In 1960 we went to the hometown I had always known, for birth of another child. I was five, and whenever anyone said "now you'll have a brother", I was quite outraged and stated with definite certainty, that I wanted another sister. Where did a five year old get the sense that girls were held less, I don't know, but it wasn't in any home I'd known. My mother had been in Homeguard during WWII, and had later been in competitions for shooting (rifles? shotguns? they didn't say), and worked before and after graduation. When I wasn't yet a year old, I'd been used to her coming home late, after having attended classes for her master's degree in the evening, after day of work at office. Grandmother, thats her mother, was my home.
But Delhi had been different, although we'd always had nice neighbours, Joshi, Majumdar, and more. Those two families were home, too. And then we'd gone to visit hometown, where yet another of us, the baby sister, was born. When my other grandmother told me, I thought they were fooling me. At the hospital I checked before being happy.
We returned to Delhi to a very different home, my third in Delhi, at the other end of the city. Our home faced the western horizon, and a year later when I heard my mother and grandmother talk in the evening saying "The days are getting longer, sun sets more North these days", I looked out at the vast horizon from our veranda where I'd be playing normally, and thought, "yes, I know that". Years later when i married someone who'd figured out the sun's North and South journey around the year, I knew he was bright - I'd known it before I was five, but living in Delhi, far more North than Mysore, and looking at the vast horizon in West, was different.
This new home was a part of a government colony, two storied apartment blocks set out in large open squares around grassy grounds, where children played and housewives sat in winter, and everyone slept under stars in summers. We rarely walked on the few roads, it was an option, but mostly cut across the squares, walking on grass or along the gravel paths leading from roads to doorsteps. These flats looked so like houses or bungalows, it's forever been a disdainful reaction when I hear people denigrate apartments in favour of houses. These actually were what Europe calls rowhouses, or townhouses as in UK.
Here the babyhood of the two younger siblings - the baby brother was born in Delhi, while we lived in that house - and childhood of all of us was forever lived in the time capsule that was that house and those five years. All my memories of home as home, spread out over many different houses in three different cities, are mostly from life there. We went to school there and had friends in the same neighbourhood, and the many neighbours I remember were all mostly from there. The Kashyap and the Mathur, the Banerjee and the Gothaskar, and the larger square that had the military officers.
I still remember the trucks filled with those military officer neighbours in 1962, and realising in recent years that I don't know if they all returned.
Only a few months ago I looked at the neighbourhood on Google maps and saw there were far more trees, but orderly, so I thought, it's nice, living there must be even better now, although the neighbourhood has since filled out, open spaces converted to built up and no more wide open horizons.
And then today, why I felt the urge I've no idea, but I looked again, and it's gone. Not just our house or block or square, but the whole G block looks empty, and when or why they did it I've no clue. These were transient homes, people shifted as they transferred or were promoted, but it seems like someone thoughtlessly wiped out our home, our childhood, our memories and traces of our beings.
The chicken coop that a neighbour kept that I carried my baby brother to show him, so he was quite engrossed and later imitated the baby chicks when he was home, keeping us all in splits, well, that neighbour must have left long ago, but as long as the blocks and squares stood, so did our traces somewhere in the air.
If I never visit, which is what is most likely, could I pretend that the Google maps are just mistaken, and everything I remember of the beautiful houses and spaces is still as lovely as in memory? Can one just make up ones mind that someone erasing ones whole chunks of life is of no consequence, and one holds it forever within?
Don't know. What I did realise suddenly, after crying a lot, is that the one home in metropolitan Boston that I'd always thought beautiful, and loved, had a front that was very similar to this house where we lived for five years, from 1960.
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But Delhi had been different, although we'd always had nice neighbours, Joshi, Majumdar, and more. Those two families were home, too. And then we'd gone to visit hometown, where yet another of us, the baby sister, was born. When my other grandmother told me, I thought they were fooling me. At the hospital I checked before being happy.
We returned to Delhi to a very different home, my third in Delhi, at the other end of the city. Our home faced the western horizon, and a year later when I heard my mother and grandmother talk in the evening saying "The days are getting longer, sun sets more North these days", I looked out at the vast horizon from our veranda where I'd be playing normally, and thought, "yes, I know that". Years later when i married someone who'd figured out the sun's North and South journey around the year, I knew he was bright - I'd known it before I was five, but living in Delhi, far more North than Mysore, and looking at the vast horizon in West, was different.
This new home was a part of a government colony, two storied apartment blocks set out in large open squares around grassy grounds, where children played and housewives sat in winter, and everyone slept under stars in summers. We rarely walked on the few roads, it was an option, but mostly cut across the squares, walking on grass or along the gravel paths leading from roads to doorsteps. These flats looked so like houses or bungalows, it's forever been a disdainful reaction when I hear people denigrate apartments in favour of houses. These actually were what Europe calls rowhouses, or townhouses as in UK.
Here the babyhood of the two younger siblings - the baby brother was born in Delhi, while we lived in that house - and childhood of all of us was forever lived in the time capsule that was that house and those five years. All my memories of home as home, spread out over many different houses in three different cities, are mostly from life there. We went to school there and had friends in the same neighbourhood, and the many neighbours I remember were all mostly from there. The Kashyap and the Mathur, the Banerjee and the Gothaskar, and the larger square that had the military officers.
I still remember the trucks filled with those military officer neighbours in 1962, and realising in recent years that I don't know if they all returned.
Only a few months ago I looked at the neighbourhood on Google maps and saw there were far more trees, but orderly, so I thought, it's nice, living there must be even better now, although the neighbourhood has since filled out, open spaces converted to built up and no more wide open horizons.
And then today, why I felt the urge I've no idea, but I looked again, and it's gone. Not just our house or block or square, but the whole G block looks empty, and when or why they did it I've no clue. These were transient homes, people shifted as they transferred or were promoted, but it seems like someone thoughtlessly wiped out our home, our childhood, our memories and traces of our beings.
The chicken coop that a neighbour kept that I carried my baby brother to show him, so he was quite engrossed and later imitated the baby chicks when he was home, keeping us all in splits, well, that neighbour must have left long ago, but as long as the blocks and squares stood, so did our traces somewhere in the air.
If I never visit, which is what is most likely, could I pretend that the Google maps are just mistaken, and everything I remember of the beautiful houses and spaces is still as lovely as in memory? Can one just make up ones mind that someone erasing ones whole chunks of life is of no consequence, and one holds it forever within?
Don't know. What I did realise suddenly, after crying a lot, is that the one home in metropolitan Boston that I'd always thought beautiful, and loved, had a front that was very similar to this house where we lived for five years, from 1960.
........................................................................................
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