Abode

Prologue
A relationship that never seems to age. Your first home on the face of the earth. Of millions of spaces, you were brought down there. Special, it seems. It is just to acknowledge that unstated love we share. Home.

Now, I took the left turn.

The greens had vanished. The face of the earth was raided by the dead plasters and bricks. My memory was proving futile. There was hardly anything that it reminded me on so many nights. There were people and faces that were not there then, and seemed to question my presence on their land now. Every eye turned and asked, who are you? I couldn’t answer them that this is where I was born. I was born here twenty one years ago. This air you breathe everyday, should be possessing some of the monosyllables I started with. I wanted to tell them, but my legs intended to follow the path and seemed uninterested in the question.

Far I could see the white dome of the mosque. It was as it is. Years ago, it seemed so big, so monumental. Now, everything was so measurable. I remember the morning namaaz, the fajr. The most powerful sound I have ever heard. The high pitched tone praising the allah, the God, transcended the language for me. The mosque was still shining white in the afternoon. I just lowered my head, brought my hands slightly closer to my bosom to acknowledge the presence of God, trying to give not much hint of what God I follow, usually.

The sigmoidal path then led me towards my home.  What could coerce me, one day, suddenly, in the midst of a routine to go and realize the sight of the place which I left fifteen years ago? I remembered just the places. No people, no relations brought me here today- nothing of the sorts who usually ask you to visit, laugh together and at least provide the eyes that can be seen or feet that are touched. Nothing came to my mind- except the home. And perhaps, that was it.   

I could now  see the white building. My home. The abode. It was no more the perfect white as it used to be. The grey and the black rested on the white. It was withering. Of the eight families it housed once, one was mine. I looked at it, simultaneously redrawing the images in the memory. The side of the building faced the road which had a face this moment- my face. The road always ended for me at this edifice. The road at its feet was then wrenched to disorient from the linearity it is supposed to follow. The road lied on its side.Towards the left corner of the building, I moved and opened the hardly-blue door to move down through the small slope into the alley of the compound. It was the same from where I used to glide down sitting on the motorbike with my father. I could reach out to those years to find the gleaming me. I allowed my legs to glide over the slope. My left hand could now touch the boundary wall on the left and the building wall to the right, simultaneously. I felt the proof of growth. There was the narrow drain, running parallel to the alley, where my father once found a snake. I still remembered. I still shivered.

Past two houses, peeking into them, I stood before the flight of the stairs. The flakes of the plaster hung over me. I doubted its strength. I grabbed the railing and took the first step. I could not help. I ran. I ran for my home above. I could not wait. I reached the first floor and turned left towards the corridor, which overlooked the alley below. The railing needed hands to stay upright, it seemed. It was almost gone. I remember, being told several times in these past years by my mother that how, hanging over them, I tried to ‘fly’ a polybag tied to the string and complaining to her that ‘why doesn’t my kite fly high, like others’ ? The lips widened, then fell the drop.

Ten steps to my home. My first home on this earth. Of all the places, God chose it for me. Of all the people, God chose me for it. This was special for me, then. It is special for me. And whether or not time erodes it from this earth, it shall remain there inside me. With the permission of the then resident, I moved in. Inside my home. My heart was beating somewhere in the corner of my body and it didn’t matter to me how hard it was. It was breathing, somehow to keep me alive and that was enough. The same brown-coloured wooden doors. The dark grey floor bearing the colour of the cement as it is. The sky bluish walls. Nothing was changed. It was just like that I moved out yesterday, grew big and entered again. The anteroom. Those rooms ahead. That window with that blue grill I used to clutch. Some eighteen years ago I dreamt of being surrounded by bandits in this home and then I killed them all. I doubted whether I could ever have that much courage. The home was home to some other lives now. I wonder from where these bricks bring so much love to share with our lives.

 It wasn’t as big as what I always thought but it would always be big enough to house me. They say, sound hangs in the whiteness of the air. Though I couldn’t hear but I am sure, the words must have been happy to see their root. I had had  fallen innumerous times here when I was learning to walk. It bore no mark. The marks were always gifted to me. And I still loved it. Every first of my life was witnessed by these walls- still and soundless. That’s how they love, perhaps. Receiving it silently and ricocheting it back. All those years came burbling through the earth beneath me, rolling up, dousing me in the warmth of fluid years, which the eyes vented through the corners.

I went for the terrace above, after thanking the occupants. Partly to hide my tears which were so meaningless to them and so was I, nevertheless. The right half of the terrace was closed. I could see from a hole in the fractured, impoverished door. It revealed the nakedness of the terrace. There were no railings now on that part. How nihil ad rem could the crown become for anyone? I felt sad for the people who lived there, not for my home. It would always remain strong for me, in my dreams, in my stories to my kids. I snapped the door open of the half which was still left candid. In those dark days of summer, when the electricity was still a facility rather than an obvious necessity, we used to make the sky our roof and the stratum of air below the stars was the quilt. This was the playground, this was the beach, this was the Himalayas. I looked up at the sky. I could see the sun and the pale white of the moon, both unaged. Only the land below them was allowed to do so.

Spreading my legs before me and letting the shoulder into the hardness of the back rest that the berth had to offer, I found the dog-eared page of the Shantaram. The train was empty, as if only I had the feeling of completeness at that moment. Eyes flowed over the words. Rolling over, coming back but they were not going in. The heart was still there at the shrunken, faded domicile. Mind lowered to whisper: You leave the house, the home never leaves you.