The house...

The house was lonely. It wasn’t built for being alone. It had been waiting for seven years to be filled with laughter and noise again. But there was none of that. Once in a while, someone who was but a pitiful remnant of her former self would come in and clear the debris of dead leaves surrounding it. She would also clean up some portion inside and sleep exhaustedly in the bed she had shared with the master of the house who was now, no more.

They had built the house two decades ago. The house was their first one. They had three children and had returned to the land they had left years before. So they decided to build the house they had always wanted. From the beginning the woman had yearned for a house and her husband had finally and reluctantly agreed. He wasn’t sure that even after years of working like a drudge in the searing hot deserts of other lands, he would have enough for a house. But this was one thing his lady was adamant about and he gave in, though not gracefully.

It was only the idea of the house that was hers. Once he got into the swing of things, her husband took over and drew a plan of a house that was as bright and large-hearted and as impossibly impractical as himself. She wanted a two-storied house that would take up less ground area and leave enough space for a tiny garden but he wanted a single storey that would take up ninety-five percent of the available plot of land. She was furious with the rest of the plan as well. There was a huge hall – enough to cater to fifty guests and three bedrooms and a kitchen. There was no study. Two of the three bedrooms were small and there were two corridors taking up much-needed space. There was a rear veranda running the length of the house and having two entrances – there were too many windows – the hall had five huge ones in a row. She felt that securing the house would be difficult while he simply wanted lots of light and at least one room huge enough that he could have people over whenever he wanted.

The daughters were made to share one small bedroom while the youngest son got the other one – guests would probably have to sleep in the hall. But in Kerala that was fine. Relatives didn’t mind bedding down anywhere and more sophisticated guests were not in their league anyway. So despite her protests and innumerable glitches, the house took form and grew into a home filled with the bustle and every day noises of a family of five living quietly in a little non-entity of a town. The house was dedicated with pujas and love – with expectations and promises. It was given a name as well and was much loved especially by the children. The girls, in particular put in a lot of effort to clean and polish their beloved house. The boy merely slept but his heart too was full with love for the house.

The years passed and the girls grew up. Their prospective husbands saw them there and their marriages were agreed upon there. There were lovely nights of a houseful of guests laughing and sharing memories of the girls when they were young and talking of how lovely they looked in the simple ornaments and sparkling saris. The excitement and the promise of new lives embarked upon on mere faith in parents’ judgement warred with the fear of leaving everything known and loved and following strangers to their homes or lands of residence. The heady fragrance of shy new love and the intoxication of the early nights in the new marriages also left their imprint on the house.

The house swelled with joy at its daughters’ growth and happiness. Soon grandchildren came along enlivening the air with their imperious demands and unrestrained laughter. The house felt content. It was then that tragedy hit– the master of the house passed away after months of agony lying paralysed in some other house far away from his soul. The house was racked with the grief that was thrown at it. The family came together to put up a united front and share their agony. Only the house knew how much the elder daughter repented of not being there more for her father. Only the house knew how the confident-looking second one, who had taken care of her father at her house far away, shut herself in the bathroom and collapsed in a weeping heap in between tending to guests during the interminably long ceremonies that followed. Only the house knew that the lazy boy had grown up to be a man when he put his arm around his mother’s shoulder to console her after having consigned his father to the flames that last day.

It was never the same again. How could a widow live on her own as much as she wanted to? She, therefore was shuttled between her children’s houses with a few days a year to visit her beloved home and try to take care of it. As time passed, no one seemed to care for the old house anymore. “Sell it off”, they said or “rent it out”. They felt it was time to be practical. They had houses of their own and memories of the old house and a happier time to keep them going. Who could take on one more house and tend it the way it needed to be taken care of? Routine maintenance was done but it seemed that no sooner had one problem been fixed than up popped another to replace it. A list of never-ending issues and a litany of complaints became the norm. The children could not afford to be a part of the old house either emotionally or monetarily. So the lady could visit only rarely and her heart was heavy whenever she had to sleep away from her only home.

The house felt their indifference. It had been built for the children and couldn’t bear their rejection. So it began to break down – slowly but surely. One pipe here, one electrical line there. Rats began invading it. The cupboards either rusted or were attacked by termites. Memories in albums piled up dust. Old clothes became moth eaten. The house could no longer protect what was inside. It no longer cared to exist. To this day, it stands proudly on the side of the road as you go east into the verdant hills in one tiny town in North Kerala but if you look closely you will see the damages wrought by grief and time. It cannot hold on for much longer but before total oblivion, it hopes to see one more gathering of its loved ones within that bright, beautiful and impossibly impractical hall that was its pride and glory.