting doesn't seem to stop after adulthood either. For most of us at least :)

T: Ah, but imagination encircles the world, a wise chap once said.

Sowmya: Thanks. Yes, one is quite well.

DSK: A long time indeed. And a lot has happened during the interval, it seems :) Many congratulations.

A said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Interesting link, thanks. Yea, I knew about the wider usage of the word, though it's meaning given in point-1 was new to me. :D

1. your closest friend.
homeboy or homegirl
boy w/o the 'o'

~N.

Shweta said...

Been ill, my poor sweet? All well you say...
But the fevered brain is a useful thing, such a cauldron it is!

DSK said...

Blush blush... thanks.

A said...

Another visit, another trip down memory lane.

Beautiful :)

the Monk said...

Neither have you, comrade. :)

Anonymous said...

It seems to me that people miss home during the bad times... what is it to them? Comfort? Or something else?

I've moved around too much for a 'place' to be home, its wherever the family is.

Anjali said...

Very nice. You post so rarely that I hardly ever check these days. This was a nice surprise.

the One said...

Shweta: Much better now :)

A: We aim to please, of course.

Monk: Why thank you. Now you have inspired the One to versify again.

Camphor: Interesting point. Comfort, definitely. And nostalgia?

Anjali: Thanks. And one shall resist the urge to say things to the effect of "Look who's talking" :)

LAK said...

Very touching.