Short story: A woman's journey to her past

It was an old house—the one I used to live in—built by my grandparents when they moved here to start a leather business. I never considered it home until I lost it. Its absence made it more present to me than its presence ever had. Now I was returning, not to reclaim it, but to see it one last time before it would be razed down and replaced with an apartment complex. Twelve years ago, I lost my family to Covid-19. Right before the pandemic began, I remember a conversation I had with my father.

“Sixty years is the life span of a concrete house. This one is around 48 years old. So in 12 years, we’ll be moving out,” he said.

“To where?” I asked.

“Well, let’s see,” he said lightly. “Maybe to a beach house in an exotic location. Or maybe a summer cottage with lace curtains, and a library with a fireplace.”

Then he winked.

“Or maybe we’ll just move in with you.”

“Why me?” I asked. “Why not with Shreya? After all, she’s older.”

“She’s too messy,” said my father. “We don’t want to keep tripping over a pile of dirty laundry in our old age. We’d rather stay with you.”

“Shreya,” I hollered out to my sister, listening to Pink Floyd on the verandah. “Appa says you’re too messy.”

“Ya,” came her dry response. “Tell me something new.”

The memory made me want to weep. I had been terrified that seeing the house again would rekindle my terrible sense of loss. But funnily, it was not my family I mourned now. I was done grieving over them. Now, it was for myself that I was crying. Or the person that I was when I lived in this house. Carefree, confident. Someone who had not yet been dismantled and reassembled by grief. Put back together crudely, like all the pieces could come unstuck any moment.

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After I lost my family to Covid-19, my uncle had sold the house to a couple from Meghalaya, and now they were moving back. I had asked the builders who had bought it from them whether I could visit it once. So here I was, not exactly sure why I was there. The stone path leading to the house is fringed with hydrangeas. The wrought-iron swing into which Shreya had rammed our Maruti when she was learning to drive is still there. The lawn has been recently mowed, and a stone Buddha stood guard in a corner. In our childhood, there used to be a small mossy lotus pond there, which no one really bothered to maintain.

I open the door and my past lies waiting. Shreya and I licking cake batter off our mother’s spatula… giggling over love scenes in Mills & Boon novels… shortening the hemline of our Sunday school dresses to ‘seduce’ the cute boys in church… trying to become more cultured by listening to Beethoven and Brahms, which we hated.

Sunlight streams in through the trellised windows of the dining room, forming an interplay of shadows on the opposite wall. It almost looks like a secret code. A sun lingo. A memory comes unbidden. My father and I form a ‘new language’ and pretend that the gibberish we speak actually means something. Shreya comes to the breakfast table, rubbing the sleep off her eyes.

“saffodledigokkalong?” I ask my father.

“Sidmantsecate sond fastcoddle,” he replies.

“What the heck are you two saying?” asks Shreya.

My father turns to her and says, “Gobbledygookstand?”

Seeing the stunned look on her face, we both burst out laughing.

I walk out of the room. My childhood has become too stuffy.

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In 12 years, many things have changed. My own children—now pre-schoolers—are living in a different world from the one I grew up in. A world more connected and yet more disjointed than ever before. Humanity seems to have gone backwards by moving forward, a push-and-pull whose dynamics has been defined by the pandemic. In a way, my life is a prototype of what is playing out in the larger drama of mankind. Just like me, the world has gotten blander. No pain and no passion. When did ‘advancement’ translate to a numbing of the senses?

My children are currently at a stage where they enjoy wearing identical clothes and laugh at each other’s jokes. They believe all the world’s cut from a single cloth. And that, ultimately, everyone thinks alike. Sometimes I wonder how to disabuse them of this terrible notion. Or is it that they are right, and the rest of us have outgrown this truth?

I remember when Shreya and I used to think like this. The first time I realised we were moving in opposite directions came unexpectedly. We were lolling on the balcony overlooking the park, our feet up on the divan, she twirling the ends of her hair, me reading a book—Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. She asked me to stop reading. I told her it was a fantastic book, and she should read it, too. She said she had, and had found it boring. It struck me then that our lives would not always run parallel. Our personalities were beginning to get shaken loose. I prayed that this moment would not come for my children for a long time yet.

llllll

As I get out of the house, I notice that our quiet neighbourhood has become busy, with street vendors selling roasted gram and cheap plastic toys. In the place of the park is a hotel with a circular driveway and three blue flags fluttering in the wind. People are queuing outside a bakery, with clouds of flies swarming over the sweets. Things have moved on, and in that moment, I knew that I could, too. Visiting the house gave me a closure that I had not known I needed.

People told me there would be nightmares. But dreaming was never the hard part for me; waking up was. When the fuzziness cleared, the pain would hit me afresh, as though I was losing them all over again. Then I would struggle to forget, for the numbness to come back. Now, for the first time, it occurred to me that I did not have to forget them. I could let go, be free to love them, to keep them alive in my memories. Free to allow myself to feel the pain. This house might be razed down soon, but in a way, I was carrying them with me. I latch the gate and walk out, broken yet more whole than I had ever been since the pandemic.