by Archita Suryanarayanan
Chirrup chirrup. Thud thud. The sounds from the tree that nearly grazed her window, along with the rhythmic sound of clothes being hit on a washing stone woke her up. ‘Anjali!’ Her mother Kalpana’s piercing wake-up call wafted up the stairs. Crawling out of the bed, Anjali made her way to the bathroom, stopping at the window to inhale the morning air.
In half an hour, she was at the dining table poring over the Deccan Herald under her plate of idlis. ‘Don’t read when you are eating,’ her mother chided, fussing over Anjali’s lunch box. Anjali’s face turned into a frown as she picked up a spoon to eat. ‘Amma, where are those new breakfast dishes I got you for you for your birthday?’ ‘Anju, the set was very pretty, but I was afraid it would break so I have kept it in the loft. We can use it when guests come…’ Kalpana’s voice trailed off seeing the expression on her daughter’s face. Anjali did not reply, but ate at top speed, picked up her lunchbox and headed to the bus stop with a curt goodbye.
Arguments about the house were a regular feature of life at No 8, Nagappa Garden, a 50-year-old compact bungalow that stood in a once-quiet bylane of Bangalore. The house fitted into a small compound with a stone bench, jasmine bushes and a guava tree, three small bedrooms and two big sitting rooms, red oxide flooring and windows with wooden shutters. The house had been built by Kalpana’s father.
Kalpana was much older than usual mothers of 25-year olds; therefore, Anjali’s life at home was also more old-fashioned. They had an old box television, a washing stone in the small backyard and rough stone flooring in the bathrooms. When Anjali’s friends visited, they oohed and aahed at the quaint house. While she smiled with them, she secretly envied their neat apartments −the gyms and swimming pools, the modular kitchens and self-locking doors.
‘Why can’t we shift, Amma, to some place more modern?’ she repeatedly asked her mother.
‘From our own house? Why?’ would come the logical reply.
‘It is so old-fashioned and cluttered here. There are so many things. Look at this, why do we need this?’ she said, pointing to a toy of a porcelain rabbit holding a larger-than-life carrot.
‘This was a gift from my cousin Shanthi who got it for me all the way from Japan! We had fought so much before the trip, she knew I loved carrots and got me the gift as a joke. She was such a stubborn kid…’
As her mother trailed off into a long reminiscence, Anjali shook her head and stormed into her room, switched on her laptop and got immersed in the latest Netflix series she was watching to drown out the dose of nostalgia.
Her mother not just insisted on staying in the same place, she didn’t want to modernise it either. ‘We have space for a nice lawn, but no, she just wants potted plants. The extra sitting room can easily be converted into a guest bedroom, since the bedrooms are too small to decently fit a double bed. But Amma thinks guests still prefer lying on mattresses on the floor in a big gang and talking about their childhood games. This isn’t the old days,’ she would fume to her friends.
***
Kalpana had to agree that many things weren’t indeed like the old days. Their nondescript house that sat on a corner-plot was once surrounded by similar houses, with small compounds, the lone tree, flowery window grills and bright colours. Evenings would mean new rangolis outside each house; the children who played used the side-walls to jump between houses all the way to the other end.
But now, theirs was the only house left on the street. Sandwiched between an office building and a small apartment, her house was no longer quiet and the most common sound she heard all day long was the reversing tunes of the cars that kept coming and going. The kitchen window no longer overlooked the neighbour’s tree but saw a solid blank wall with mouldy water pipes. Her evening walk was now a sightseeing tour of spotting the latest new upscale restaurant. With a new technology park being constructed close by, many builders had also capitalised on the possibilities of the neighbourhood- apartment hoardings were creeping up everywhere – the old milk booth, the local grocery store, the bus stop. ‘Air-conditioned gym, tennis courts!’ they screamed.
Kalpana’s house on a corner plot, surrounded by new developments, was not a location lost on the shrewd eye; like Kalpana’s cousin Shekhar, who was a businessman with a flair for convincing reluctant customers when he was on the lookout for an investment.
‘You have to think about it,’ said Shekhar, one evening, sitting on the cane sofa and sipping his tea from the new cups that were finally opened. Kalpana sat opposite him, lost in thought. The house meant everything to her − apart from her daughter, it was all she had. She had grown up here and come back here with her baby daughter after her marriage fell apart. She looked at the heavy cement staircase and remembered how Anjali would sit on it and do her homework as she waited for her mother to come home.
As Kalpana sat contemplating, Shekhar was running his experienced eye around the house − a sleek steel staircase here, mirrors reflecting the olive-green theme of the walls, a new room in the front yard with cushioned sofas and a glass reception table. Yes, this was a goldmine waiting to explode.
‘It will be a hit. Guaranteed!’ he declared. ‘There are so many new shops here but no salon yet. I have always wanted to start a salon chain. Since it is our family house, it will bring me luck too,’ he added as an afterthought.
