I don’t trust houses easily. They’re very deceitful. I grew up thinking a home is a house is a house is a home. No one taught me the difference when I was a child. Home used to be Colony house, crowded, with Appa, Amma, Appa’s father, Amma’s parents. I’d always get in someone’s way or the other and always be told ‘Oru edathula summa irukka maatiya!’
Home then became an old house, slightly renovated, outside colony, away from all my friends, bigger, a big investment for parents back then, but I hated it when we moved in. Now, on top of older head count, we had Appa’s aunt, and I had a younger sibling that everyone kept cooing about. Frankly, I didn’t see the charm. Baby cried and smiled and couldn’t play any games with me, useless. My room was where Appa’s cupboard and everyone’s big mirror was, so technically, a room in the house I was allowed to sleep in - the doors didn’t even have a latch. I lost 3 grandparents here, including my favourite Paati.
I never dreamt of a world outside until 9th std brought along a new Physics sir who told us IIT was the dream life for those who dared to work 100x harder than we did. Home then, almost miraculously, became a quarters outside Chennai. Thambi has a crazy memory that remembers numbers and dates and incidents down to the T. I overheard quizzing Appa about the door number from the first quarters we stayed at. 422, apparently. I don’t remember squat. Don’t remember names of the neighbours. I remember the aroma of Koovum floating about a hundred feet away persisting around the colony always. It was a flat a friend’s friend had recommended to the parents, and knowing no one here, trusting their judgement, they accepted that Chennai always came with Koovum and everything to do with it tingling at least one of our senses always. Sibling was tiny, his dimples showed every time he smiled, and terribly adorable.
Home later became another quarters, when their friend’s friend unceremoniously kicked us out because almost overnight, they had decided they wanted to use that flat as storage area for themselves. Parents decided this is probably what Chennai life is like, and found another flat for us to move to. It was.. how do I put it? The length of the house was twice its breadth. It was weirdly shaped, hot as fuck during summers with almost no aeration in ‘my room,’ and if I opened the window, I’d be facing neighbour’s gate. I fought like my life depended on it to go attend entrance exam and interview for Christ college, got selected, and then decided I wouldn’t go. I was heartbroken over so many things, joined college, joined NCC, among other things, collapsed at the doorstep one day, got hospitalised for almost a month (maybe more, the good memory gene skipped me entirely), and came back alive after a close encounter with the closing card. Amma decided this whole house shifting business had to stop, took up a loan, and we then had a small house in a neighbouring area I knew nothing about, and already hated. I tried telling her. She told me I should stop being selfish and be happy for the family.
Home was now the house that collected 15 layers of dust every time we kept the windows open - and open they must be, or you’ll get baked within. ‘My room’ was the room with a shelf for the Gods and Pooja items, the bathroom, where the washing machine tumbled and coughed, but continued to live. I had to walk so much longer before I could get a bus to college. Most summer months, we would take our mats and sleep on the terrace. Amma always ‘heh’-ed away all questions like ‘But what if this happens?’ ‘But what if that happens?’ Sibling suddenly had a growth spurt. He was knee-high one day, and the next, my height. All the walls had pencil markings of his height with date, and it annoyed me because I stopped growing in 8th std. Everything else I remember is me being heartbroken, confused, losing my shit, and a lot of other dark things.
Home then became a series of places I tried to put together, one payment by the other, trying to bring in some sort of belonging. Suddenly, it became the sole purpose of life, to put it all together, one small research and one small step at a time. Colours and textures and models and lights. I struggled to battle the guilt of leaving, and the satisfaction of knowing and feeling independence in ways that will remind you that you are your own person. With it came drama, tears, people, memories that are possibly some of the most important ones from my adult life. Sibling was suddenly the most sensitive person who knew to advise the right kind of advice, that I could call family.
Home, by now heartbreakingly, became a question. It then became a series of houses, comfortable and with light and air and spacious enough, altogether for the first time ever, we shifted to one after the other, because the owners, overnight, decided they wanted to have it empty for a while (not kidding), have it ready for son’s wedding 3 months away to use a guest house for guests attending (not kidding), sell it for a few C’s (we were told they would be glad to sell it to us), etc.
Home was by now an elusive subject that repeatedly brought me empty-handed to the streets. Technically, not entirely empty. I always had the local free paper in my hand, with prospective places to look circled. I spent weeks with a couple of friends who drove me through the length and breadth of the entire locality, I think I can basically map the entire thing on a piece of paper at any point now. Sibling now basically all of my life, without any careful lies I used to have to make so he would not hold it against my head in situations with parents where he needed the edge over me - sibling became a mature, albeit, confused just enough for his age, person.
Home is now a house one past owner’s friend vouched for us with the current owner. I had a hundred misgivings in my checklist with the house, but it had to do, because we had run out of the deadline to either ‘buy the house or vacate.’ I did not have the C’s. The voltage fluctuates like crazy almost every day. On summers, it’s tripping on the heat. Get it? It’s tripping! Tripping! Okay, okay. The heat runs into the house by the afternoon. I have to share a bathroom, and oh god, the sibling can be disorganised and messy! Amma and I still fight over almost everything. Sometimes it’s cute. Sometimes only. My room door is almost always closed. YouTube autoplay will be on, and a Lightroom catalog will be open. My books are still inside a cardboard box, no storage facility. Appa knocks and waits for my response before opening, always. Amma barges in like the world is ending, always. Thambi and I text each other. Appa’s fainting gave us all a good scare. Corona has brought all of us to the terrace on multiple evenings to sit and watch the sun go down and Venus come up. I have been cleaning my room like a psycho. I like clean floors and citrusy and butter biscuity smells.
I think about my favourite cousin a lot. She’s a smart cookie, the hardest worker I know in my life. Her whole life was more or less dragged around because of a property dispute between her father and his idiot brothers. A property probably over a 100 years old, and crumbling. Crumble they still live in. Her uncles have not ceased squabbling over it, her old man is no more, she has to hold herself up and run the entire ship. On some difficult days, I wish I could just pull her out from there. She teaches and pursues a PhD, and I know I do not have to feed her anything but love and courage. What does home mean to her? How do I drag out a portion of my heart and tell her she does not have to worry about the roof leaking or the drain clogging, because in my heart, she can always stay? I think of the time I visited her last and she cooked up a storm of 5 courses, plus a payasam. She used to be shorter than my sibling. I cannot remember when she grew up enough take hold, while telling me to stop worrying and take a break now and then.
Yesterday, she told me to not react to everything and lose my temper. ‘Calm ah iru, akka!’ After years and years of longing for a table just to sit and write at, I finally have one. I have had it for a few months now, a cheap, recycled piece, but a table, nevertheless that I piled things on. I cleared it up and wrote a little sitting by it. Today, I gave in a little more and put up some lights. I know Appa wants me to give him answers to my life, but today, it can wait. Today, I’ll put the laundry to dry, roll out the mat, put on the ac, turn on the lights, drink a little tea, and read a little. Today, sibling and I will annoy each other just enough, not fight. I wanted to sleep earlier, but it’s okay, I’ll open the kindle and stare into the space around me that now has a warm glow. My brain will worry about the sibling, my cousin, when next work will come, if this flickering fickle-minded voltage will give me a big repair bill like last summer, when and where my next payment will come from, if I will survive to stay sane enough to function while consuming daily news, friends I have not met in so long, family who is around and getting on every nerve of mine, things I thought I would do, but cannot get myself to do, and when big basket delivery slot will be open for me again. But today, just tonight, I will lie down on my back, acknowledging that I have taken one small step forward, towards trusting that maybe, maybe, this house will be home, even if just for a little bit longer.
