When a house rejects you, you first see the signs. When a house shifts, before that it thinks about shifting. Checks its options, goes around looking for inhabitants, visits them, discusses with its corners, walls, floors, roofs, makes a choice, and finally says yes. When a house shifts, it first shifts.
In the starting, it feels lonely, because the house goes to check the new people out. These new people seem fine. There are some cracks here and there, some leakages here and there, but nothing that time cannot fix.
(And time cannot do is fix)
(And house does not know it yet)
When the house comes back home, you are still not told that the house is planning to shift. The unbroken rule that the house has maintained over the years for you is to see the signs. Nobody becomes good in observation just like that.
You will find tiles breaking away but the complaint to civil is never made.
"Why get it repaired now"
You will find furniture forgetting where it put itself. One day you will notice the lightest plastic chair as absent. Your dining table will also go. You will enter the house and find khichdi because there are no more spices in the house. Masaladaani also shifts. You begin to lose senses abruptly - smell taste sight.
The house does not sweep when it leaves. The house does not mop when it is going away. That is tradition after all. But memory has a way of showing itself. When you go out and see the shadow that seems like long tanned, you finally realize it for the first time that the shadow is not tanned. That, it is the exact shade of lead, and you remember HB pencils on the wall.
When the house goes to check on its new people and see if they are being white washed properly, you still feel that there is a chance of someone coming home that day. But home is where house is. And house is already out there.
That house shifts every day. Inch by inch, furniture by furniture, smell by smell, surf by surf, bucket by bucket, curtain by curtain, charger by charger, gadda by gadda, puja by puja. And finally, when the times comes, the house makes no reference to 'the boy must die'. A big truck will come to take the house away. You stand in the dark, trying to memorise that they forgot; glad that reconstruction, renovation, building, shifting were words only for houses, because what would you ever do with so much replay except distribute memories when they finally switch off the last light.
They come back to take the tube lights away. You sigh and seek some air. The Philips, the Ujjala, the fans were never theirs. When the night will come, you sit on that broken tile that now seems so light. Weights and waits both are not yours anymore. You will not miss the house. The house that night will inhale a different white wash, built by the people that are your own.
You feel how that tile might have broken and you realise how people you are.
In the starting, it feels lonely, because the house goes to check the new people out. These new people seem fine. There are some cracks here and there, some leakages here and there, but nothing that time cannot fix.
(And time cannot do is fix)
(And house does not know it yet)
When the house comes back home, you are still not told that the house is planning to shift. The unbroken rule that the house has maintained over the years for you is to see the signs. Nobody becomes good in observation just like that.
You will find tiles breaking away but the complaint to civil is never made.
"Why get it repaired now"
You will find furniture forgetting where it put itself. One day you will notice the lightest plastic chair as absent. Your dining table will also go. You will enter the house and find khichdi because there are no more spices in the house. Masaladaani also shifts. You begin to lose senses abruptly - smell taste sight.
The house does not sweep when it leaves. The house does not mop when it is going away. That is tradition after all. But memory has a way of showing itself. When you go out and see the shadow that seems like long tanned, you finally realize it for the first time that the shadow is not tanned. That, it is the exact shade of lead, and you remember HB pencils on the wall.
When the house goes to check on its new people and see if they are being white washed properly, you still feel that there is a chance of someone coming home that day. But home is where house is. And house is already out there.
That house shifts every day. Inch by inch, furniture by furniture, smell by smell, surf by surf, bucket by bucket, curtain by curtain, charger by charger, gadda by gadda, puja by puja. And finally, when the times comes, the house makes no reference to 'the boy must die'. A big truck will come to take the house away. You stand in the dark, trying to memorise that they forgot; glad that reconstruction, renovation, building, shifting were words only for houses, because what would you ever do with so much replay except distribute memories when they finally switch off the last light.
They come back to take the tube lights away. You sigh and seek some air. The Philips, the Ujjala, the fans were never theirs. When the night will come, you sit on that broken tile that now seems so light. Weights and waits both are not yours anymore. You will not miss the house. The house that night will inhale a different white wash, built by the people that are your own.
You feel how that tile might have broken and you realise how people you are.
 |
| Checking Houses |