Vanshree, Marve Road, Mumbai – 64
An ode to my childhood home,
the house that built me,
the place etched in my heart forever!
I am overwhelmed with nostalgia as I write this. I am tearing up. Weeping tears of homesickness. Of reminiscence.
Back-to-back visits to my paediatrician triggered a deluge of childhood memories.
Every day on my way to the hospital, I’d see my childhood home, Vanshree building, shrouded in scaffolding, on the verge of being bulldozed to the ground. And then the day arrived when the place where my house once stood was rubble and debris.
It was in my face – I could no longer retreat to the comfort and safety of childhood – the most cherished time of my life.
It’s been more than twenty years since I moved out of my childhood home, and yet, it feels like yesterday. It is such an integral part of me and now it’s gone.
I have such rosy memories of the place.
Imagine your childhood home being bulldozed to the ground! It feels like a thousand knives piercing your heart.
Every day, I’d stop by my childhood home, looking for meaning, or, perhaps, yearning for my old self. I’d just stand and gaze at the nondescript building. It was strangely comforting – all the empty houses corresponding with the emptiness within me. Like a balm to my anguish. Maybe I was trying to find solace in my childhood home or what remained of it.
I dawdled through the backyard. I found myself dabbing at my eyes. It was here that I’d buried my sister’s Nataraj pencil when she refused to accompany me to “City of Joy” for pav bhaji and black forest pastry.
Haruki Murakami rightly said, “Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
When we return to the places of our childhood, our mental routes clash with tangible reality. There was a time when my sister and I were inseparable, and today we only know “what’s up” with each other.
How my brother would toss away my clothes, on the ledge, below the bedroom window, when we’d fight like cats and dogs. Today, we don’t fight because we hardly exchange a word.
I walked up to a neighbour’s front yard. I longed to feel the pinch of gooseberries under my feet. I hungered to eat those tiny gooseberries that we’d collect and rinse in boiling water and savour like a leisurely meal. Where did the tree go? I ached to shake its branches and collect the tiny green pearls of my childhood.
Everything came gushing to my mind.
Soon enough, I found myself groping for stars, the ones I’d count, lying on my back, sprawled on the terrace of my childhood home; I hungered to soak up the night sky, a glistening tapestry of my childhood stars.
The inexplicable connectedness we experience with our childhood home is almost haunting. The house you’re born in functions like a safety net, like a mother’s womb you want to retreat to from time to time. After all, our childhood is not only treasured in knickknacks and memorabilia, but it also lingers in all the spaces we once inhabited.
May we never lose our sense of wonder. May every child have a childhood as beautiful as ours.
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About the Author
Swati Moheet Agrawal delights in giving depth to the banal, and literature makes her world more navigable.
