had grey glazed flooring. Nothing fancy… no marble or anything, no tiles even. Three rooms: yellow walls, yellow walls and green walls. 10 feet by 10 feet each. a foot and a half of white colouring at the top and the bottom. Ceiling fans, one soundless, one gently whirring (that was grandma’s room), and another rotating with a severe, strict taack-taack-taack. Two bathrooms, one with an Indian style commode, and the other with an European style one. A 12 feet by 8 feet dining space. an inconsequencial balcony.
It used to get very cold in the winters. And very hot in the summers. We never had AC. We didn’t have a water heater either, but there was the gas oven, where Ma used to make hot water so that I could take a shower early on in the morning. I never wore an unwashed shirt in my life before I got to the hostel. Pushpo-mashi ensured that.
There was a dairy, a khatal a little distance from the place. In the winters, there used to emanate a smell of fresh manure, blown in by the monsoon winds. It was mild, and not really offensive. Infact, this smell of manure, mixed together with the smell of wet earth, had a weirdly attractive-repulsive thing about it, something which words can never explain.
Joy-da had a small hole-in-the-wall paan-bidi shop, where we used to buy Big-Fun bubble gum for 50p. Next to it was Dr. Sarkar’s house. Dr. Sarkar was brilliant. We used to all want to grow up and become doctors. We used to all want to grow up and become Dr. Sarkar. Probably the only major diagnosis which he made a mistake in, killed my aunt.
Dad’s older brothers stayed in the two lower floors of the house. Grandma stayed with us. Since sister was born by then, i had to move to grandma’s room, and stay with her. my bookshelves came along as well. Grandma’s room was a half a foot longer than the other two rooms, it was planned that grandpa will stay there too, but he had died when I was 1. I was very comfortable there in that room, and grandma used to wake me up at 5 in the morning so I could go out to play in the neighborhood playground, football in the summers and cricket in the winters.
That place is a long way from here.
That place was home. No other place has been home, ever since.
