Sitting in the balcony of my new home, at nine in the evening, I looked at the cars passing by. Honking their way out of the traffic jam, and always in a rush to reach their destination. I couldn’t help but relate it to life in general. About how we are always in a rush to accomplish one thing after the next, never pausing to stop and take a breath. It’s been more than a year now since we (I and my family) shifted to this new home. And, even though I have lived here for about six months now, it’s weird that it still doesn’t feel like home. It might have something to do with the fact that the last house we lived in had 16 years of our lives. 16 long years of the same room, same building and the same path to the house. But with that, there were thousands of memories scattered in every nook and cranny of the house. This post comes a year later, but I guess time gives you a certain perspective of what’s left behind. As the proverb says “You only know what you’ve got when it’s gone.”
The last house I stayed in, was towards the end of the road, far away from the shops or nearby parks. One had to walk the entire length of the road to get to the main road, to catch a rickshaw or auto (the days before Uber and Ola ever came into the picture). A few shops did open up later, over the years. I remember, sometimes feeling unhappy about the fact that there was nothing to do, nowhere to go and everything just seemed so far. It’s only now I can realize how much I liked that place for the childhood friends I made, the games I played with them and for the neighbours and their cute little kids who I got to have fun with.
Looking back through time, it seems as if the house was a part of all the special things that happened to my family over the years. It was where my brother got his first computer, where he and I grew up fighting and quarrelling like every other siblings I know, where he checked his status to get admitted into IIT, where I aced my board exams, where we celebrated Mom-Dad’s twenty-fifth anniversary, where I got admitted to a good engineering college with the branch I wanted and where I celebrated uncountable birthdays of close ones as well as mine and anniversaries of relatives. These are just some of the things that come to the top of my mind when I think about all the years spent there. There are so many tiny little things like how I first learnt to cook, all those summer vacations trying random activities with Mom, getting friends over and playing with them with Barbie dolls and kitchen sets to finally growing up and having sleepovers with them.
Me and my cousins as kids
My birthday celebration
My neighbour’s kid and my favourite blue wall
And, when you finally take one last look at the house that was, it reminds you of the last scene, from the series finale of Friends, that this house holds a part of you and things will never be the same again. All those fun and carefree years of life aren’t coming back, and all that’s left are box full of memories!
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