Home
was in the change of seasons; in the rooms that don’t exist in my flat
in Delhi; in the people I have grown distant from; in some of the
rituals I no longer follow; in the
nalmots (hugs, the tighter the
better) I have swapped for hellos. Home was in the study desk by the
first-floor window, from where I could see the Shankaracharya temple in
the distance.
Downstairs, Kakeni (my grandmother)
would be sitting, also by the window. If she needed to call me or my
sister, she just needed to put her head out and holler our names. But
she had her own system—a big, thick stick with which she would tap the
wooden ceiling (one tap for this, two taps for that). Downstairs,
adjoining the
baithak where she sat and where the family spent most of its time, was the kitchen and the
daan kuth (a small partitioned area in the kitchen with wood-fired
chulhas). Sharing the wall with the
daan kuth was the bathroom. It had a huge copper vessel inside a concrete casing, with a tap attached to it. Come winter, the
daan would be fired up every morning to cook—usually
hokh syun, vegetables dried in summer—and to replenish the
kangris (a pot filled with hot embers, which you hugged like a hot-water bottle underneath your
pheran.
Yes, that garment that can accommodate a mini-world in its
circumference). The wood stoves would warm up the room, the kitchen and
the copper vessel, ensuring running hot water.
Shankaracharya TempleOn the top floor was the
kaeni, a huge hall-like room, with huge windows. Above it, the
braer kaeni, where we stored wood for winter. To access it, you had to place a ladder against a hatch in the ceiling. If the
daan kuth kept you warm in winter, summer would see some families moving to the
kaeni
to beat the heat. Not that it ever got very hot; we didn’t need ceiling
fans (now, I am told, you need ACs). There were systems to avoid the
tiring haul up and down the stairs—a rope, with a basket attached, was
suspended from the window. It was like having a summer and winter home
in the same house.
And then there was the
zoon (moon)
daeb,
a sort of covered balcony, where the women would sit and watch life
unfolding on the street below. It was Twitter and Instagram rolled into
one; gossip travelled faster than news ever could.
The day would start with
brand fash, cleaning the area in front of the main door with water at dawn, and end with
syandhya choeng,
the lighting of an oil lamp at dusk. The front door had no doorbell. It
would be opened in the morning and closed late in the night. All
through the day, the house would embrace friends, relatives, friends of
friends, relatives of relatives, even strangers. And if there was a
wedding in the neighbourhood and it started raining, all the rituals,
guests and hangers-on would move to your
kaeni and rooms. Like the other houses in the
mohalla,
our house had no number, but letters never got lost and guests always
found their way. You just had to take the name of the head of the family
and people would escort you to your destination. Everybody had time.
When you went to a wedding, you did not go empty-handed, nor did you return empty-handed—you carried a
tippan (tiffin) carrier, the bigger the better, to bring back
roganjosh and
maetsch. If you were a child, you stood behind the groom so that when the neighbourhood ladies showered him with
nabad,
shireen and toffees, you could scramble to collect as many as possible. If you were a
baraati, you got to savour
kabargah (deep-fried lamb ribs) and
modur (sweet)
pulao, which were rarely served to the rest of the guests.
Kabargah, or deep-fried lamb ribsThe
rest of the world was beyond the mountains. Travelling away from home
meant crossing the Banihal tunnel to Jammu in winter, when schools would
close for two-three months. We would come back via that same Banihal
tunnel when the snow started melting. Soon spring would arrive, and
tourists would start filling the
shikaras, the hotels, the
gardens and the Boulevard Road. They would be gone come autumn, and the
same gardens and roads would be covered with
chinar leaves, and then snow in winter.
It has been over two decades since my family crossed over to the
other
side of the mountains. The home that had been our world was looted. The
house has new owners. My mother went back once; for a while, my father
would go back on work, despite threats to his life. The front door of
the house has been boarded for security reasons now—the same door at
which my dad would stand waiting for us, the one that friends and
relatives would stream through the whole day. The door at the back,
which used to open on to a patch of land where we played
sazloeng
(hop, skip and jump) with our neighbours Daisy, Guggu and Pinki, used
to have a small marble slab on the right that read “Prem Nivas”. I
wonder if it’s still there.
Recently, a cousin went back to show
his children their “hometown”. He said a house had come up behind ours.
If I were to open the window today, I would see new faces, not the
Shankaracharya beckoning in the distance. I would not be able to see our
neighbour Rajlal’s daughter standing at the window of her house,
calling out that there was a phone call from Delhi. We didn’t have a
landline. So people would call up Rajlal’s house, telling them they
would call back
in 20 minutes.
In the meantime, they would call us. Rajlal would always kiss me on the
forehead and ask, “Which class are you in now?” Rajlal and her
daughters loved the fritters mom made on Janmashtami, just as we used to
wait eagerly for
chai at their house on Eid. Besides hugs and kisses, we used to exchange
dupattas,
goodwill and a lot more. A decade ago, when my mom called her from
Delhi, Rajlal had the same question, “Which class is Nipa in?”
Sometimes, time stands still in your memory.
I have not gone
back since 1990, though in my imagination I have travelled home several
times, sat at my study desk, looked through the photo albums (which
might have been thrown away as trash), rushed out of the front door to
watch the Janmashtami procession, rustled through the fallen
chinar
leaves in the school grounds with friends, making our own music, thrown
snowballs down my sister’s back and snuggled up next to Kakeni to hear
the story of Sudama and Krishna that she used to narrate most evenings.
I remember the pain of trying to cope with the aloofness of a new city, which I call home now. There is no
braer kakeni or
zoon daeb
here. I have not noticed the colours of spring or autumn here, only the
harshness of summer and the briefness of winter. I cannot leave my
front door open here. And though it has a doorbell, it does not ring
that often.
I hope I can go home some day, and that we will be able to leave our front doors open, once again.
