Home

My first.
My home.
If I close my eyes and think of home, I see a black gate, with an arch of worn out branches over it. I see chipped flagstones leading up to black and grey steps, marked out in white. I see a latticed door, with a latticed window frame next to it - an empty bottle of Castrol 2T oil standing on the sill outside.
The doors open to a small room, done in green paint. The small, almost triangular room leads on to two different rooms.
One is my Appa's room. That is where I grew up. The room where my grandfather and I spent many an hour together. He taught me the joys of reading and the joys of listening. He would tell me stories in that room, stories that were at once rooted in reality and fantasy. Stories that built my imagination and stories that built my foundations.
That room was where a kid learnt about Noddy and Shivaji. A room where a kid got to know about his mother's trip to South India, and it was a room where the story of his own birth was told to him - tales that he will never forget.
The other door opens on to the living room. It has in it the old dining table. The table that was used to play cards, and the table that has seen many a meal being consumed - some in silence, some in angst; some in sadness, and many in happiness. The room also has my Appa's bed. He and I would lie in it together, watching India play some match or the other. I would wait for the advertisements, and he would wait for the cricket. Entire afternoons were spent that way.
Close to the telephone in that room would lie a selection of books - some in Marathi, most in English. Some would be borrowed from Popular Library, whilst others would have been borrowed from BCL.
On then, onwards near the television, where in the corner there resided (but doesn't now) a settee, done in red. You could curl up and go to sleep in it, easy as pie. The other side of the television was a little rectangular stool that was used for more purposes than it was designed for. As a temporary table for studying, as a dining table for the many tiny tots that the house has seen, as an imaginary castle to defend - oh, so many things.
Behind the two beds that forever lay parallel were two chairs. The last word in comfort, you could sprawl on them and drift away to Neverland in the blink of an eye. They would also face each other in eager contest when the carom table was brought out.
The little cupboard set in the bottomed out window near the dining table. Where the whiskey would be kept - as would be the peg measure. Up above it would be the rummy counters, the fine silver and the assorted odds and ends that the house had accumulated. Still above would be the thermoses, the fine cutlery, and in a small tin box - the finest of treasures - a small toy train that still runs.
Close your eyes and you can still see the other things that have defined that room. You can see the lady in barely any clothes hanging over the door that led to the kitchen, the clock hanging over the television, the rods hanging over the dining table, the forlorn lamp hanging in the middle of the room, festooned with a orphaned lampshade, the tiny attics over either bed, and most of all - the swing.
It would be put up only in the summer, right in between the two beds. Sitting on it, you could swing the entire length of the room, higher and higher, until you eventually reached the tube light over the dining table with your toes. Seriously.
Anju Mavshi's room, with the bed in the corner, the cupboards set in the walls and that little staircase that led to nowhere. The incredible coolness of that room, the incredible quietness.
And then the old kitchen, first with the old semi circular embankment against a small tap and the pitifully small platform. The wooden ledges that hid many a treat - cashew nuts carefully camouflaged beneath innocuous papads, dark chocolates stashed behind dabbas that were red in colour, with a white lid. The little storage rooms, where you had to bend down in order to enter them.
The verandah outside, that led to the bathroom and the loo. The bathroom earlier had a large copper tank, after which, Wasu Mama's washing machine was parked there. The red swing posts outside, which, from my earliest memories, never had a swing attached to them. From there, you could open the window to the small room that led off to the living room. A small storage room, here you could find a heavy table with a drawer that hid in it many a child's treasure. Next to it, under the stairway that led up top, hid another storage room. Full of nooks and crannies, is home.
I grew up there, right from my very first year. Every weekend, and almost all of the summer holidays would be spent there. We would go, my grandfather and I, from home to watch the pigeons being fed near the river. Sometimes to the house that was near the post office - it had a dog that both he and I were friends with. He would take me for long walks on the tekdi nearby. He taught me swimming at Tilak Tank, and at the age of six, I had completed the entire length of the old Tank - all 100 metres of it.
I remember the inordinate amount of pride I had that day.
I grew up in that house. A child became a boy, and a boy became a teen. A teen became an adolescent.
Appa died. Six years ago. My blackest memory of home.
Life moved on - I joined Fergusson college. Friends would come over, many a time.
Ostensibly for lunch, more often for a game of carom and somnolent slumber.
Ketan and I spent many an hour talking about Ayn Rand, about Greek philosophy, about mysticism, and quite literally anything and everything under the sun. It was that kind of an age.
Shoan and I spent many a day talking, arguing, debating and pontificating to each other about economics. We learnt the intricacies of mathematical economics, the arcane application of statistics to economics, and we learnt about economics itself.
Then I joined Gokhale. Two of the most memorable years of my life. I would come home for lunch during college when Aji was there, and Kshitij would often join me. Later, when no one would live there anymore, we would spend all of our days there.
Like I said, two of the best years of my life.
So many memories. All the good times, all the bad times. All associated with home.
Home to me, and home to three generations of my family before me. Home to my friends from Fergusson, and home to my friends from Gokhale. Home to the three biraadar log. All of us have lived our lives, in one way or the other, in that there home.
Shivchaya, Aji-Appancha ghar, Deccancha Ghar, Naani House.
Home.


It got sold a couple of days ago - home will soon be no more.