BY..............
C.N. Dhar
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 Temple
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 ribs
The 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.
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.
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.
The 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.
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.
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