***
‘Maybe we should think about it?’ Kalpana wondered to Anjali later that night.
Anjali was taken aback. ‘What? Amma, I can’t believe you are actually saying this.’
Kalpana smiled sadly. ‘Isn’t it what you always wanted?’
She wanted her fiercely-independent daughter to have the monetary support to fulfil her ambitions. ‘We could get a small flat, and you can put the money for going for your Masters’ degree abroad, or into that ‘startup’ you have been dreaming of…’
Anjali laughed at her old-fashioned mother’s usage of the new age word. Returning to bed, she promised to think about it.
Ten days later, the deal was sealed.
‘Are you sure?’ Anjali had asked her mother for the hundredth time. She knew Kalpana had lived almost all her life within these walls. and would often say that she could not possibly imagine spending her last years anywhere else. But this time, her decision was made.
They started looking at apartments- websites, brochures, site visits, newspapers. Large gated communities and small groups of six houses, some wet with cement and others finished and gleaming with furniture. They even looked at the one with the air-conditioned gym advertised at the milk booth. Soon, with a fair share of help from Shekhar, they found their future home −a one-year-old apartment in a large complex of 200 houses, around ten kilometres from the soon-to-be salon. They moved, with drastically fewer belongings, new furniture to this new life.
Anjali busied herself in selecting furniture, getting the electronics fixed and getting used to her new commute to work. Kalpana got to know her neighbours, arranged for her daily needs. She rapidly made friends and settled down, seemingly content with her modular kitchen and the plants in her balcony. She took walks in the apartment, involved herself in the cultural events, joined a local women’s club that went on short trips.
Often, Kalpana thought of her jasmine bush, her creaky front gate and the pattern of the mosaic flooring she knew almost by heart. But with all the new activities, she was able to push the thoughts away.
Anjali, on the other hand, had a harder time settling. Wary of the new neighbours, she gave them small smiles as she went to work. She missed the fresh mornings, the clutter of the dining room. She felt oddly out of place in the modern kitchen. She kept forgetting that there was no front gate to lock at night. She loved her bright, airy bedroom and built-in wardrobe but found herself missing the steel almirah, the discoloured switchboard. Wasn’t she the one who wanted the move? She wondered how her mother had settled in so soon while she kept thinking about the old lane, the terrace, the trees. Every day, she felt a pang when she thought of how the red floors and old staircase would be gone forever.
Two months following the move, after settling into the new routine, she had an uncontrollable urge to go visit the old house. She knew it would be too painful for her mother, so she made up an imaginary dinner meeting at work and boarded the bus with a beating heart.
As she walked towards the lane, she almost turned away. But she forced her feet to move. There she was… nearly there. She stopped rooted to the spot.
The apartment on one side and the office building were still the same. The house was gone, along the jasmine bush, the guava tree, the stone bench and the unruly back garden. Even the two neem trees on the strip of land outside the house were gone. Labourers shuffled about with sand and cement, laying the new foundation. She saw a board one corner with an illustration of what the new building would look like. A glass façade with a hint of green inside, swivel chairs visible from the road, built four storeys higher than the apartment next door. She stared and didn’t realise the time passing until she felt a tap on her shoulder. ‘Anjali, what a surprise! Are you okay? You look upset.’ It was Shekhar. She felt a sudden revulsion at the sight of the person who brought about this change. But she smiled. ‘Yes, I was just taken aback at seeing the house suddenly gone.’
Shekhar gave her a surprised smile. ‘I thought Kalpana would be the one to mope and you would be the practical one.’ Anjali gave him another weak smile and turned away in embarrassment when she sensed her eyes becoming moist. ‘I did give a thought to trying to convert the old house, give it a bit of ‘old world charm’. But maintenance becomes so difficult, you know? You would know,’ he added with a laugh.
Anjali nodded. ‘Yes, I was always complaining about it.’
Soon, she left with a last look at the plot, imagining at the gate a large poster of a woman with glowing skin and shiny hair pouting at the camera. She took quicker steps to the bus stop.
Later that night, she sat at the balcony with her mother, checking her email while her mother read a magazine from the apartment library. ‘Anju, are you okay? You are so quiet today. Did the meeting go on well?’
She looked at her mother seriously. ‘Yes. Amma, are you okay at this new house? I know how hard it must be for you.’
‘No Anjali, I really like it here. I’m happy we made this decision,’ she paused, ‘I should have listened to you earlier! I needed a change of place, and some new friends. I was lost in too many memories in that house.’
Anjali smiled pensively as she recalled the emotional roller-coaster that she and her mother had been through over the last few months.
‘What’s it, Anjali?’ her mother asked, watching her smile.
‘Nothing, Amma. It’s unbelievable how different our life is now. I suppose we have learnt to let go,’ she sighed.
Kalpana patted her daughter affectionately on her cheek and nodded. ‘Indeed,’ she said, ‘we have learnt to move on.’
